The Quiet Arrogance of Scale: Why Sitting with Our Ignorance is the Ultimate Humility

If you asked me how cosmic scale affects us, my short answer is “that it depends on who you are”. Scale is subjective. For some, looking at the vastness of space or the ancient age of the Earth only inflates their ego, leading them to believe the universe was made specifically for them. For others, it humbles them.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson once noted that if learning about cosmic scale threatens or depresses someone, it is usually because they started their day with an unjustifiably large ego. Slicing away that ego allows us to step past existential dread and simply sit in wonder. I do not have accurate knowledge on where the needle usually swings for most people, but as an engineer, a lover of science, and someone who has spent a lot of time thinking about human existence, I can speak to my own journey to humility.

From Childhood Certainty to Temporal Parochialism

Growing up as a Nigerian child in the late 90s, I was taught to believe I was special, believing that the world had been crafted to reward the few of us who were dedicated, honest Christians, leaving us feeling uniquely chosen. In that communal environment, scientific scales of time and space were not part of the typical conversation. Instead, the world was framed through religious or traditional perspectives.

As my curiosity grew and I began learning about other religions and cultures, a confusing realisation hit me: every group shared that exact same, or very similar, sense of being uniquely chosen. Everyone believed their story was the central plot of human history.

In philosophy and geology, this mindset is known as temporal parochialism, defined as the human habit of treating our immediate culture, era, and personal lifespans as the main event of the universe while ignoring the vast planetary rhythms beneath us. Breaking out of that mindset was difficult, but science offered a bridge. It provided an objective framework that allowed me to draw parallels between my upbringing and the broader reality of the cosmos.

Putting Numbers into Perspective: The Galactic Year

As an engineer, I like grounding abstract ideas in concrete metrics. We often hear that the Earth is over 4.5 billion years old or that light takes thousands of years to travel between stars, but those numbers can easily become abstract facts on a page.

To really feel the weight of deep time, it helps to look at a larger clock, the Galactic Year. This is the duration required for our Solar System to complete a single orbit around the centre of the Milky Way, which takes roughly 225 million Earth years.

When you convert human history into galactic time, our place in the cosmos becomes strikingly clear:

• The Sun has completed about 20 full orbits since Earth formed.
• The non-avian dinosaurs dominated the planet for over half a galactic year (~165-180 million years).
• Anatomically modern humans have existed for about 0.001 of a galactic orbit (~230,000 to 300,000 years).
• The entirety of recorded human history, roughly 5,000 years, occupies just 0.000022 of a single Galactic Year.

Milestone / Horizon	Scale in Galactic Years (GY)	Earth Years Equivalent
Earth’s Total Age	~20.0 GY	4.5 Billion Years
Dinosaurs’ Reign	~0.75 GY	~168-180 Million Years
Human Existence	~0.001 GY	~230,000 Years
Written History	0.000022 GY	~5,000 Years

When you look up at the night sky and see tiny twinkling dots, you are not just looking across vast distances; you are looking across deep time. Almost everything humanity has ever built, fought over, or written down occurred in a microscopic blip of galactic time.

Chronophobia vs. Timefulness

Historically, societies have reacted to this vastness with a kind of chronophobia, described as a subconscious fear and denial of time. We try to defeat time through building physical empires, corporate structures, or rigid ideological systems designed to project our names into the distant future.

Geologist Marcia Bjornerud, in Timefulness: How Thinking Like a Geologist Can Help Save the World, contrasts this temporal anxiety with what she calls timefulness, which represents an active, literate awareness of our place within overlapping biological, geological, and cosmic cycles. When we internalise timefulness, we realize that no physical structure, empire, or individual legacy can withstand deep geological time. Eventually, subduction, erosion, and cosmic shifts recycle everything.

Accepting this is not depressing; it is freeing. It replaces the vanity of trying to build permanent monuments with a far more sustainable mindset: process ethics. If nothing lasts forever, the ultimate value of our work cannot depend on whether it endures indefinitely. Instead, value comes from how ethically, thoughtfully, and harmoniously we solve problems during our temporary window on Earth.

“The Search” as Our Collective Purpose

This brings me back to the core questions that started my personal journey: Who are we? What are we here for? How does this universe work? Whose theory is correct?

When I look at early philosophers and the origins of world religions, I see a shared origin point, the fundamental search for meaning. My issue with certain rigid systems, whether religious or secular, is the claim that they have already figured the world out. In reality, I do not think anyone has.

The universe seems set up in a way that requires us to keep searching. In science, this is embraced as epistemic humility, which is the recognition that our observations are naturally limited by our technology, our vantage point, and our brief moment in time. We are not the final destination of cosmic history; we are a temporal bridge. Our responsibility is not to deliver a final, static answer to the universe, but to hand down a habitable planet, clearer questions, and deeper understanding to those who come after us.

Sitting with Ignorance

Ultimately, feeling small against the backdrop of deep time does not strip life of meaning. Recognizing that all our religious texts, scientific achievements, and technological marvels represent only a tiny step in an infinite journey is enough to sit with a real feeling of insignificance.

That insignificance is not a defeat; it is the foundation of genuine humility. It frees us from the arrogance of needing to be the centre of the universe, leaving us with something far better: an open mind, a sense of wonder, and the freedom to keep searching.