Tag Archives: Universe

IF OUR UNIVERSE TEEMS WITH LIFE, WHERE ARE ALL THE INTELLIGENT SPACE ALIENS?

Our universe is mind-boggingly vast. The best estimates claim it’s about 92 billion light-years wide and around 13.82 billion years old. Cosmologists say there are trillions of galaxies holding quadrillions of stars, never mind quintillions of planets interwoven throughout the sky.

That’s a sextillion of combinations—exceeded only by the Avogadro’s number (6.02214076 × 1023) of mistakes I’ve made during 68 revolutions around the sun. Seriously, though, principles like the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation assure us that biological life exists elsewhere in the universe, but there may not be much “intelligent” life out there. That conclusion is supported by the space-breaking astrobiology work of Professor Sara Seager with her thought-leading, biosignature model of hunting out exoplanets containing extraterrestrial life.

Fermi? Drake? Seager? Who are these guys? What do they know about extraterrestrial bio-lifeforms in relation to your Earthly place in the universe? And where are they—these intelligent space aliens—that astrophysical calculators say have to exist?

Maybe it depends on your definition of life and intelligence. We’ll get to that in a moment. First, let’s look at the history of Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI) programs and two recorded, unexplained, electromagnetic contacts that just may have been sent by ET.

Starting the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence

SETI began more as an amusement than a serious scientific venture. In August 1924, a natural celestial event coincided with an advancement in human technology. Mars was in its closest orbit with Earth—a condition called an opposition—and it attracted a lot of astronomical interest, even with amateurs now equipped with rather sophisticated telescopes.

Radio transmitters and receivers had enormously increased in output power and input sensitivity. David Peck Todd, an American astronomer, had been experimenting with the new SE950 radio which was invented at the end of World War I. It never saw active service and was now surplus to the civilian market. Todd and Charles Francis Jenkins, a photographer and inventor, teamed up to point the radio at Mars and record if anything returned.

This experiment interested the U.S. Naval Observatory in Washington that offered a Navy observation dirigible (airship) to take the SE950 antenna two miles into the sky so it would have less impact from terrestrial interference. They pointed the antenna at Mars, and what they found shocked the world.

The radio’s receiver was connected to a graph which recorded a repetitive series of dots and dashes somewhat like Morse Code. When printed on paper, the code became a human face. The signal from Mars suddenly stopped and was never heard again.

The SE950 Radio

Sensing human interference or even a prank, Todd and Jenkins had their experiment reviewed by Nikola Tesla and Guglielmo Marconi. These two pioneers of electricity and radio dismissed the human element, verified the signal as real, but suggested it didn’t necessarily originate on Mars. They surmised the message possibly came from the same region of the sky but much further out.

The “Mars Face” ignited a century-long search for alien intelligence. It also created the overall space race which resulted in Sputnik, Apollo Eleven, and the poor saps currently marooned on the International Space Station caused by a broken Boeing rocket. It also funded exponential generations of publicly and privately funded SETI projects.

One venture, the Ohio State SETI Big Ear program, paid off on August 15, 1977. Jerry Ehman, a project volunteer, was shifting through signal records and spotted an abnormality that fit perfectly with a technological output—not something that could possibly originate in nature.

The signal arrived in the frequency of hydrogen atoms which is the common denominator researchers monitored. The reason being is that hydrogen might be the universal frequency used among advanced civilizations for interstellar communication. The signal’s imprint was 6EQUJ5 which means SFA to you and me, but to a trained eye like Ehman’s it was so outstanding that he wrote “WOW!” beside it in bold red letters.

The WOW! signal needs a bit of explaining to understand its relevancy. In SETI-speak, the signal started out at an intensity of 6—already an outlier on the page—climbed to E, then to Q, peaked at U—the highest power ever recorded by any SETI search— then decreased in equilibrium through J and signed off at 5.

This signal invigorated the SETI industry and still drives it today. Most researchers and learned scientists feel WOW! remains the strongest candidate for an intentional alien transmition. Alas, the signal was never recorded again but has no reasonable earthly or natural explanation.

The SETI experiment from 1960 onward is so comprehensive that entire books have been written documenting the process. And the fascination hasn’t waned despite hiccups in funding. Today, in 2024, there is a hyperdrive movement in SETI experiments with an alliance between the Breakthrough Listen and National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) at the Very Large Array in New Mexico.

The new venture’s name is COSMIC which stands for Commensal Open-Source Multicode Interferometer Cluster. (Someone really had to work to come up with that acronym.) COSMIC is AI-powered by supercomputers and will be able to process billions of intercepts in real-time, not like in 1977 when the WOW! signal surfaced days after transmission/reception.

