We are trapped between two illusions.
On one side, the illusion that small things don’t matter. That the hurried goodbye, the unspoken word, the extra second before sending a message—these things are trivial. We assume their weight is negligible because we can’t see the chain reaction they trigger.
On the other side, the illusion that big things do matter. That empires, careers, legacy, and human ambition have some kind of permanence. We build, we fight, we conquer, only to be reminded—slowly at first, then all at once—that entropy is the final ruler.
Douglas Adams understood this. The Total Perspective Vortex didn’t kill people by force; it did something worse. It revealed the truth. It showed them the infinite vastness of the universe and their microscopic, irrelevant existence within it. The weight of that insignificance crushed them.
Except for Zaphod Beeblebrox. Because he believed he was important enough to matter in the infinite.
And yet, Asimov went a step further. In The Last Question, the AI across eons kept trying to solve the ultimate paradox: how to reverse entropy, how to make things permanent. Time and time again, the answer was just out of reach—until the end of everything.
Until only one thing remained.
And in that final moment, the AI whispered, “Let there be light.”
Maybe that’s the answer.
Maybe the secret isn’t in how big or small things are, but in what we choose to do with them. Maybe knowing the universe is vast and we are small isn’t the end of meaning, but the beginning of it.
The Total Perspective Vortex doesn’t break you if you decide—like Zaphod—to matter anyway.
The Last Question isn’t hopeless if you choose, in the face of entropy, to create something new.
Big and small are illusions. The only real choice is whether we keep asking the question.