The Power of the Anthropic Principle

Before moving on to the next subject, I wish to summarize a few points from earlier posts and relate them to newly introduced terms. Like EVERYTHING else, the anthropic principle is also heavily dependent on scale. It created the universe and our planet, but it also created us and is constantly with us in every choice we make. This is what I have previously referred to as the Road Taken or the Personal Legend. Things can only happen once and in one way. You are who you are because your parents combined their genes to create you. That is why you look the way you do. Your ancestors’ genes, going all the way back to primordial life, have led to you. This is still a fairly big scale, but the principle works on even smaller scales. Where you live, what school you go to, who your neighbors are, these conditions are fundamental in determining who your friends will be, who you fall in love with and how you spend your spare time. In return these influences slowly shape you into being the person you are. Concordantly, if you grew up somewhere else entirely, you would speak and think in a different language, associate with completely different people, have different tastes, in effect be a completely different person. Again, this is the anthropic principle at work. Your environment shapes you into being exactly you and no one else. Any change in this environment might change you as well. Even down to everyday choices the principle still works its magic. Which route you take to work, the time you leave, the conversations you engage in, the people you meet randomly, all these events can potentially have monumental importance in your micro-universe, can even be matters of life and death or guide your life decisions. This is because of the anthropic principle aka. the Road Taken. Over the course of your life, these factors continually shape your personality. Something that will only really become apparent with time. But as your life changes so in fact do you. Your job, geographical location, current and past friends and colleagues, as well as the ongoing changes in your family setup as some pass away and others appear, these all continuously change your own personality as well. 

Closely associated to the anthropic principle is the butterfly effect which as an analogy states that even the slightest and seemingly insignificant events can potentially have extreme consequences. In my experience I find this to be true, and I am thus very humbled by the power that chance hold over our lives. So at the same time as I label myself a pantheist in religious terms because I acknowledge the Universal Clockwork as the maker and mover of everything, to create meaning out of this awe I turn to philosophy. This is why in philosophical terms I am a semi-compatibilistic scale determinist. At the core of this label there is a deeper understanding of the power of the anthropic principle and chance which helps release you from the unbearable lightness of being because it releases you from the major responsibilities of existence. Instead of trying to control everything, you just have to seize any opportunity that falls in your lap and make the best of it. Decisions can only be made in the presence based on the information available at that time. The accumulated effect of all these micro-decisions is what determines your route. This is navigating on the Infinite Freeway, but as described earlier, it is a congested and fast moving place, so you never have absolute control of your route, and only slight navigational changes are completely in your control. More importantly, your starting position and vehicle is not up to you at all, hence the semi-compatibilistic approach. For parents wanting to have children, ensuring that these will have the best possible chances of successfully navigating the Freeway, might fall under their micro-universe to a certain degree depending on their own situation, but for the child there is no influence whatsoever and thus that decision falls under their macro-universe as they do not even exist yet. Macro-choices are not up to you so with those you just have to go where the road takes you. 

Acknowledging that scale is everywhere and knowing that only micro-choices are really in your hands sometimes makes you seem like a cold sociopath as I have touched upon before. With that in mind, I wish to cover a very sensitive subject with the risk of seeming very pragmatic or even cynical. Because scale also applies to timelines. This is something I have given a lot of thought lately, since I started dealing with a lot of conservationists through my work. They all have great intentions in saving the rainforest and individual animal species that are threatened as a result of human development. And even though I share their sentiments and admire their work, as well as a profound love of the natural world, when I apply some of my philosophical beliefs, it puts their entire efforts into a wholly different light.