The Drake Equation

1960 was a pivotal year for SETI expansion. David Drake was a young astronomer attached to Project OZMA at the NRAO Howard Tatel telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia. Drake was a brilliant man who looked for simple solutions to complex problems. He was invited to present at the National Academy of Sciences about the current state of SETI exploration.

Drake knew he was going to get the “What’s the chances” question, so he sat down and tried to figure it out mathematically. The answer being an estimate of the number of active, communicative, extraterrestrial civilizations in our Milky Way galaxy. (Note: All SETI explorations focus solely on the Milky Way, not distant galaxies.)

David Drake considered factors such as the rate of star formation, the fraction of stars that could have planets, the number of planets that could support Earth-like life, the fraction that develop intelligent life, the number of societies that have reached technological advancement to communicate interstellarly, and the number that have survive to be currently active. His equation gave the answer of 23. See screenshot below:

The Drake Equation is still the gold standard that drives SETI credibility. It’s a formula taught at the beginning of every Astronomy 101 course and is considered the second most famous scientific equation besides E=MC2.

The Fermi Paradox

So, if David Drake is right, and there are 23 Milky Way civilizations capable of communicating with us, why don’t we hear from them? Where are all the intelligent space aliens? This question is the Fermi Paradox.

In 1950, Italian physicist Enrico Fermi was working on an offshoot of the Manhattan Project where they were building a civilian nuclear reactor. He was having lunch with colleagues when he suddenly blurted out, “Where are they? Where is everybody?”

His associates looked at Fermi as if he had two heads until he qualified with, “I mean the aliens. If the universe is teeming with life and there are intelligent beings out there, where are they? Why haven’t we seen or heard evidence of them?”

Fermi had a good point. If Drake is correct, and there are 23 societies outside of Earth, why haven’t we seen or heard evidence of them? Set aside the two strong candidates from 1924 and 1977. It’s a paradox. If they exist, why don’t they show themselves as we here on Earth so desperately do?

In SETI-speak, the Fermi Paradox is “The Great Silence”. The paradox expands the contradiction with possible explanations:

  • The Vastness of the Universe minimizes the chances of contact.
  • The Age of the Universe limits civilization lifespan to coexist at the same time.
  • The Rare Earth Hypothesis says that intelligent life is exceedingly rare.
  • The Great Filter says that advanced societies are filtered out by natural forces.
  • Technological Self-Destruction eliminates complex civilizations.
  • Intentional Invisibility says these alien intelligences don’t want outside contact.
  • The Zoo Hypothesis posits that aliens are very much aware of us and watch.
  • The Simulation Hypothesis questions if we are a programmed simulation.
  • The Dark Forest Hypothesis says they’re there; we just can’t see them.
  • The North Sentinel Language Hypothesis claims we’re unable to understand them.

Stephen Webb wrote an interesting book titled If the Universe Is Teeming with Aliens … WHERE IS EVERYBODY? Seventy-Five Solutions to the Fermi Paradox and the Problem of Extraterrestrial Life. Some of Webb’s suggestions are pretty far out, but it’s worth the read if you really want to think out the Fermi Paradox.

The Sara Seager Answer

Someone who really has thought out the Drake Equation and the Fermi Paradox is Professor Sara Seager. She’s the uber-bright, planet-hunting, astrobiologist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) where she uses the new James Webb telescope to identify exoplanets with Earth-like conditions. So far, Seager has found over 5,000 probables in pretty much every place she’s looked.

Professor Seager is convinced the universe is teeming with life—biological life—not necessarily intelligent life capable of signaling. She suggests the SETI folks are looking at this wrong. Rather than randomly look for radio technosignatures, searches should be zooming in on biosignatures to find out first if life is there and then scan for intelligent emissions.

Seager and her team look for the chemical signs of oxygen, hydrogen, and methane coming from exoplanets. These are the primary indicators of carbon-based life, and they seem to be exceedingly common in the Goldilocks Zone which is the right distance from the host star to allow liquid water. Seager’s approach is to first find the life, then listen to hear if it has anything to say.

Sara Seager has rewritten the Drake Equation for a more modern approach. Her conservative calculation is that we’ll find at least two inhabited planets within the next ten years. “It’s only a matter of when,” Seager says. “Not if.”

Then it’s a matter of asking, “If our universe teems with life, where are all the intelligent space aliens?”

INTERCONNECT — FINDING YOUR PLACE, PURPOSE AND MEANING IN THE UNIVERSE

This piece is downloadable in full-length PDF format by clicking the blue bar button at the screen’s top or as a Kindle eBook and PDF through links at the end.

