We're spinning in space at 1070 miles an hour, and moving round the sun at 67, 000 miles an hour. We are the Third Rock from the Sun, as his very Reverend James Marshall Hendrix pointed out, and a blahhh of an American sitcom flogged to a merciless death*.
The planet is a mind-blowing 4.54 billion years old**. Older than my jokes. Older than your gran's stories about getting tipsy on a charabanc to Morecambe. Older even than God.
Because God was invented by humans, and we're only about 200,000 years old.
Earth exists in the Goldilocks Zone - so called because conditions are just-right-for-life, not because we are a bunch of porridge-stealing, bear-baiting harridans. And, given the enormity of the Universe, which is itself 13.82 billion years old, the chances of life forming here are bogglingly small.
Our own existence as a species is so utterly improbable as to be almost miraculous. Not actually miraculous, mind, because that would imply the existence of some kind of godhead, and, like I said, that's one we made earlier, not the other way round.
Your own existence, and mine, and everyone who ever lived, is down to an even finer sliver of chance. The odds against any single one of us being is slimmer than a River Island model. Take a moment to absorb that. You shouldn't really be here, reading this. I shouldn't really be here, banging this out on a shitty Mac I've borrowed, which is making me wish Steve Jobs had actually really never been here. How do I right click this silver piece of technological evil? Why do Mac user swear by them? They're surely more deluded than Young Earthers.
Given that slightness of probability, I have a question for those who are posting the forthcoming nonesense on Facebook. Those of you who are Proud To Be British - what the fuck exactly are you proud of? You didn't choose to be British. You're here by an accident, a fluke, an unplanned and unpredictable explosion and scattering of dust the best part of 14 Billion years ago.
You might not be ashamed to British - although given that we are responsible for giving the universe Jeffrey Archer, Michael McIntyre, The Segway and the Mau Mau massacre I'd question that - but proud? Really? If your greatest achievement is to survive birth, you really ought to stretch yourself a bit. Try consecutive thoughts perhaps? A completed sentence?
This may seem a minor point, but this jiggled thinking is the thin end of wedge which has resulted today in someone firebombing a mosque in Muswell Hill. Because what it really means, like a St. George's flag in a pub window, or a Swastika tattoo on your forehead - is simple. Proud To Be British is shorthand for - and I shall be polite about this - I'm a fucktardic xenophobic halfwit who'd rather identify myself as disliking and distrusting foreigners than celebrate the fact that I have one life, at one time, and, against all odds***, I am on this planet, spinning through space, with the rest of humanity, my fellow travellers in time and space.
And, instead of rejoicing in our common bonds, our shared histories and experiences, our many and varied cultures, and stories, and heroes and villains, and foods, I'm going to define myself by the fact that parents happened to be in this little corner of our little planet nine months after they shagged.
I'm picking on Britain, because that's what I've seen on Facebook since the death of Lee Rigby. But the same ranty point is applicable to all. We should mourn the death of one our own - a human - as is fitting. But remember - like the Borg - we are essentially the same the world over. We don't choose how we come in to the world, or where we come in. Your birth is your parents' achievement, not yours.
We are here together. Let's be here, together.
* It occurred to me that this programme is no longer on our screens, and I wondered what had happened to it. But I realised I don't care. I really do not care. Even less than I care whether Darma and/or Greg survived that car crash at the end of series two which was soooo clearly a desperate attempt to get given a third series. Which I hope they didn't. Because it was insult to the living. And the dead. And the yet-to-be-born.
* For those of a religious persuasion who think the earth is 6, 500 years old. You are utterly fucking insane. Ironically, I bet you also disbelieve evolution, while being closer to ours and apes' closest ancestors in intellect than most other member of homo sapiens sapiens.
***Which reminds me, we also gave the world Phil Collins. We should hang our heads in heavy shame.
