Albert Einstein:
“I think the most important question facing humanity is, ‘Is the universe a friendly place?’ This is the first and most basic question all people must answer for themselves.”
- “For if we decide that the universe is an unfriendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources to achieve safety and power by creating bigger walls to keep out the unfriendliness and bigger weapons to destroy all that which is unfriendly”.(1)
- If we decide that the universe is neither friendly nor unfriendly and that God is essentially ‘playing dice with the universe’, then we are simply victims to the random toss of the dice and our lives have no real purpose or meaning. (2)
- “But if we decide that the universe is a friendly place, then we will use our technology, our scientific discoveries, and our natural resources to create tools and models for understanding that universe. Because power and safety will come through understanding its workings and its motives.” (3)
Since we are (an expression of) the universe, we can also translate “the universe” to us.
Do we believe that we are all intrinsically good or bad human beings?
If we decide to trust in our basic goodness, then we will use our own personal resources to (begin to) understand ourselves, along with what motivates us.
I would love to hear what you think/ in which option you recognize yourself, and why.