Once upon a time, a youth lay on their back and gazed in awe at the starry sky. The moon waned as a dim crescent—God’s Thumbnail, some call it—which let the universal brilliance of consciousness resonate in the youth’s eyes. Billions of fireballs blazed above, and countless more stars couldn’t be seen. The cosmos had cracked its coat. Like a galactic exhibitionist teasing eternal entropy, the universe flashed a perfect picture of order defying chaos and displayed an unbashful interconnection with all its occupants, including the star-gazing youth.

If you remember… that youth was you. Regardless if your years are still young, you’ve reached middle-age or are now advanced in time, the wonder of universal questions remains etched in your mind. Who are you? Where did you come from? Where are you going? And what is your interconnected place, purpose and meaning in the universe?

These are timeless queries people like you’ve asked since humans first consciously observed the heavenly heights. Long ago, your ancestors used their emerging awareness to question universal curiosities. It’s a natural thing for humankind to look for simple answers to straightforward questions and, no doubt, you’ve queried them many times during your earthly existence without receiving any clear response.

For centuries, sages and scientists pondered the meaning of existence within the universe. They’ve debated scientific theories and proposed philosophical solutions to deep puzzles boldly presented in the macro and micro worlds. You’ll find narrow common ground on who’s right and who’s wrong which leaves you to wonder what nature’s realities truly are.

Albert Einstein equated that science without philosophy was lame and philosophy without science was blind. That great scientific sage also spent the second half of his life looking for the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) that interconnects everything in the universe. That includes your place, purpose and meaning.

As wise and astute as Einstein was, he didn’t complete his mission of tying the universe into a nicely packaged bow. It’s not that he didn’t believe all parts of the universe were intrinsically interconnected. Einstein knew in his gut that all physical laws and natural processes reported to one central command. That, ultimately, is the universal dominance of consciousness that allowed your creation and will one day destroy you through eternal entropy.

This isn’t a religious treatise you’re reading. No, far from it. It’s simply one person’s later-in-life reflection on three interconnected and universal curiosities. What’s your place? What’s your purpose? And, what’s the meaning in your life?

To find sensible suggestions, it’s necessary to dissect what’s learned (so far) of universal properties and what’s known about you as a human. You’re a conscious being housed in a physical vessel and controlled by universal principles. You had no choice in how you came to be here, but you certainly have choices now. Those include placing yourself in a safe and prosperous environment, developing a productive purpose and enjoying a rewarding meaning from the limited time you’re granted to be alive.

At the end of this discourse you’ll find a conclusion about your place, purpose and meaning in the universe. It might be one person’s opinion, but it’s based on extensive research and over six decades of personal experience. However, for the conclusion to make sense you need to take a little tour through the universal truths.

Ahead are a layman’s look at the origin of the universe, classical and quantum physics, chemistry, biology, anatomy, neuroscience and the life-changing principle of entropy. It’s also a dive into what’s not known about the biggest scientific and philosophical mystery of all—how consciousness manifests through the human brain and how entropy tries to kill it. Now, if you’re ready to interconnect with the universe, here’s what your place, purpose and meaning truly are.

The universe is enormous. It’s absolutely huge. There aren’t proper adjectives in the English language to describe just how big the universe really is. Perhaps the right word is astronomical which means exceeding great or enormous.

People often use the word “cosmos” interchangeably with “universe”. That’s not correct. Cosmos refers to the visible world extending beyond Earth and outward to the heavens. The universe incorporates all that’s in the macroscopic or outward realm, but the term also drills down and incorporates everything within the micro-regions of molecules, atoms and then into sub-atomic realities where quantum stuff gets seriously strange.

In Chemistry, Biology and Physics 101, you learned you’re created of energized matter built of complex material formed by atomic and molecular chains. So is every set-piece in the micro and macro universe. All visible matter contains material made of atomic structures that strictly obey standard operating procedures set down during the universe’s birth.

How that happened is explained by a few different theories. Religious accounts, depending on the flavor, hold that an omniscient supernatural power created the universe at will and for a vain purpose. Current scientific accounts dismiss all supernatural contribution and exchange it with a series of natural orders called the laws of physics and non-tangible processes of the universe.

Most scientists don’t attach an intentional purpose to the universe. They leave that to philosophers who tend to argue with abstract thoughts that aren’t backed by hard evidence. Then, there are those who think the universe is simply a grand thought.

No matter who’s right and who’s wrong, there are a few facts you can personally bank on. One is that you exist in a physical form and use consciousness to be self-aware. That includes knowing you have a place in the universe, a purpose for being here and there’s a meaning to your life.

