As for us:
We must uncenter our minds from ourselves;
We must unhumanize our views a little, and become confident
As the rock and ocean that we were made from.
How does living in a full cosmos affect my daily life? As dear old Robinson says, it unhumanizes my views a little; it de-centers me.
In an empty cosmos, humans alone have agency. Humans can be acted upon by impersonal forces, certainly, but those actions are definitionally meaningless. Only agency imparts meaning.
In a full cosmos, many persons–to repeat, only some of whom are human–are acting according to various interests. What’s more, many human persons thought to be fully responsible agents are ridden by bandit powers. Co-creation in relationship (consciously or unconsciously) is the law of a full cosmos.
In an empty cosmos, agency is too heavy a weight for a single person to bear. In an empty cosmos, it is indeed true that “the greatest misfortune that ever befell a primate was rational self-awareness.” What a tragedy if I am acting alone! How am I to bear the responsibility in a time of always-on awareness of world events? How am I to avoid despair when some human persons have vastly more power than me?
In a full cosmos, I am aware that other, greater-than-human powers exist–some of whom I can call on. And shaped as I am by the teachings of Jesus, I believe love is ultimately directing its unfolding. I can find peace when I learn to trust the unfolding.
The cosmos is a roiling ocean of powers operating at scales and for purposes unfathomable to me, but my role is not to penetrate these mysteries. I have been told by the master teacher to “take no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.” Or in the words of Julian of Norwich, “All will be well, all will be well, all manner of things will be well.”
A full cosmos makes my individual actions less central but no less crucial. My actions are less central because I am one of many agents. The fate of the world is not solely in human hands, much less my hands.
But my actions are crucial because they are part of the ongoing co-creation. In that process, as Elrond said, even small hands can move the wheels of the world. My responsibility is only to find (in the phrase that spread like a codeword from Gigi Coyle to Charles Eisenstein to Gordon White and beyond) “what is mine to do?” What is mine to do is not a puzzle; it is what I find when I turn in the direction of love and beauty. What I find there is my place in the community of beings, working together toward ends we cannot imagine.