I’ve just read Carlo Rovelli’s little book Seven Brief Lessons on Physics. He’s an Italian, one of the founders of the loop quantum gravity theory. His concluding chapter has to do with what we human beings actually are: that is, rather insignificant products of, and in, a universe we are gradually learning more and more about, thanks to consciousness, whatever that may be. We human beings are not, after all, so terribly special to the universe itself.

“I believe that our species will not last long,” he opines….”All of our cousins are already extinct.” Our closest cousins anyway. Chimpanzees and bonobos are still around.

Being individuals of a doomed species may look like a dismal prospect, even though you and I are not living in the final final stages of the process of human extinction–which actually looks inevitable to me, too.

So whether or not all the sick people get medical care, all the starving people get food, all the homeless people get shelter, all the good/bad people get what they deserve are rather short-term issues.

It might even be time that the shredded, outdated document we look to reverently (or irreverently) as our U. S. Constitution gets tossed in the dustbin. We have way too many laws, and they don’t seem to help much when it comes to standing in the way of the downhill evolution of the human species. I mean, even Moses didn’t accomplish all that much, and the laws he delivered have been around for thousands of years already.

When it comes to human life, the laws of physics matter far more than the laws of Congress or even of religion.

But here we are. Some of us have children to think of. Some of us even think of the whole species spread over the planet. Can we do something for ourselves? For them? Will it matter, from where we are now? Even time itself, according to physics, is only a “thing” as it falls within our ability to notice it and, in a limited way, measure it. Where are we “now”?

As we roll into 2020, a nice round number, perhaps we can all relax. Fear and panic won’t stand in the way of physics one little bit. On what laws shall we rest our daily decisions? To what ends apply our personal resources and energies? As a human being with a mysterious capacity called consciousness, we each get to choose.

Rovelli speaks of our being naturally curious about the nature of our humanity and our place in the universe. “We are made of the same stardust of which all things are made, and when we’re immersed in suffering or when we are experiencing intense joy, we are being nothing other than what we can’t help but be: part of our world.”

Be you. That’s it.