As said, this isn’t a religious paper. Religion can be a matter of faith but, then, so can science. The difference is that science relies on direct observation, proven experiments and the ability to replicate results. Science also depends on building hypothesizes, turning them into theories and then certifying them as facts.

No particular physicist claims sole authorship of the Big Bang Theory. Currently, the Big Bang Theory is the leading account for the universe’s origin, and it’s generally accepted throughout the scientific community as being the best explanation—so far—of where your structural matter originated. It goes something like this.

In the early 1900s, an astronomer named Edwin Hubble (the space telescope guy) was busy measuring galactic light and came upon his profound realization that the observable universe was expanding. Not only was the universe growing, Hubble exclaimed, but it was also accelerating its expansion rate. That led to a logical conclusion that the universe must have started in a singular place and at a specific time.

Some of science’s brightest folks worked on mathematical extrapolations and built the theory postulating that all matter and energy in today’s observable universe must have been once compressed in a singularity that exploded. That big bang started the time clock, created space, released energy and formed matter. It’s been growing ever since and, along the journey, you were created as an interconnected part.

This sounds like a pretty big undertaking. It also sounds pretty far out to think everything in the known universe was stuck in the space smaller than an atom where it was exceedingly hot and heavy. Well, guys like Einstein and Steven Hawking accepted the Big Bang Theory as fact, although Einstein famously quipped, “God knows where that came from.”

Without any other scientific direction to go on, what you see in the universe got started from a single point and is enormously here in its present form and place. The best-educated guesses place the universe’s age at about 13.77 billion years, give or take a few hundred thousand. This rough age-estimate comes from measuring Cepheid Variable Pulsating Stars (CVPS) with the Hubble Space Telescope which has proven to be quite useful once NASA got its foggy lens fixed.

The size of the observable macro, or outer, universe is impressive. Current measurements find the most distant visible electromagnetic radiation to be 46 billion light-years from Earth. That’s in every direction where the radio telescopes pick up the Cosmic Background Radiation (CBR) signal. Astronomers believe the CBR is a leftover mess occurring about 300,000 years after the Big Bang. If the true universal distance radius is 46 billion light-years, then the entire trip across occupied space is around 92 billion light-years in diameter.

That is a massive distance. It’s gigantic, humongous and colossal. Light, which is electromagnetic radiation, travels at 186,000 miles per second or 300,000 kilometers per second. That means that in one year a light particle can travel 5.88 trillion miles or 9.5 trillion kilometers. Multiply that by 92 billion and you’ll see that it’s a long, long way across the visible universe.

That’s just the macro universe that astronomers can see with current technology. Most scientists agree they’ve only explored something like four to five percent of the visible universe, and there’s far more out there than known today. This is an ongoing search with exciting discoveries emerging all the time.

To get a feel of where your physical place is in the macro universe is, you’re on the surface of a planet called Earth. Your home base is 93 million miles or 150 million kilometers from the sun which is a common-type star. It takes eight minutes for light to leave the sun and meet your eyes. To put this distance in perspective, a light particle can circle the Earth seven and a half times in one second.

The solar system extends a long way out. Pluto, which has returned its classification into the planet family, is seven hours distant from the sun via light speed. Going further, your planetary arrangement orbiting the sun is in one part of your home galaxy called the Milky Way. The sun is approximately 30,000 light-years from the big black hole at the Milky Way’s center, and you’re actually closer to the nearest independent galaxy than you are to the Milky Way’s core.

No one knows how many stars there are in the Milky Way. It’s a countless number. The current consensus is there may be a trillion stars in your home galaxy. Some astronomers feel there could be a trillion or more galaxies in the visible universe.

The Milky Way is part of a galactic bunch called the Local Group. These 54 assorted-shape star arrangements form part of a larger galactic collection known as the Virgo Supercluster. This is a big, big crowd but nowhere near what’s really going on out there.

Recent astronomical observations confirmed that beyond the Virgo Supercluster lies a monster called “Laniakea” which is Hawaiian for “Immeasurable Heaven”. This stupendous structure sits in a part of space called the “Zone of Avoidance” where the clouds of dust and gas are so thick that visible light is impossible to perceive. Astonishingly, Laniakea and the Virgo Supercluster are being pulled together across space and time by a behemoth force nicely titled the “Great Attractor”. No one knows what that force field is, but it’s powerful.

As you lay on the Earth’s surface and gaze at the starry sky, you’re not seeing reality. You’re only seeing light that left its emission point a long time ago. If you spot Andromeda, the only independent galaxy visible with your naked eye, you’re seeing that structure as it was two million years ago. For all you know, Andromeda may no longer exist.

