It's not all about you! Or is it?

Having spent the day marvelling at Portugal’s earthly charms, I feel fortunate to be able to enjoy it all. With nought but the rhythmic sound of those incessant crickets punctuating the silence of the rural Portuguese evening, troubles that blight the world beyond seem a million miles away.

I wrote this article when I woke up at 3am and couldn't get back to sleep having dozed off on a wooden veranda that overlooks the rural splendour of the Alentejo. Earlier that day, I'd had a bit of an argument with a close friend who said that everything in life isn't “about me”. Not that I’d ever imagined that everything in life was “about me”. Anyway, I drew breath, sat down and pondered the fact that there may be a school of thought that proves him wrong.

So, there I was in the heart of rural Portugal. Not the usual 'beachy' Portugal with all its glistening blue sea, surf, golden sands and abundant cafe-culture. Nope, I was slap bang in the middle of the often arid and frequently harsh Iberian interior with its huge swathes of parched scrubland and vast plantations. There I was in this amazing place pondering imponderables.

Admittedly, it was pretty difficult to expend too much energy on pondering unanswerable questions whilst living amidst a community which faces real-world challenges on a daily basis. But despite the harshness of Portugal’s semi-arid interior, local farming communities still manage to cultivate parched acreages and successfully produce an impressive variety of crops. Growers must pray each day that the relentless sunshine briefly subsides and those endless Iberian skies yield a drop or two of rain. The power of time-honed local knowledge as well as being in tune with nature obviously pays dividends. But from where I stood on that sweltering August night, rain seemed a pretty distant prospect. Each searing day made the land appear more and more drought-ravaged. I had to pinch myself as a reminder that this is Europe. I half expected to see herds of wildebeest, giraffes and zebras plodding through the scrub and the tinder dry grasslands.

Observatory

I occasionally visit an observatory which is about an hour away from these rolling rural acreages. Centro Ciência Viva de Constância is located at Alto de Santa Bárbara, Via Galileu Galilei 817, 2250-100, Constância. It's close to the beautiful little town of Constância itself, which is a fabulous little place nestling peacefully where the River Tagus meets the River Zêzere. After my most recent visit, a bunch of us stargazers got together for some dinner. There was much to discuss!

After a lot of observing, my own conclusion is that the more scientists resort to using cutting edge observatories and multi-billion dollar space telescopes, the more questions are uncovered than actual answers found. In fact, cutting edge tools serve to debunk long-held theories and quash what used to be mainstream thinking.

After a day listening to a plethora of theories and opinions, I realised that the nature of the universe cannot be fully understood by simply observing billions of galaxies spiralling away in the infinite Cosmos. It may come over as arrogant for a tiny spec of starstuff such as yours truly to suggest that ‘our’ universe is quite probably all about what WE make of it. But this may well be the case.

I'm not alone with this somewhat whacky theory. Of course, I was laughed at by die-hard mainstreamers but I was also told a tale of how (once upon a time) an actual astronomer was walking through the woods close to his home. The story goes: that the astronomer paused for a moment and gazed up into the impressive forest canopy after his attention was drawn by some bickering crows nesting above. Whilst looking up, he noticed a huge golden orb web spider precariously tethered to a swaying branch. The creature sat there on a single thread with its legs reaching out as it tried to detect the vibrations of trapped insects struggling to escape its wider web.

To the astronomer, it seemed that the spider was surveying its own universe just as he himself did. But, the laws of scale meant that everything much beyond the spider’s gossamer pinwheel was as incomprehensible to him as the planets of the solar system are to astronomers. The human observer seemed as distant to the spider as far off celestial bodies are to astronomers.

Kindred

But the astronomer felt that he and the spider were somehow kindred. He saw that even scientists lie at the heart of a vast web; the great web of space and time whose laws (just like the threads of the spider's web) are interconnected. The laws of physics were fathomed and formulated by human minds in just the same way as the web was formed by the spider. The question is, would the laws of physics exist were it not for conscious minds? Would the web be possible without the spider? More profoundly, would space, time and physical objects continue to exist if conscious, sentient beings were removed from the equation? Would anything actually exist if you or I were not around to actually perceive or experience them?

Working out the nature of things within our universe has obsessed scientists and philosophers for millennia. Three hundred years ago, the Irish empiricist George Berkeley noted that the only things that can actually be witnessed are our own perceptions. He concluded that consciousness itself is the fabric upon which the Cosmos is apprehended. Sights, sounds, temperature, taste and indeed all our senses only exist as perceptions within our heads. None are absolute constructs in of themselves.

Philosophical ponderings

It can be argued that observations and theories such as those of George Berkley are nothing more than philosophical ponderings. Mainstream science has always preferred the idea that a physical universe exists into which we have each individually, inadvertently and miraculously arrived against staggering odds. This standard mode of thinking presumes the existence of a singular reality that prevails either with or indeed without our presence. Yet, for over a century experiments in the field of quantum physics have routinely demonstrated the opposite. Bonafide results have proved time and again that results of certain experiments depend on whether someone is observing or not. These results are so confounding that no one has yet been able to explain them fully.

So a universe devoid of consciousness to observe its existence would be wholly devoid of purpose? It would just be a dark melee of rock and dust floating silently through infinity, its existence ne'er to be beheld by anyone or anything. An utterly inanimate and sterile universe without a glimmer of wonderment in any part of its infinite vastness.

So. Let no one ever tell you that “it’s not all about YOU". Because it very much IS. It's about all our wishes, our dreams, our desires and our goals. It may well transpire that we do indeed shape the existence for all who share this epic journey.

Douglas Hughes is a UK-based writer producing general interest articles ranging from travel pieces to classic motoring. 

Douglas Hughes