The Big Picture by Rick Doble

Please read this brief introduction or you can jump to the bottom of the page and start reading the central essays.

When I told my friend Kirk Elbod about my intentions to create this page he said,
"Well, it's a dirty rotten thankless job but someone's got to do it. The only acknowledgement will be laughter, but hey who's worried?"

At the age of almost 55 years, and after studying history, religion, art, literature, astronomy, anthropology and the history of science, I decided to put together my own understanding of "The Big Picture."

Any good understanding of the "The Big Picture" should include the following:

• #1. Where did we come from?
  
• #2. What is important now?
  
• #3. Where are we going?

Instead of taking a narrow perspective of the next hundred or even thousand years, I have decided to think in geological time or the time frame of the universe.

Time is an important because the life of the universe and the life of the solar system and the life of the earth are in much larger units of time than the life span of human beings. The universe can be talked about in billions and trillions of years and the earth in millions and billions of years.

Yet even though these two time frames are different they converge. What we do here now as humans could affect the Earth for hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions of years. Two such long term examples are radioactive waste and the diversion of a comet which would have otherwise hit the Earth.

As a species we have been able to grasp concepts much, much larger than our own small existence. That we can even imagine such things says a lot about our abilities. For example, how can a creature who will live 100 years at most imagine the life of the Earth which has evolved for billions of years?

So to get back to the central questions, here are my detailed answers:

#1. Where did we come from?

The Beginning of Time
While this story was written in simple language for children, in the form of a modern myth, it is really for adults. For example, few adults understand that all the atoms in our bodies were created in the explosions of stars, that is they were created in a super nova explosion of a star before our sun and before our solar system (not in the Big Bang).

#2. What is important now?

This is Our Time
A brief essay (a short interview with Kirk Elbod) about what is important now for us today. Has the Earth hit an iceberg and is it sinking like the Titanic?

#3. Where are we going?

The Future of the Universe
Another brief interview with Kirk Elbod: Are we just star dust in the wind, insignificant tiny beings in a huge universe or is there more?

But, wait there's more:

For a detailed discussion of the oddities of time read:
Time & History

Also you may want to read my essay about art which touches on many of the ideas in "What is important now?"
Thoughts about the future of art in the 21st Century by Rick Doble.

I also create visual art plus essays, monologues, and poetry. Visit these pages:

Main page for visual art.

Main page for writings.

For a much longer and extensive set of interviews (essays) go to:
The Kirk Elbod Interviews