The universe can play a lot of tricks on an observer. But one thing the universe never does is change its basic operating rules. Space, time, energy and matter follow strict laws that apply everywhere throughout the universe. Whether you’re on Earth, in Andromeda or around Laniakea, all fundamental forces behave the same way.

There are four fundamental forces in the entire universe—both in the macro and micro worlds. Those are electromagnetism, gravity, the strong nuclear force and the weak nuclear force. Space, time, energy and matter all adhere to these four forces from which many physicists have tried to find a common denominator to frame the Grand Unified Theory (GUT).

So far, no luck. Einstein spent the second half of his life working on a unified theory. His intuition told him unification lay in an infinite pool of information which is the non-visible and non-tangible factor that gives space, time, energy and matter its direction. This information or intelligence principle certainly seems to be real, and it’s captured in the acronym STEMI for Space, Time, Energy, Matter and Information or intelligence. It might also be universal consciousness.

Information permeates the entire universe. It somehow laid down the four forces emerging from the Big Bang and then made other rules or laws of physics which carried throughout the entire regions of reality. However, what the rules say about operating the outward cosmos are not exactly the same rules as those governing sub-atomics.

What directs your existence in the macro world adheres to classical or Newtonian physics. Down in the microcosm realm, though, your matter and energy have different masters. The wee parts of you behave according to quantum physics which are somehow interconnected back into classic physics and STEMI.

*   *   *

To read the rest of Interconnect and find the conclusion of what your place, purpose and meaning in the universe really are, follow these links for a free, full-length download. It’s a relatively short piece at 11K words and you might just find it quite worthwhile.

For a FREE PDF eBook of Interconnect – Finding Your Place, Purpose and Meaning in the Universe, please click here:  Interconnect Manuscript PDF

(You can also click on the button in the blue bar at the top of the screen for a quick PDF download of Interconnect.)

For a FREE Amazon Kindle/Mobi eBook of Interconnect – Finding Your Place, Purpose and Meaning in the Universe, please click here: Interconnect Manuscript Amazon Kindle/Mobi

(This link will take you to my Amazon sales page where Interconnect is temporarily available as a FREE promotional Kindle eBook. I’d appreciate if you’d get a Kindle copy as this drives my Amazon ranking up. Thanks!)

If you have any difficulties downloading any efile type, please email me at garry.rodgers@shaw.ca and I’ll ship you an attached copy. Also, please feel free to share Interconnect. It wasn’t written as a money-maker. Rather, it’s a personal letter to myself in an attempt to figure it all out. Here’s one of the principle take-aways:

 

THE UNIVERSE DOESN’T GIVE A FLYING FUCK ABOUT YOU

Johnny B Truant is an awesome dude. He’s a prolific author and writes some of the biggest websites on the internet. Johnny’s mission is to get you devoting your life to becoming “Legendary” which is basically about being as awesome as you can be, in as many areas as possible, in a totally realistic and achievable no-bullshit way. Imagine a slightly more abrasive Tony Robbins and you’ll have the basic idea. Today, Johnny guest posts on DyingWords with this provoking piece. 

AAA11I’ve been watching this show lately with my 6-year-old son, Austin, who likes learning about space and planets and black holes and stuff. It’s called How the Universe Works. And man, the universe has one hell of a story to tell.

It all starts with, presumably, the Big Bang, wherein a single point in space barfs forth a hot, violent soup of particles and energy that take a few hundred million years just to cool down enough to begin coalescing into stars. You know… to “cool down” enough to become giant fucking balls of fire.

Stars ignite. Star clusters form, and become galaxies. Rocks in space start running into each other, and a few planets are created.

Eventually, the Earth is born. Hooray!

AAA9The Earth sits there for a few more billion years, until, after a lot of back and forth and general bureaucratic indecision, life shows up. Very, very recently, humanity, (which is perfect and unique if you ignore how random it all seems), makes its appearance. Hooray!

That lasts for a little while. Humans thrive. Invent the rotisserie. Build the internet. Watch porn.

After a bit, though (and this part of the story is still unwritten, but definitely coming) the sun sloughs off its outer layers, obliterating all of the inner planets as it dies. Then, as the fusion at the sun’s core that keeps it inflated runs out of raw materials, it collapses into a white dwarf, and the solar system weeps as it loses yet another great player to retirement.

Hooray!

AA16After this, it gets really fun. The astrophysicists who used to think the universe was going to re-contract into the Big Crunch now say that the universe’s expansion is actually accelerating. Meaning: After enough time passes, the Earth’s old position (Earth having been blown away aeons ago, of course) will be so distant from anything else that you’d be able to look up into the sky and see absolutely nothing at all.

Quite a story, right?

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper

Deep, man. I don’t know about you, but looking up into the sky on a clear night is enough to give me existential chills.

