This interactive flash program (and an earlier version of it) has been making its way through the toppings of the internet:
Scale Of The Universe Website
How can the social reaction to this presentation be explained without appearing to be an elitist asshole? Maybe it can't.
So fuck it:
A sane person with an IQ above 100 will conclude "That's pretty cool.".
An educated person with an IQ above 120 or to whom this topic is a great interest will shrug because they have grasped the reality of the situation for many years.
A person who is not so educated, and/or lies at the bottom tier of the IQ spectrum will react in this way:
Now, Ilya is a benevolent and kind-hearted Russian, so his conclusion is "Be happy, your problems are small". But it is no more logical to conclude that than to conclude what Ilya's angsty younger brother Igor proclaims:
"It is so big and we are so small!!! How can life have meaning when we are
like ants!".
That is the kind of mentality that wanders on to their favoured emotional tirade-grounds i.e., messageboard and thinks that there is some great philosophical conclusion to be drawn at attempting to grasp the enormity of what is.
That it took such a diagram to concretize this broad of a thought implies that the shock of a "great revelation" at the enormity of the universe is in reality the self-shock of their own brain's abstract capacities being activated after years of dormancy --- or perhaps for the first time.
Apparently in our trash world-culture the dawning of third-tier abstract thought (thinking in principles) is taking some people a little longer to apply consistently. One supposes those must go hand-in-hand.
So, before a memetic "mind = blown" reaction is elicited from you, before a facepalm-inducing, "This puts things in perspective." reply is offered, before you find yourself in a rush to minimize your own value, before you parrot the status quo's "It is big, I am small." catch-phrase, please be prepared to answer the following question:
So what?
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