Narcissism, närsəˌsizəm/ , excessive interest in oneself and one’s physical appearance. Synonyms: vanity, self-love, self-admiration, self-absorption, self-obsession, conceit, egotism, egoism. More at Wikipedia…

Narcissism is the first face of Nihilism which is the first face of Dystopianism.

The world’s cultures have become narcissistic.

Our de facto personal understanding of reality and the world around us defaults to a focus on the self, not the other, and surely not the relation (Grok Analysis).  One of the stem roots for that focus goes back to Isaac Newton’s absolute space and time. The concept allows things to be things unto themselves. Subjects and objects were really real. Yet, strangely, any philosophy that does not have a place for the concept of infinity and its relation to the finite, by default, opens narcissistic thinking.

Big Bang cosmology has nothing definitive to say about the infinitesimal at the Planck scale. It has nothing to say about infinity. It has nothing to say about the first seconds of the universe. It has nothing to say about the initial conditions.

Reconsider the debate between Wilhelm Leibniz and Newton (through his correspondent, Samuel Clarke). Leibniz lost the debate — he died — and subjects-objects became the standard perception. That hyphen that separates them is the relation and it became entirely and clearly derivative.

This cultural narcissism has extremes and eventually it became a subject unto itself:

“Narcissism is a concept in psychoanalytic theory, which was introduced by Sigmund Freud in an essay, On Narcissism (1914). The American Psychiatric Association has had the classification narcissistic personality disorder within its manuals since 1968, drawing on the historical concept of megalomania.”

Narcissism is part of our modern life.  We all have time to look into the mirror. Our culture reinforces it and the television culture hones the skill set. “It’s all about me” begins to be sealed within the soul.

And, narcissism opens the path to nihilism.

This summary is part of a four-page series
about the inherent nihilism within the big bang theory.

Reworking these paragraph within this article: (14 January 2025)

Grok: You’re highlighting some of the limitations of Big Bang cosmology, particularly when it comes to the very early universe and extreme scales. Let’s break down these points:

• Infinitesimal at the Planck scale: The Planck scale is where the effects of quantum mechanics and gravity are expected to become significant, making classical physics inadequate. Big Bang cosmology does not provide a definitive description here because at these scales, we need a theory of quantum gravity, which is still not fully developed. Current models like loop quantum cosmology or string theory attempt to address this, but they remain speculative.
• Infinity: Big Bang cosmology deals with a finite universe expanding from a singularity, but it doesn’t inherently describe or explain what “infinity” would mean in terms of cosmic scale or time. The concept of an infinite universe or infinite time is more philosophical or mathematical in nature rather than something Big Bang theory directly addresses.
• First seconds of the universe: The Big Bang model describes the universe’s evolution from about 10^-43 seconds after the Big Bang (the Planck epoch) onwards. Before this time, the conditions were so extreme that our current physics can’t describe them; we enter the realm of quantum gravity. For the first few seconds, we have models like inflation which try to explain rapid expansion, but these are still theoretical and not definitively proven.
• Initial conditions: Big Bang cosmology traditionally does not specify the initial conditions because it’s based on extrapolating backward from observable conditions. The initial singularity is more a mathematical concept than a physical one, and explaining what “caused” the Big Bang or what the conditions were at t=0 remains beyond the scope of the theory. Theories like the multiverse or cyclic models attempt to address these initial conditions, but they are not part of the standard Big Bang model.

In essence, while Big Bang cosmology provides an excellent framework for understanding the universe from a few moments after its inception to the present day, it indeed leaves many questions unanswered, especially those pertaining to the very beginning or the very smallest scales of existence. These gaps are significant areas of research in theoretical physics, where new models or modifications to existing ones are continually being explored.

Big Bang cosmology has very little to say about the nature of space-time, i.e. the work by Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) to define a metric is inferred. The singularity, a point where the curvature of space-time becomes infinite, are beyond the scope of our current physical theories like general relativity. Inflation theory, that magical period of extremely rapid expansion immediately after the Big Bang may smooth it all out but stretches reality into illusion. But, it needs all the illusions it can accommodate to explain features like the large scale structure and the near-uniformity of the CMB. And, dark energy might be driving the accelerated expansion of the universe and space-time’s properties can change. The work of our scholars like Alan Guth at least gives us a “structure” that is malleable and evolving.