AAA8You’re not just looking up into a curtain of black. You’re looking into the eye of the universe. Stare for a while and you start to realize — on a deep, gut level — that the moon is a giant rock circling us in space. The sun is a violent, fusion-fueled ball of plasma and gas millions of miles away that destroyed the atmospheres of all of the inner planets (including Mars, which is farther away from it than we are) and would do the same to ours if we weren’t lucky enough to have a magnetic field that diverts the solar wind.

The cute little pinpricks of light you see out there are other giant, explosive, incredibly pissed-off balls of gas floating in an infinite void, most of which are far more impressive than our puny sun. And that smear of milky white through the sky? That’s the center of our own galaxy — a gigantic pinwheel circling a supermassive black hole like floating detritus around the vortex of a flushing toilet.

There’s a lot of crazy shit going on out there.

And in fact, the Earth could bite the dust at any time.

AAA1Comets. Asteroids. Apparently, there’s even a star nearby that may eventually go all black hole on us. When it does, it’ll shoot a jet of X-Men style radiation out of its poles, perpendicular to its accretion disc, directly at us. (The good news is that we’d never see it coming. We’d just suddenly be reduced to our constituent atoms.) Even avoiding all of that, though, just buys us time. The Earth is not permanent. The sun is not permanent. The oldest stars alive today are not permanent. It will all end.

AAA17And in the middle of this story (because we’re the ones telling it), is us. Here on our little blue planet. Here at this exact, tiny, special blink in time. Here, but only “here” in the way a beetle might be “there” on the sidewalk of Times Square during rush hour. Sure, the beetle can survive, but only for as long as it’s not in the wrong place at the wrong time. Nobody’s out to get that beetle… but nobody’s watching where they’re stepping, either. The city was there long before the beetle, and it’ll be there long after the beetle’s inevitable demise. The city, always neutral, honestly doesn’t care one way or the other whether the beetle lives, dies, suffers, or thrives.

And you were worried that trying something new might make you look dumb or that your business might not make any money.

What the fuck is wrong with you?

The universe doesn’t care about you. It can’t. It’s too big, with too much going on.

AAA12Maybe there’s a grand conductor, and maybe there’s not. I do happen to believe in God, or the Spirit of Life, or the Force for all I know, but regardless of belief or disbelief, one thing I know for certain is that no matter WHAT or WHO is out there, he or it doesn’t “care” if you define “care” in terms of life and death. Nobody is special. Nobody gets a pass.

Everything dies. Everything. You were born with a terminal disease, just like everything else that has ever existed. You, your lamp, the sun, and the Bee Gees all have that in common.

This, like the universe’s apathy, is neither good nor bad. It is simply a fact.

But this fact — the immutable, inevitable, impossibly obvious fact we will die as surely as we were born — is something we all deny for most of our lives.

AAA16You’d think we’re never going to die, the way we cower and second-guess and fret over each little action. We act like what we do today will forever alter the flow of creation, of time, of space. Every move is vital. Each little event could upset the delicate balance. Everything is of paramount importance.

We can’t do things differently, because the system, however imperfect, works and is extremely delicate. We might upset it by thinking outside the box. We have to weigh every decision, because a butterfly flapping its wings in Nova Scotia could cause a hurricane in Guam. Or, as Homer Simpson taught us, if you kill a mosquito in dinosaur times, Ned Flanders might become the unquestioned lord and master of the universe.

We can’t do something that might make us look ridiculous, because first impressions last forever. We can’t try and fail, because then we’ll be ruined forever.

AAA19Think a scar (or a tattoo, for that matter) is permanent? It’s not. Your body was literally formed from stardust and will eventually return there. The duration of a scar doesn’t even register on the big time line. In fact, I heard that God watches jewellery commercials and LOL’s when they say that diamonds are forever. It’s all a big joke up there. There’s a drinking game in Heaven, where angels do a shot every time humans invest “for the long term.”

What are you so fucking worried about?

AAA13You are here now. Eventually, you will be gone. You have but a nanosecond on the universal clock to do whatever it is you’re going to do. When that time is gone, it’s gone. Forever.

That means that although what you do doesn’t matter to the universe, it should matter one hell of a lot to YOU.

In fact, it should matter to you more than it currently does.

AAA22If you knew how small you are and how short a time you have to do what you can, you wouldn’t waste time watching five fucking hours of TV a day. You wouldn’t waste time doing a job you hate. You wouldn’t waste the little time you have dealing with assholes, feeling sorry for yourself, or being timid about the things you’d really like to do.

I’m 35, and it dawned on me just recently that it’s not at all long before I’ll be forty.

