You’ve probably already heard about the news that the first-ever image of a black hole has been
taken. It might have been when you were scrolling through your news or social media app this
week. Personally, I woke up with a news notification about it on my phone. Which, in retrospect,
is kind of a hilarious way to learn more about the intricacies of our universe.
For those who don’t know, black holes are basically the corpses of stars that collapsed into
themselves, forming regions of space with immense gravitational pull. Meaning, anything nearby
can’t escape it, not even light. So naturally, my initial reaction to discovering someone had
finally snapped a picture of this impressively terrifying cosmic phenomenon was, holy shit that’s
cool.
Apparently, the image of the black hole went beyond simply being cool (what a shock), and
bolstered Einstein’s theory of relativity. So, way to go, Einstein! I’m starting to seriously digress
because this is NOT a science article. This is an existential article. It’s so existential that I have
to declare it’s overwhelmingly existentialist quality.
Ultimately, when all my scientific questions faded away I started thinking about how tiny and
insignificant humans are in the cosmic expanse of the universe. I started questioning: Do we
even matter? What’s in a galaxy far, far away that our tiny human minds will never be able to
photograph or comprehend? These are just a couple of examples of the lighthearted questions
that were suffocating my mind. Alas, to soothe my existential dread I realized I must meditate
and focus on my breathing, instead of focusing on unanswerable questions. Just kidding, even
though that probably would have been an okay idea!
Instead, I took a deeper dive online and what I found was truly disturbing. Like, I’m gonna have
nightmares for weeks. People stared into the heart of a black hole on their smartphone screens
and decided the first thing that they would do was tell jokes! People joked about how blurry the
image was, and how it looked like a donut! The indignity! (Yes, I’m using a lot of exclamation
points. I’m upset!) These are just a couple examples of the common jokes I found. I thought
maybe, just maybe we were better than this. That when we gained the privilege of viewing
cosmic entities that we’ve never been visually exposed to before, we’d be filled with awe,
existential dread, and gratitude to the person that made the image possible. But, apparently
not. And I’m just really disappointed if I’m being honest.
This whole experience resulted in me becoming the living embodiment of Friedrich Nietzsche’s
infamous words, “Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster…
for when you gaze long into the abyss. The abyss gazes also into you.” Dear god, I’ve been
gazing into this abyss. I’m not sure I liked what it turned me into. If you think the abyss I’m
referring to is the literal abyss of the black hole, you would be mistaken. The metaphorical abyss
I’m talking about is existentialism and the poor side of human nature. The lasting impression is
not sweet on me or you. Good day.
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