The original post: /r/television by /u/pm_me_reason_to_livx on 2025-08-15 19:26:32+00:00.
Rewatch sessions #60:
- Title: Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey
- Network: FOX; National Geographic
- Released: 2014
- Genre: Science documentary
- Stream: Amazon Prime Video; Tubi
About 7-9 years ago I watched Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey for the first time, and after rewatching it now as an adult, I hadn’t realized just how much this show helped shaped my view of the world. As someone whose knowledge of physics, chemistry, biology and other science related areas is at the basic level (maybe even below that since I don’t even know some of the words/phrases being thrown around in the online science community), I can say I’d be an even dumber person if I hadn’t seen Cosmos. I’d be much more ignorant to the world around me, simply caught up in the social reality we humans have constructed, oblivious to the inner workings of physical reality.
Presented by Neil deGrasse Tyson, the man who has pretty much been the front man of science for over a decade now, Cosmos: A spacetime Odyssey is is a follow-up to the 1980 television series Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, which was presented by Carl Sagan. The first thing I noticed while rewatching is just how much more dramatized the presentation felt than how I remembered it being. The grandiose Stark Trek-esque soundtrack, the flashy CGI/animations of ‘The Ship of the Imagination’, and even the stories themselves of scientist who made important discoveries that often times have a hero/villain approach. This slight overdramatization is the only pet-peeve to be had with this series though if any, and though I think it’s the only aspect of this series that carries the risk factor of not aging well, it’s mostly a non-factor. What’s most important about Cosmos, is what it teaches, and I believe what it teaches, about the universe, about evolution, about science, about history etc. are essential lessons all mankind should have. The information is conveniently laid out and formatted in a way most people, from science nerds to the low-class baker, will understand (well, at least for English viewers as far as I know). But whether or not the highly devoted Christian or the stubborn flat earther etc. will believe any of it… if they’re ever convinced hard enough into watching it that is… is another scientific event that can be observed and studied. Confirmation bias, belief perseverance and other fallacies have always been thorns to societies, which is why I believe the closer to their pre-teen years someone watches this, the more the information will stick.
But even as I say this I question whether or not the information given in Cosmos are necessary information to have. What would knowing how planets formed, how evolution works, or how atoms are formed change about society as a whole? Well, I imagined there would be less dumb takes and arguments online, but what else would change? Would we finally come together and solve some of the consistent issues that have been a thorn at our sides since pre-historic times? Such as disparity, poverty, homicide etc.? For now, that’s just wishful thinking. If anything, neuroscience, a field that deserves its own big budget production like Cosmos, pretty much exposes that our flaws as humans are mostly embedded within us, passed down overtime through our genome which evolved to prioritized our survival. The truth is, many humans over thousands of years have lived and died believing complete opposite to what this series teaches. So maybe… maybe humans need to be a bit delusional to the world around them to be able to function efficiently. Maybe being fully aware of our environment and how it all works at every second of the day is counter-productive to our survival.
For the argument of whether or not humans needed to delude ourselves in order to survive, there has to be a mention or nod made here to religion also (another aspect of life that deserves it’s own Cosmos like breakdown series). Because apparently, what started as us worshipping our environment (the sun, the moon, the trees, the storm etc.), evolved into a plethora of gods with given names and idols built to represent them, and thus, now we have multiple different theistic ideologies within multiple different cultures. I believe these religions, create an ease-of-mind for the humans who believe in them, essentially serving the same purpose which willed primitive humans to start worshipping their surroundings in the first place. Our newly gained consciousness must’ve been a strange and confusing thing. Thinking deeply about our existence must’ve been… to simply put… a pain in the arse. It’s probably why Socrates was widely disliked in Athens due to his persistent questioning of life and traditional beliefs… and also probably why religion is still so pervasive today despite most having faulty footings and logic.
Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey is a collection of our studies of life, a presentation of some of the most important things we’ve learnt so far and how we discovered them. But how does one interpret the entire 13-episode season as a whole? What does this entire docu-series says about life? What is ‘life’ even? It’s quite uncanny, but when you really think about it, the depiction the series gives on how planetary systems are formed, with dust, gasses, rocks etc. colliding into each other, can also be used as an allegory to how life is on earth as well. We… humans, animals, plants etc… are just a bunch of objects colliding into each other. Not just our actions, but also our desires, our preferences, our ideologies and beliefs. And every collision carries with it an endless string of consequences we often don’t get to see, causing other collisions and other collisions. Life… the universe maybe even, is just… endless collisions between objects.
Cosmos: A spacetime Odyssey is an essential TV show in my eyes. It’s a show that tells it like it is, a show that is honest about what we don’t know, and a show that gives hypothesis that I still see circulated on social media today (for instance the ‘we are living in a black hole’ hypothesis). It’s the show that made me aware of just how insignificant we all are in the grand scheme of things… as early as the opening episode in fact. That zoom out it gives from our earth back the furthest we can see in space/time always just… blows my mind. I am confident we are not alone in the universe. Cosmos: A spacetime Odyssey also makes me curious about the future. What is left to be discovered? What mysteries will be uncovered? What life-altering inventions will be made? What will life on earth be like 100 years from now?
rating: N/A