The universe is vast, and we are small. If we vanished tomorrow, the universe would go on much as before. If our solar system vanished, or the entire Milky Way galaxy, the result would be the same. Against the backdrop of the universe, our existence seems insignificant to say the least. And if the macrocosmic universe itself is an illusion, is that not final proof of our ultimate insignificance in the great scheme of things?

And yet four centuries after Galileo, we still imagine ourselves at the center of all things. We insist that we have a role to play on even the greatest stage. But do humans really have such a purpose? Are our tiny lives important to the universe? Or is it arrogance alone that makes us think so highly of ourselves?

Are we as insignificant as we seem to be?

In all likelihood we are exactly that insignificant. But before we accept the obvious answer, perhaps we should examine what we know.

First, we are a legitimate part of the universe. We have no reason to assume that we are less legitimate than other elements of this vast all. If our part of the universe is insignificant, we likely must conclude that other parts of the universe are just as insignificant. We might have to ask whether the universe itself has any discernible significance.

Alternatively, if we assume that all elements of the universe have some significance—for no other reason than each element plays a role in the functioning of the whole—then we must conclude that our existence also has at least that much significance. We play some role. We are not accidental to the mechanism of the universe, but rather part of the functioning of that mechanism. Even the illusion of self may have some minor part to play in the illusion that is the whole macrocosmic universe.

Does the universe want or need us to exist?

Second, as far as we know, we and other conscious entities are the consciousness of the universe. And since our knowledge of conscious entities is limited, it is conceivable, if unlikely, that we ourselves are a primary source of consciousness in the universe. Even if we are not alone, we are a means for the universe to experience conscious existence.

To state the obvious, that experience includes the basics such as observation, awareness, and intentionality, but also more intangible things such as language, imagination, creativity, literature, philosophy, science, civilization, not to mention friendship, love, loss, and even death.

What if the universe can know itself and all these things only through us and other conscious entities? Is that our role? Does that give our existence meaning and importance?

Are we part of the purpose of the universe?

Third, what if in addition to knowing itself through us, the universe also finds purpose through us? Not because we are its purpose, but because we search for purpose. In other words, through us the universe experiences a search for purpose.

We need not assume that we are the reason for the universe or that the universe was created for our sake. We can accept what seems obvious from the tiny scope of our existence, i.e., that we are not the most important part of the universe. But we are a part of it. And we happen to be a part that looks for purpose, both our own and the purpose of the universe itself.

Is our search for purpose important?

Could our seemingly insignificant lives help the universe find its purpose? Does the universe even have or want a purpose?

Again, all we know for sure is that the universe has conscious entities within it that search for purpose and meaning. Just as the universe experiences consciousness through its components with consciousness, the universe may experience meaning through its conscious components that search for meaning.

Is that enough? Can the universe rely on conscious components to find meaning and thereby create the universe’s own meaning?

Does the universe need more meaning than that?

We often imagine that the underlying meaning and purpose of reality is discoverable, something known out there that we cannot see. We spend lifetimes studying the universe or meditating to uncover its secrets. But could it be true that the universe has only what we give it, that it has the meaning that conscious entities within it search for and create?

The universe may or may not have a purpose, but it has a search for purpose. It has us.

Data is a living robot made from synthetic materials who possesses intellect and consciousness

“Data” is the name of the character played by Brent Spiner in the Star Trek films and television shows.[1] He is a synthetic life form constructed from metallic alloys, circuitry, and organic-like materials that simulate a human body, and he has both great intellectual capabilities and a form of sentience and self-awareness.

Data struggles to understand humanity. Over the course of his fictional life, he obtains a programming upgrade that allows him to experience emotion, which leads him to struggle even more with what it means to be human. Gradually he expands his consciousness and becomes a more fully developed sentient being. He ultimately sacrifices himself to save his human crewmates.

Data stands in a long line of fictional characters who are artificially created beings—robots, golems, puppets, statues, and monsters.[2] The fictional device often has been used as a metaphor for what it means to be human, or as a way to provide an outsider’s commentary on humanity.

Data is that type of metaphorical character, but that is not what I mean when I say that we are Data. No, my meaning is not metaphorical in the same fictional sense at all.

Humans are living robots made from organic materials who possess intellect and consciousness

We are not just like Data. We are of the same kind as Data.

In other words, we are robots of organic construction. Instead of metal substructure and silicon circuity beneath our skin, we have bone and carbon-based cellular structures that support a complex system of vessels, communication lines, nerve endings, and synapses. Our species of Homo sapiens is an emerging life form that appeared on our planet in our current form only about three hundred millennia ago. Our brains did not learn the rudiments of language until one hundred thousand years ago, and since then over a relatively short geological time span, our brains have evolved to develop advanced intellectual, social, and cultural capabilities based on language. We quite literally have become living robots of the same category as a creature like Data, evolving and developing new capacities as we learn to be who and what we are.[3]

Like Data we struggle with what it means to be human

Our species did not come into being with full knowledge of how to use our capacities and how to live as self-aware sentient creatures. A hundred millennia into the development of language, we do not understand our own humanity or how to communicate clearly even some of our most basic needs and desires. We have emotions and feelings, but they confound us. Our consciousness is hard to define, but it defines us, even if we cannot explain it fully or pin it down in our brains, and even if what we often imagine as “self” is indeed an illusion. Like Data we are learning machines, struggling to understand who we are, creating what it is to be human in real time.

