Cosmology: The Key to Thinking Big for the Very Long-Term

We’re in the middle of a revolution in cosmology.  It’s every bit as important as the Copernican Revolution.  For the first time in human history, we have a picture of the universe, the whole universe that might actually be true.  And this is an opportunity for the human race. 

If enough people come to understand this picture, it could be a very unexpected ticket to a sustainable world because it shows us, for the first time, how to really think big and for the very long-term.  And this is the perspective that the world needs in order to start getting a handle on the global-sized problems that are so overwhelming today to our smaller ways of thinking.  

And let me just say, right at the beginning, that this is not a western picture of reality. This new cosmology is not western, it’s been developed by scientists from all over the world, from many different religions, and it is equally true for everyone on Earth. 

And that’s why there is a possibility that this could become common ground, so to speak, for the kind of shared future that we have where we’re going to have to learn how to cooperate on a much wider scale around the work than we’ve ever done before.

In Their Own Words is recorded in Big Think’s studio.

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