>>Real insanity would be realizing how large the universe is
I remember going camping when I was 15. After everyone else fell asleep, I laid on my back under the clear open night sky and let my mind wander.
I first thought about planets in our solar system, then the interstellar medium, then other star systems with their own stars, planets and asteroid belts. I then "zoomed out" and thought about the Milky Way, then about other galaxies, spiral ones and starburst ones and irregular galaxies, and the void between them. I thought about nebulae and black holes. As time passed, I started to view Earth as just a planet, and our sun not as the Sun but as a star. Just one out of countless. I started to put myself in the shoes of an alien who lives on another planet - or maybe within interstellar clouds! - and tried to...
Then I stopped.
The reason I stopped was because I had the distinct feeling that my mind was about to break. As if I was about to run a buggy function, and if I pressed Enter to run it, it would throw an index out of bounds error and crash permanently. So I did the sane thing by pulling my sleeping bag over my head and falling asleep.
It starts with the protagonist looking at the stars in a similar way, and somehow finding himself leaving his body and flying out amongst the stars.
From there on the scale keeps increasing, both time and space, covering billions of years, and pretty much the scale of the universe.
He wrote an earlier book - Last and First Men - that covered 2 billion years of future developments of humanity -, and Star Maker makes Last and First Men seem limited in scope.
Freeman Dyson apparently says he got the inspiration for a Dyson Sphere from Star Maker.
I think that feeling is a major barrier we as a species need to get past, which is more of a spiritual/therapeutic issue than an intellectual one as far as I can tell. This foundation provides free 10-day silent meditation retreats where they push you to have that experience but instead of opening your eyes and "pulling the sleeping bag over your head", you embrace it and explore beyond. It changed my life. I've been to two of these things, one in CA and one in TX and if you ever have time it's worth it in every way. I'm not affiliated with them in any way, I just think it's relevant.
I remember going camping when I was 15. After everyone else fell asleep, I laid on my back under the clear open night sky and let my mind wander.
I first thought about planets in our solar system, then the interstellar medium, then other star systems with their own stars, planets and asteroid belts. I then "zoomed out" and thought about the Milky Way, then about other galaxies, spiral ones and starburst ones and irregular galaxies, and the void between them. I thought about nebulae and black holes. As time passed, I started to view Earth as just a planet, and our sun not as the Sun but as a star. Just one out of countless. I started to put myself in the shoes of an alien who lives on another planet - or maybe within interstellar clouds! - and tried to...
Then I stopped.
The reason I stopped was because I had the distinct feeling that my mind was about to break. As if I was about to run a buggy function, and if I pressed Enter to run it, it would throw an index out of bounds error and crash permanently. So I did the sane thing by pulling my sleeping bag over my head and falling asleep.