And forty is FUCKING OLD in the mind of a guy with the mentality and sense of humor of a teenager. I mean, hell, you can make an argument for 30 being young despite the fact that the MTV crowd says different, but forty-something is what your grandmother was. When I had this epiphany, a succession of uncomfortable and incredibly obvious realizations followed.

If I can turn 40, I can turn 50. If I can turn 50, I can turn 60.

AAA20Once, I was a kid and everyone else was old. The tables will turn. I’ll be the guy that kids look at and see as old. Me. Fucking ME. Me, who was once out cruising on Friday nights, staying up until dawn. Me, who thought I was indestructible, who thought I was forever. Turns out I was wrong. Turns out I was just one in 6.8 billion, and very much subject to the same laws of time and space as everyone else. One day, if I’m very lucky, I’ll be a shriveled 100-year old guy with a cane. An old man with a kid’s mind, wondering how the hell this could have happened.

Think about this. Now.

AAA21Think back five years in time. Remember what you were like. Realize how fast five years can go. Think about who you are today, the place you’re in and the age you are. Then step back into the shoes of your five-years-ago self and look at yourself as you are today.

I have two kids. That’s not possible. People like me don’t have kids. We’re too young. We’re kids ourselves, forever young and irresponsible. It’s ridiculous. I live in a house that I own. I pay bills. It’s crazy.

Think about it.

Realize that time will never stop.

AAA15NEVER. You will never be younger again. It’s like being on a train with no stops that’s always leading you farther and farther from home… or closer and closer to home, depending on how you look at it. You can never get off that train. You can never board a train going the opposite direction. If you missed a stop, tough shit. If there was this great thing even just two miles back that you decided not to do, you can’t change your mind and go do it. That place is gone forever.

A simple example for me is skateboarding. I’d have loved to do that. And sure, adults can learn to skateboard. I’m a huge believer in “it’s never too late for X.” But really… REALLY… if you want to truly skate, that’s something for the young. I know I won’t be taking it up now, shredding through our concrete jungle.

AAA23In my past, there’s also an opportunity I could have taken advantage of that I didn’t, and that I wish I had. There’s a thing I got rid of that I really wish I’d kept. But the train never backs up. Never. I missed those things, and I will never get a second chance.

Do yourself a favor, right now, and realize two things:

  1. You will keep getting older, and then you will die.

  2. Everything that’s ever entered your experience has lasted and will continue to last for only a brief moment in the life of the universe.

AAA24This is game time, champ. You’re in. You’re in, playing, right now, and the clock is ticking. So stop wondering what it all means and how you’ll possibly ever do X and what people will think, and get on with your life already. Stop being a pussy and go do something amazing.

Do epic shit.

I’m just now getting around to the end of the newer Battlestar Galacticaseries and something hit me when Dr. Baltar suited up with the troops for the end assault on the Cylon colony. It’s this:

 Noble people do noble things.

AAA25That’s it. See, throughout the series, Baltar is a selfish asshole. He’s responsible for the annihilation of the human race, he betrays everyone, he forms a cult that rubs his chest and feeds him grapes. But in the end, he does the right thing. And when I saw that, I realized that it doesn’t matter what you’ve done. What matters is what you do. A whole series’ worth of being ignoble doesn’t stop a truly noble act at the end from being noble. The idea of “nobility” (or “good,” or “bad,” or “worthy,” or “awesome,” or anything else) is defined only by our actions.

You can’t be a bad person who does good things. If you do good things, you’re not bad; you’re good. There is simply no way to manifest badness other than by being bad. Anyone who’d argue that you can be bad while ultimately doing good things is just a douchebag philosophy major looking to get his ass kicked.

So what does this mean to you?

Why… it means everything.

AAA29It means that in the small amount of time you have to live, you can be whatever you want. It means that even though the universe doesn’t care enough to give you what you want, it doesn’t care enough to stop you from having it, either. So embrace that anarchy, and take those things for yourself.

If you want to be awesome in this life, do awesome things. If you want to be a leader, do some leading. If you want to be an expert, do the things an expert does.

A few weeks ago, I talked to Trust Agents co-author Julien Smith, and soon after, he sent me a tweet and for a moment, I wondered, “How the hell can I be more epic?” But then I realized something really obvious.

To be epic, all I’d need to do is to do epic shit.

AAA27So that’s what I’m doing, today and from here on out. Just do it. Claim it. Stop waiting for permission to be epic. Most people think that they need to be tapped on the shoulder by the Epic Fairy if they ever hope to be epic, or if they’re ever going to have the audacity to do something truly epic. But it’s not true. Want to be epic? Just do epic shit. There’s nothing else to it.