That is how we are most like Data. We are organic mechanisms attempting to become human, while simultaneously exploring both what it means to be human and the universe in which we live. And that is fine with me. I do not consider it reductionist in the slightest. We don’t need to imagine ourselves more than organic machines. It is enough that we struggle to be human. That is what is important and most interesting about us.

It is also what is most interesting about the universe. Why does the universe generate living machines such as us? Why do we have the capacity to examine ourselves and question who and what we are? Why do we want to become more than what we are? To be what we imagine we could be?

Perhaps because we are exactly like Data.

[1] Data was introduced as a character in the Star Trek: The Next Generation television series in 1987. Wikipedia 2022. Data (Star Trek). Last edited on June 13, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_(Star_Trek)

[2] The many examples include movies such as Her and Blade Runner, the Pinnochio story, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, the myth of Pygmalion, Hal 9000 in 2001: A Space Odyssey, even C3PO and R2D2 of Star Wars.

[3] If it seems difficult to conceive of humans as advanced robots, read one of our most accomplished cognitive scientists and natural philosophers. Daniel Dennett describes the evolution of the complex operations of the brain over thousands of years of natural selection and concludes that consciousness can be defined as a virtual machine operating on an organic substrate. In his widely held view, humans are exactly like living robots running on advanced software and organic parts. “’Of course we’re machines! We’re just very, very complicated, evolved machines made of organic molecules instead of metal and silicon, and we are conscious, so there can be conscious machines – us.’” Dennett (1991), pp. 431-432.

“All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players….” William Shakespeare, As You Like It (Act 2, Scene 7)

The entire macrocosmic universe is an illusion

What does it mean that the world around us and the heavens above us are all an illusion?

What we know is that objects appear to be solid, but are not. Space appears to be empty, but instead is full of energy. Energy and matter are interconnected and interchangeable, comprising one vast connected energy field spanning the entire universe.

The atomic and subatomic components of matter in that field are not solid. They are both particles and waves and even bundles of waves. They move constantly at dizzying speeds, but have no definitive location and momentum. In their essence they are hardly things at all, but subparts or subzones of that vast interconnected field of energy that is everywhere and everything. The universe is defined by interactions among the subparts and subzones, the constant exchange of energy and energy particles.

Macrocosmic time is not constant, but relative. Objects moving at different velocities experience time differently, with time coming almost to a halt for objects approaching the speed of light. Beneath the macrocosm in the quantum world of energy particles in a universal energy field, time as we know it may not exist at all, with nothing but waves upon waves of superpositioned possibilities constantly evolving, pulsating, changing, and therefore always the same.

Our entire macrocosmic universe is sewn together from a subatomic fabric of interconnected energy. Our world—the stage on which we humans play out generations of our existence—may be nothing more than a temporary knot of energy in that vast fabric.

So yes, the holodeck is “real”

It is not real in the sense that we live in a simulation, a pretend world generated by a complex software algorithm. We do not live in a zoo created by an advanced alien species. The illusion in which we live is not fake. It is real. It is what the universe does and is.

The universe is indeed a vast engine of energy and matter that continuously generates the macrocosmic world in which we live. The generation of our world is not an accident or a collateral effect. It is a physical phenomenon that follows from the logic of the universe, as intended and intentional as any element of material reality can be.

Why does the holodeck exist?

That is perhaps the biggest and most foolish question of all. What is the meaning of the holodeck?[1] Is there any meaning? If we are in an illusion, should we conclude that existence has no meaning? Is the holodeck and its macrocosmic illusion final proof of our insignificance?

Alternatively, if the universe is a system, should we ask if the holodeck serves a function in the system? What mechanism or logic in the universe necessitates the creation of a macrocosm that is essentially an illusion?

This alternative statement of the question suggests a different way to think about the significance of existence. For some yet unexplained reason the universe has created and is creating a stage every moment of its existence. Is it logical to assume that the performance on the stage has no significance? Could the play be insignificant? Or is the play somehow important to the functioning of the system?

And if the play is important, and we are players, are we important in some way? Are our small, seemingly insignificant lives important to the functioning of the universe? Must the play go on?

There are possible explanations of the great illusion which suggest precisely that.

[1] “The Holodeck is a fictional device from the television franchise Star Trek which uses “holograms” (projected light and electromagnetic energy which create the illusion of solid objects) to create a realistic 3D simulation of a real or imaginary setting, in which participants can freely interact with the environment as well as objects and characters, and sometimes a predefined narrative.” Wikipedia. 2022. “Holodeck.” Last modified March 20, 2022. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holodeck#:~:text=The%20Holodeck%20is%20a%20fictional,interact%20with%20the%20environment%20as