[henry quirk]

More than once Flint has asserted we think we’re special only cuz we feel that way.

Let’s see if we can establish the human being’s uniqueness, his specialness based on what we currently know.

We estimate the diameter of the known universe to be 93 billion light years.

A big place.

We estimate that only 4% of what comprises the universe is matter (and most of that is hydrogen in one state or another).

We infer the existence of what we call dark matter/energy. We can’t measure it but we need it to be so that our math works out.

Mostly though the universe is empty, a big nuthin’.

So: right off the bat, on the largest scale, we’ve established a specialness for ourselves. We’re rare cuz we’re matter. And we didn’t have to consult our feelings to do it.

As I say: most of that rare thing (matter) is hydrogen in various states. Organized matter gets cooked up in the heart of stars and is rarer still. Carbon, iron, oxygen, etc all far rarer than rare hydrogen. In fact complex or organized matter is so rare that it makes hydrogen look commonplace.

See? Specialness without feeling.

But we’re not done...

Space is vast. Even in our little on-the-edge-of-the-galaxy sol system distances are *ahem* astronomical. Because of these vast distances, the truly incomprehensible scale, we may never know how much rare organized and complex matter has become rarer still by becoming ‘alive’. What we can infer, however, if our sol system is representative, is living matter is rarer still, rarer than non-living organized matter, rarer than that ubiquitous hydrogen (that, again, makes up the bulk of all matter through the universe to the tune of only 4%).

Only here, on our little mud ball, is living matter apparent, and then pretty much only on the surface. The bulk of matter associated with Earth, that is Earth, is organized, complex, but lifeless.

So: without resorting to feelings, we can see our specialness is even more profound.

Can we go further?

Damn straight we can.

Interspersed among all the living matter (a very rare commodity) is sumthin’ even rarer still: self-aware matter, recursive matter, intending matter, purposeful matter, reasoning matter, matter that laughs, matter that imagines.

How marvelous!

Even more so cuz all this self-aware, recursive, intending, purposeful, reasoning, laughing, imagining matter comes in discrete parcels independent of other discrete parcels of self-aware, recursive, intending, purposeful, reasoning, laughing, imagining matter. Each parcel very much like the others but simultaneously so very different from all the other parcels.

Lord, we’re talkin’ about a level of specialosity that mind blowing! Surely I can go no further?

Hold on to your hats...

In a universe 93 billion light years across, mostly empty but for a smattering of matter (most of which is just electrons doin’ the tango with protons); in this vast empty place where organized matter is so rare as to make hydrogen ho-hum; in this Reality where living matter - insofar as we know - even rarer still, has spread out over the surface of one little dynamic rock and has given rise to remarkable self-directing, self-aware matter; in the midst of all this escalating specialness, two discrete parcels of matter are at stalemated on the essential nature of the individual.

No matter the scale: we are special. Even more so: each of us is special. In this big old, mostly empty universe, there’s only one of each of us (so much the same, so much not the same).

There’s your ‘magic’, plain as the nose on your face, and that there is fact, not feeling.