People always say, “I wish I was amazing. I wish I was awesome.” Fucking hell. Stop whining and just be it already. Be fucking awesome.

Nobody’s going to give you the gift of awesome.

AAA14Nobody’s going to make you good, or great, or amazing, or epic. Nobody’s going to make you an expert or an authority or a voice anyone should listen to. Nobody’s going to level you up. If you want that next level, take it. Take it for yourself.

Grab it. Become it. Claim it. Write a treatise. Create an event. Champion a cause. Build something great. Speak your mind. Make the call. Build the business. Author the book. Send the email. Do it. Do it.

If you fail, big deal.

AAA31You might write something and nobody might read it. You might build it and nobody might come. You could fail and ruin your life. You could take a chance and end up looking really, really stupid. Boo-fucking-hoo. It doesn’t matter.

You are very small. We are all staring down the barrel of a gun, and we last only for the tiniest, tiniest moment in time. Your life is a one-way train, and any second you waste is a second lost forever. You are that beetle on the streets of New York. The universe doesn’t hate you, but it doesn’t love you, either. You’re just an atom in its infinite workings. The universe doesn’t care if you live, die, suffer, or thrive.

Only YOU care.

If your life is to mean something, it’s up to YOU.

AAA26You cannot influence the movements of planets. You cannot live forever. You cannot affect the entropy of the universe. All you can do is to make this moment — your moment — better. You can affect the lives of others around you, and you can affect your own life. You can ease some suffering. You can do some epic shit. If you, yourself, only last for a nanosecond, you might expand your influence to a millisecond. And that’s something. Honest, it is.

You don’t matter to the planets and the sun and the stars, but you matter to YOU. You matter to those around you. You matter to those you can reach, and touch, and who you live and die with.

Stop waiting for someone to give you what you want.

AAA4The universe is too busy to care. It has worlds to create and galaxies to destroy. If you’re worried about death and about your own end, don’t. It’s coming whether you like it or not. You will either arrive at the end of your life in style or you will arrive broken and beaten, but whichever way you choose, have no doubt that you WILL ARRIVE.

There is only now. If you have power, it’s now. If you can change anything, you have to do it now. If you want to be or to have that next great thing, be it. Have it. Take it. Own it. Do it. Become it.

Be awesome. Do epic shit.

Do it now. The clock is ticking.

*   *   *

AB4Johnny B. Truant is a writer, a motivator, and a politically-incorrect, awesome internet legend. Here’s how Johnny explains himself:

The two things I do are writing novels and talking about becoming “Legendary” which is my own hard-edged, punch-you-in-the-face-because-I-love-you brand of human potential and personal development.

AB7I’ll leave this part vague because I’ll never remember to update this and I don’t want it to be too dated, but let’s just say that Fat Vampire (for adults) became a successful six-book series and that The Beam (also for adults) became a successful ongoing serial and that Unicorn Western (for kids and adults) became this big stupid monster that I still think is the most awesome and badass dumb idea I’ve ever had the pleasure to experience. Then I wrote other stuff.

You can check out all of my books here on Amazon and you can search for me on the other stores. I’m most places. Every single one of my books is more awesome than a camel with six cigarettes in its mouth firing a shotgun at robots while it goes off a ski jump in an El Camino with Ted Nugent.

AB5I also run a membership community filled with very cool, very driven, very dedicated people called Everyday Legendary. It’s quite inexpensive and is designed to help you get your head out of your ass and make real change, complete with a lot of support and accountability from like-minded peers. You can learn more about the Everyday Legendary community here.

And of course, because I can’t resist the impulse to talk a lot about this topic either, I started a podcast with “Impossible” guy Joel Runyon called Bigger Better Stronger Faster, which is all about this kind of thing.

AB8If you like the manifesto and the podcast and dig the idea behind my membership community, you will like my blog. I’d read the following three posts as a kind of trial by fire, to get you quickly steeped in Johnny-think: The Universe Doesn’t Give a Flying Fuck About You, like I’m sharing here on this depressing death-site called DyingWords.net with some corpse-cutting, washed-up weirdo named Garry Rodgers because maybe it fits with You Are Dying and Your World is a Lie, and Disobey. Oh, and if you’re the kind of person who makes excuses, read this. It’ll smack you back to reality – like DyingWords.net does.

Garry & my sites are fun, interesting places and I hope you dig us. Excuse the pun – it’s the first time I’ve tag-teamed a coroner.

Follow Johnny on Twitter at: https://twitter.com/johnnybtruant

Like his Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/johnnybtruant?ref=search&sid=594258147.3221702576..1

Watch this guy on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/selfpublishingpodcas