Sometimes a question quietly appears in the back of my mind:
“In a universe this big and indifferent, why are we struggling so hard to live?”
It usually doesn’t come out of nowhere.
It shows up after scrolling past war footage, mass killings, hate crimes, and another cycle of ideological conflict.
It isn’t just a “philosophical mood”.
It feels more like a natural reaction when life is already heavy, and the news keeps proving that humans can be cruel, irrational, and self-destructive. In those moments, I feel myself slowly losing faith in humanity and wondering what the point of any of this is. It’s a slow, quiet kind of losing faith in humanity that builds up over time.
I wanted to put this mix of cosmic emptiness + loss of faith in humanity into words, and then see what is left that still makes life worth living—at least for me.
From the universe’s perspective, we really are “less than dust”
If you zoom out far enough, the math is brutal:
- The universe is over 13 billion years old.
- Earth is a tiny slice of that timeline.
- Human civilization is a flash inside that slice.
- My individual life is a blink inside that flash.
On that scale, it’s hard not to think:
“I’m smaller than dust.
Nothing I do really matters in any lasting way.”
That conclusion is not a sign of weakness.
If anything, it’s logically consistent with what we know about cosmology and time.
So when this kind of thought shows up,
I don’t think the right response is to scold myself for being “too negative”.
On a purely cosmic scale, the emptiness is real.
Losing Faith in Humanity: How War, Massacres, and Crime News Erode Basic Trust
For a broader psychological view, you can read this overview from the American Psychological Association on coping with distressing news.
Then there’s the other layer: not just the size of the universe, but the behavior of our own species.
Open a news feed on the wrong day and you’ll see:
- States bombing civilians in the name of security or ideology,
- Groups wiping out other groups over land, blood, or belief,
- Large-scale abuse and corruption with almost no accountability,
- People treating other people as disposable tools in some larger game.
After enough exposure to this, a few thoughts start repeating:
“How can humans do this to each other?”
“Maybe ‘faith in humanity’ was always a naive fantasy.”
“Maybe this species is fundamentally broken.”
What collapses here is not just “good vibes”.
It’s the minimum level of trust that quietly supports daily life:
- Trust that other people are, on average, trying not to harm each other
- Trust that there is some slow progress over time
- Trust that the world isn’t just a random playground for power and violence
When that trust cracks,
motivation doesn’t just drop a little—it can fall through the floor.
But do we really have to live by the universe’s standards?
Here’s the strange part.
We often judge our own lives by the standards of a system that literally doesn’t care if we exist.
The universe:
- Doesn’t care if stars explode,
- Doesn’t care if planets break apart,
- Doesn’t care if entire civilizations vanish.
Physics keeps running. That’s it.
From that perspective, whether I pay off my debt, write a book, raise a child, or give up tomorrow…
the universe has zero opinion.
And that leads to a different kind of thought:
“If the universe assigns no meaning at all,
then meaning inside this tiny human zone is up to us.”
No one from “above” is handing out a fixed purpose:
- No cosmic voice telling you what you must achieve,
- No universal scoreboard that tracks your contribution,
- No objective ranking of which life was “worth more”.
If that’s true, then the things I decide to care about
become my meaning—not because they matter to the universe,
but because they matter inside my limited human radius.
For some people that’s:
- their kids,
- their work,
- a piece of art or research,
- paying off debt and living quietly,
- keeping their body from completely falling apart.
On a cosmic scorecard these might all be zeros.
But inside a small human circle, each can be a full, valid reason to keep going.
Too much information, too little control
In the past, this kind of existential heaviness might have shown up:
- reading philosophy,
- walking alone at night,
- or during a life crisis.
Now, it shows up just by unlocking a phone.
- War footage is livestreamed in full color,
- Victims’ final messages are shared and amplified,
- Hate, revenge, and dehumanization are dissected in real time,
- Global crises stack on top of personal problems inside the same screen.
High exposure doesn’t just numb us.
Sometimes it pushes us toward a very sharp conclusion:
“This species has no hope.”
“Nothing I personally do can fix any of this.”
And here’s the key problem:
- These events are mostly outside my control,
- But the feelings they trigger are inside my nervous system,
- And the energy they drain comes out of the small budget I need
to manage my own life and the people around me.
In other words:
“World-scale tragedy with zero control”
quietly burns the fuel I need for “5-meter-radius actions where I do have some control.”
It’s also one of the fastest ways of losing faith in humanity while feeling completely powerless.
Mental health resources also suggest practical steps for dealing with news anxiety and information overload, like setting limits and focusing on what you can control.
So I shrink the frame: not the universe, but a 5-meter radius
At some point I started to shift the question.
Instead of:
“What is the meaning of human life in this cold universe?”
I try something smaller, more practical:
“Even if cosmic meaning is unclear or empty,
is there enough reason inside my 5-meter radius to keep going today?”
Inside that 5-meter radius, I find:
- The people who look at me and expect me to still be here tomorrow,
- The family members who are affected—directly or indirectly—by every collapse and every small recovery in my life,
- The projects I secretly want to finish at least once in this lifetime:
a blog, a book, a piece of software, a story, a tool that might help someone else later.
If I compress all of that into one sentence, my current answer looks like this:
“Even if I’m losing faith in humanity as a whole, I still choose to show up for a few specific people and a few specific projects I want to finish before I’m gone.”
It’s not a grand mission.
It won’t be written into history books.
But for my nervous system in this specific life situation,
it’s enough of a reason to try again tomorrow.
It’s my way of living with losing faith in humanity without letting that feeling freeze me.
The goal is not to delete the emptiness, but to carry it differently
I don’t think I’ll ever fully “solve” these questions.
- The universe will always be too big and indifferent,
- Wars and atrocities will unfortunately continue,
- Human cruelty and stupidity will keep surfacing in new forms,
- My faith in “humanity as a whole” will probably stay fragile, and there will be days when I start losing faith in humanity all over again.
So instead of aiming for a heroic, tidy resolution like:
“I overcame nihilism and found my ultimate purpose,”
I downgrade the goal to something quieter:
“Even with emptiness and disappointment sitting in the back row,
I can still choose a few reasons to live inside my small radius today.”
That might look like:
- being present for the people who would actually miss me if I disappeared,
- working on one piece of writing, one idea, one tool that feels honest and useful,
- taking one small action to protect my body and mind from completely burning out.
From a cosmic perspective, I’m still less than dust.
But from the perspective of a few humans close to me—and a few things I still want to make—
I am not dust.
I’m a specific person with a specific role that no one else will accidentally perform in the same way.
Right now, that’s the only kind of meaning that feels real enough to hold onto when I’m losing faith in humanity yet again.
If you’re wrestling with news-driven stress and digital overload, you might also like these Mindcella guides:
→ Doomscrolling Is Draining Your Mental Energy (Especially at Night) – how to stop late-night scrolling before sleep.
→ Dopamine Detox, Without the Hype: How to Calm Overstimulation and Get Your Focus Back – a realistic way to turn the volume down on constant stimulation.