Does Anything Matter?

Nihal Boina


Does Anything Matter?

Imagine spending your whole life working up to something very important to you and then one day realizing that none of it mattered, because your end goal did not have an appreciable effect on the world, much less the universe. Almost everyone has had, or will have, the thought of ‘Does anything we do matter?’; it’s a question that many spend their whole lives attempting to answer. This question is of top importance because if nothing did matter, then there would be no point of living life. When considering that we are pretty much nothing when compared to the everything surrounding us, the afterlife, the butterfly effect, and the Uncertainty Principle, I believe that there is no answer to the question. Instead of attempting to answer the question, we should choose to believe that life does matter, even if it doesn’t, because every living being would benefit.

Sometime in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble made the astonishing discovery that the universe is expanding, and at an increasing rate, or an acceleration, which basically meant that as time progresses, our presence in the universe becomes less and less noticeable. I currently occupy a space of around 24 cubic feet. The universe, on the other hand, is of a space of around 408 sextillion cubic light years (keep in mind that one light year is 31,039,141,970,400,000 feet). Through extensive calculation, this puts me as occupying 6.106 * 10-57 % of the universe-- .00000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000006106. On top of this, there is also the possibility that there could be an infinite number of universes, which would make me 6.106 * 10-57 % of a grain of sand in the biggest beach ever; we are just too small in order to make any sort of appreciable change in our surroundings.

Put simply, life only matters if there is some sort of afterlife that becomes more pleasant/harsh based on our actions in the physical life; this is because if there isn’t some sort of afterlife that acts in this way then that would mean that our choices made in our physical life (our only life) wouldn’t have any, real, long-term repercussions. The reason why this is being brought up is because right now there is no concrete evidence for how an afterlife would exist and why an afterlife would exist for us, because, we are infinitesimally small when compared to everything. Even if an afterlife existed, it wouldn’t remain permanently because not even the universe is permanent, and will likely end itself through a heat death in about 101000 years due to the decaying of protons; this is contradicting to the whole idea of an afterlife because an afterlife is supposed to last forever.

The butterfly effect is the phenomenon that even the smallest actions in one moment of time can have the greatest effects in the future relative to that moment of time. It’s represented through the book 11/22/63 in which a young man named Jake finds a wormhole that brings him back to the year 1958, where he prevents the assassination of JFK, believing that he will make a positive change in the world. However, after taking out Lee Harvey Oswald and returning to his original time, he found earthquakes everywhere, half of the world destroyed due to a nuclear war, and his old home destroyed. Even the smallest actions, like the presence of a butterfly can have the greatest, most arbitrary effects. Because of the butterfly effect, it would be reasonable to believe that even the smallest actions that we have could make huge ripples in space-time.

In a book that I am currently reading, Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, the fabulous Stephen Hawking talks about something called Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle and how it changed our perception of the universe completely. Back in the 1900’s Newton’s laws of motion gave rise to the philosophy of determinism-- the idea that every action that we do can be predicted. What determinism meant was that nothing we do matters because every action we take can be determined; what is the point of living life if you already know the end result? Eventually, Werner Heisenberg came along with the Uncertainty Principle. What the Uncertainty Principle says is that we can’t know both the present position and velocity of a particle accurately because the more we know of one, the less we can now of the other; this meant that determinism is wrong, and that it’s impossible to accurately predict the actions of all parts of the universe.

From here on out, the evidence for whether or not anything we do matters tends to delve more and more into pseudoscience, or areas that can not be solved through the application of the scientific method (like astrology or religion), so I will have to solve this question through taking a step back. Let’s analyze what the universe would turn out to be if every intelligent living being believed in the idea that nothing matters vs. what the universe would turn out to be if every intelligent living being believed in the idea that everything matters. Through extensive analysis, if everyone believed that nothing matters, the universe would turn into a place of destruction, disorder, nihilism, and pessimism, proving bad for everyone. If everyone believed that everything we do matters, the universe would turn into a place of peace, pleasantry, order, and optimism, proving helpful for everyone.


When considering the arguments of expansion of the universe, the afterlife, the butterfly effect, that we choose our own fate, and the analysis of what would happen if everyone believed that nothing matters, I conclude that there is no answer to whether or not anything we do matters. Our physical life is very short as is and if we spend the majority of it searching for an answer we probably won’t ever find then we will miss out on most of the joys of life. Live life as if it matters, even if it doesn’t, because of the effects that it would pose on the the universe.







Works Cited





Hawking, Stephen. A Brief History of Time. Bantam Books, 2017.





King, Stephen. 11/22/63: Part 1. Scribner, 2011.