Humbling Perspective

Friday, March 21, 2025

Humbling Perspective

The YouTube algorithm has caught onto the idea that sciency content appeals to me—particularly as it relates to the grand scale of things. In this case, it is our humble lives that are placed into the context of (what we believe we know about) the Universe. The Scale of Time is itself a mere ten minutes long, but the relative times are translated into physical distances.

The film accomplishes its intent of demonstrating how puny the length of a human life is: the width of a hair. You can see why the filmmakers are moved at the completion of their project. The epigraph from Carl Sagan to start the short film has its fullest impact at its conclusion.

The empty desert setting adds to the loneliness, as does the encroaching dark. It has a slight sense of morbidity to it. But in some ways, it exudes a mood of secular emptiness, where scientific knowledge is relayed as cold, hard fact, beyond scope and scale, without the wonder that holds some promise of spiritual interconnectedness.