What Are We? II

The question usually posed is: who are we?

Sometimes we also ask the question: are we alone?

Perhaps, another posing of the question another way will provide a more needed focus,

Such as: what are we?

At our present time, in assumed chronology, we sometimes think of our presence is at the center of known thing. This will entail looking at our situation to see if we are "omniscient" enough to know all the factors in relation to other factors of the universe and also whether we are at a time event juncture.

What are we? Empirically, modern science may say we are composed from "star dust" which entails a lot of component parts to come together to make the forms of what empirically exist. It may also be answered, we are darkness. For the origin of composite parts come from darkness, like dark annihilation of dark matter may be before.

We sometimes ponder from our perspective of intelligence just how long we have to accrue knowledge about our environs and universe. Science indicates, by our chronology, that the universe we assume to know is about 15 billion years old. That what composes the materials  of the universe were initially very compacted, or radiative, or immaterial. 

It is held that human civilization is some few tens of thousands of years old. Perhaps mankind is a few million years old.  Yet we have evidence that there are other beings on this planet well before us, some that were huge mammals and dinosaurs. Those lifeform species had live much longer than we have, hundreds of millions of years in some cases. They live at an earlier time than our existence. However,  an earlier existence may not have afforded the rise of all opportunities of existence such as n intelligence of higher awareness. Nor is there any guarantee that being of nonenduring, temporal proclivities will enable to mark on the whole existence of a cosmos.

Was their earlier existence by millions of years of different species more toward the center of time of the universe's development than ours? We don't specifically know the end point of the universe's chronology to accordingly make a vey accurate gurss toward answering that. But it helps toward making a perspective.

Yet, we do know that over time events that situations have changed. The universe is no longer compacted, for one. And, from our perspective, there is not only inanimate matter in the cosmos now but also intelligent life since the known beginning.

If one wanted to live more at the center of time development of the universe, perhaps then the era of dinosaurs and before is chronologically more appropriate. For it is believed recorded that the pace of the cosmos expansion is not much changed in the present but has shifted some 6-7 billion years ago. Now that would have afforded one to be at a most momentous change in our universe since its beginning compared to the present status, when the expansion is already the prevailing force.

Now, what if there had arisen an earlier intelligence at another location of the cosmos that had explored its environs? Would we, if we found them, be able to communicate with them and perhaps trade information? The scientific odds likely are against that occurring. For, due to the astonishing accelerating expansion rate of the cosmos, most locales that were close together soon after the beginning are now likely so far separated and being even more so, that any communication even by the speed of light would not avail if they are of a distant part of the universe. Then of course for out locale, we have to yet detect any sign of advanced civilization in our solar system or any neighboring galaxies.

So for millions of galaxies and millions of stars and solar systems, we do seem to be  the only present site of intelligence. And with rapidly expanding space, the odds of encountering like others are always diminishing. The end development of this universe entails that major matter will expand away with space and separate even more from each other and matter density will diminish likewise in the universe. Any surviving bound objects will become islands amidst vaster volumes of space. Any interspecial contacts would then be impossible.

Further, there are reports of the scientific community that for the same treatment of equations that provide reason for the our existence can also be turned around so that in one case, the can perform its functions and expansion without having any significant matter in it. This would tend to make any significance of matte to be rather inconsequential for any central or extensive role in such a cosmos. This is usually traced to finding of Willem de Sitter, ca. 1916-1933 in his examination of general relativity. For example, the present scientific estimates of the presence of baryonic matter, stars, planets, asteroids and the like, consist of only 4% of the total cosmos. The dark matter provide the balance of percentage of matter, with "dark energy" comprising 69%. It is further observed that there is a tendency  of the future cosmos to revert to a drastically reduced presence of material state where only expansion will prevail over a near voidness.

In furtherance, science indicates that measuring some critical factors in the cosmos that comprise a cosmos, if some values are skewed differently, there is ample outcome that the arrangement of properties in the universe would be inclement toward the aggregation of matter to make planets or even that no cosmos could form due to irreconcilable disparate elements or factors. These values could involve compression, density, radiation, matter-antimatter, hydrogen among significant factors. This has not been refuted or obviated and may signify the outcome of the universe's progression. It would seem that the presence of intelligent being is more problematic than inevitable.

This is a lot toward determining what we are, as an identity.

What are we? It is likely we are not of the above treated constituents, for they are transitory, ephemeral natures with no underlying strata. Nothing else has been determined either as perdurable.

There is no guarantee of the occurrence of any particular development of any nature. Likely, any occurrence of anything is at best problematic and the same for any being that would exist in such environs, for, presumably, the being would be constituently conditioned or dependent upon such environs, if any develop. The responses to the questions, "who are we", "are we alone" and "what are we" are qualified by whether the factors that would lead to substantiating those occurrences can reliably be creditable, if even they can be substantiated to be considered.

Amidst ever changing natures, the elusive quest for identity might evolve to a yet even more germane question of candor.: are we any distinct thing, at all?