Very well curated 3-minute videoclip on Astronomy …It makes us aware of a great human Delusion that all of us suffer from and none of us can get rid of as long as we live …
What is that great delusion?
It is believing that where we live , what we experience, what we know and what we build in this microcosm called our world is macrocosmic in nature … And that who we are and what we become is what the entire cosmos is too …
What is a microcosm?
The microcosmos is a community, place, or situation regarded as encapsulating in miniature the characteristics of something much larger, indescribably vaster.
It’s a bit like like saying Mylapore in Chennai city is a microcosm of all of modern India ….
And likewise, when humankind is regarded as being the representation in miniature of the entire universe… that’s when delusional thinking sets in.
Such a delusion is nonetheless the strongest and deepest of all human beliefs — the belief in correspondences between the Universe and Man is correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm too. Without that magnificent delusion, however, we would actually all go very insane.
It is indeed sheer delusion , yes, as this videoclip poetically and dramatically explains … to think that our little planet Earth, and our own tiny microcosmic world in it, is the centre of the entire limitless universe… but then without such a spectacular delusion, we would just not be able to wake up every morning and carry on living our daily lives, occupations, and keep chasing our dreams and cherishing our fond hopes for our futures …
Without this delusion , this great world of ours which we believe is greater and more important than the universe, and why, even larger than Life itself, would make no sense at all … For as this video explains, the reality of the macrocosm is too frighteningly overwhelming to comprehend and the fiction of the microcosm we live in is too infinitesimally obscure for acceptance or coming to terms with so easily …
If one thinks deeply about the matter after watching the video-clip, one would realise that it’s both heroic and tragic human condition indeed that it must cling on to delusion to defeat despair.
Sudarshan Madabushi