The Cosmic Plea for Personal Comfort - 1

“Why did he have to die so fast mummy?” wept the boy at the grave of his dog. “He was still a baby”.

His mother kneeled next to him and whispered “because God loves him. Tommy was a good boy and God has decided to keep Tommy with him forever. Tommy is in a better place now.” The little boy smiled.
A harmless stretch of the truth it was, and sufficient to ease the pain. The basis of the claim was entirely irrelevant to the effect it had, of course, but the latter will always overshadow the former. After all, where is the satisfaction of being an intelligent species if we are unable to make peace with suffering?

For centuries, we looked up to the heavens to draw an inference of the cosmic scale for a myriad of phenomena - birth, death, purpose, suffering, evil. We relish in the guilty pleasure of remoulding reality to validate our position of importance.  It is almost as if the universe exists for the sake of being toyed by our own whims and fancies, to feed us with a substantial amount of mega-ness so that we can feel grander, ignoring the irony.

Why are we amused by the thought that we could be the sole purpose of the universe? Why do we think our existence is essential to that of the cosmos? 

As Lucy said "humans consider themselves unique, so they've rooted their whole theory of existence on their uniqueness", we have grown to become more justified in our superior outlook. We regard ourselves as the cream of the crop of all lives on earth, a stand cemented by our ownership of intelligence. But does intelligence equal supremacy?

Alex O'Connor, of Cosmic Skeptic, put forth the following thought (paraphrased): to say a species is superior to the rest requires a certain scale to measure the degree of supremacy, and we have used intelligence to claim our victory. Had we used life span as a measure, the Japanese jellyfish would have won and had we used regenerative capacity, the axolotl would be supreme. To illustrate the bias, imagine setting creativity as a measure of supremacy to say the artist is far superior to the chemist. 

It is, hence, more likely our own prejudice that led us to arrive at such cosmic conclusions of our role and "purpose" in the grand scheme of things and less to do with reality as it is. We have personified the universe, and in doing so, employed it as our personal guardian. 

To us, the planets embody human abstracts: love, luck, wealth. Their movements are the foretellers of our individual destinies. Their lands, devoid of life and hospitality, are evidence of our special status. We look to the skies to plead for comfort; to remind ourselves that every orb and star, and every dust and flame have been positioned and their every action orchestrated, for our fundamental needs. 

What a lonesome lot we are.