Brian Johnson uses the cosmic calendar, which compresses 13.8 billion years into one year, to show that recorded human history takes up only the final 27 seconds of December 31. It's a reminder that your next year matters on a timescale almost nothing else does.
13.8 billion years.
December 31 at about 11:59:33 PM.
12,000 years and ~480 generations.
December 31, 2022.
Hi, this is Brian. Welcome back to another heroic plus 1. In the last few plus 1s we've chatted about the insane odds of being alive, the power of not eating, and the importance of reducing our tech inputs to optimize our health and longevity. Today I want to talk about another idea from Michael Easter's great book, the Comfort Crisis. This one's from a chapter called 1231, 1159 and 33 seconds. PM Michael tells us, and I quote, the host was explaining the concept called the cosmic calendar. It puts all of time, the universe's 13.8 billion years, on a year long scale. So in the cosmic calendar, the Big bang occurred on January 1st at 12am The Milky Way galaxy formed on March 16th. Our solar system took shape on September 2nd, and Earth followed on September 6th. About 4.4 billion years ago, the first complex cells on earth emerged on November 9. Dinosaurs appeared on Christmas and went extinct on December 30. And then the host said that in this calendar, all of recorded human history, 12,000 years and 480 generations of people shows up on the night of December 31st at about 11:59 and 33 seconds. Let's pause and reflect on that for a moment. Imagine our 13.8 billion year old universe on a year long scale. A cosmic calendar. The Big bang occurred on January 1st. Our solar system shows up on September 6th. Note, it always boggles my mind to think that the universe was doing whatever it was doing for 9 billion years before our sun and Earth even showed up. Insert head exploding emoji. Yet again, dinosaurs appeared on Christmas and disappeared on December 30th. And in this calendar, all of recorded human history, 12,000 years and 480 generations of people shows up on the night of December 31st at about 11 hours, 59 minutes and 33 seconds. Yep, our universe is incomprehensibly vast and. And it's 11:59 and 33 seconds on December 31st, and the clock is ticking. So tell me, as we Prepare to make 2023 the greatest year of our lives, what is it you plan to do with this one and wild precious life of yours? Hero day one. All in. Let's go.
