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i heard someone say once that us believing that the entire universe being created as a simple backdrop for our one civilization is the most egotistical thing that could exist. it is a very big place and there has to be at least a couple other places in the universe where life of our level has evolved. i say a couple because there is something that i think people forget. the universe is around 15 billion years old and has a good additional 100 billion years in it before the collapse and a new big bang, i do believe in alien life and i do think that there is some out there at the same time as us, BUT, we are assuming when we talk about aliens that they evolved at the same time as us in a universal time-line. as a species, humans are very young and have only been around 8000 years or so, that is a micro-percentage of the 15 billion years the universe has been here in this cycle. also, our civilization will not last forever, we will, eventually die off in one way or another, everything is born, exists and eventually dies. let us say that we manage a full one million years from human 1 to the last human, that is a very long time and still less than a tenth of a one percent of the time that the universe has been around. millions of alien species/civilizations have probably been born, lived, and died off, entire species that were born, learned to kill each other, learned to get along with each other, wrote books, songs, plays, developed science of their own and wondered about the universe, wondered about their Gods and demons, buried their loved ones and faded to dust after thousands of generations, gone so long that the planet they were on has nothing more of them and their empires than a layer of dust and carbon compounds, maybe a few bones
in reality, we are so small compared to everything that is. our people, our planet, our star, our solar system and even our galaxy are just dots in a science book to some other living, intelligent thing out there. as much as we wonder about them, they wonder about us and as big as every problem we have seems to us, they have an equal measure of heartache and happiness. of course there are aliens out there, we may never meet them, but we share a commonality of all intelligent, sentient beings, we share the ability to feel, think and to question the environment we exist in, we are not alone, we simply feel that way sometimes. and as alone as we can feel, we are part of something that will churn us into stardust one day, and that stardust will return to the rest and in a fiery silent explosion will create the next universe and the next "humans" who will feel just like we do and ask the same questions