What would it be like to live in a bubble?  I'm not talking about the bubble in which the so-called "bubble boy" of Houston lived for most of his life; his was for a medical reason.  I refer to the scenario portrayed in the current television series, based on a Stephen King novel, "The Dome."  "The Dome" presents life in a town which has been literally shut off from the rest of the world by a massive dome that, suddenly and unexpectedly, has descended upon it.  The "Dome's" boundaries are entirely impersonal and arbitrary:  families are split, commuters are cut off from their jobs, houses are sliced in two, and many law enforcement and fire safety resources are left outside.  It is, in a sense, a closed universe.
     In a closed universe, however, only those within it decide what is moral.  So far, aside from a few individual aberrances, the common good has prevailed.  It remains to be seen, though, how long this will last.  When people become a law unto themselves, values become entirely relative and, in a universe with no meaning other than that it is (which is a tautology), mean nothing at all.
     Ironically, however, such relativity then becomes the new absolute.  And we're back to square one.  In a closed universe, all we have is ourselves, and unless we are perfect (and this in itself is a statement of value that we, in a closed universe with no meaning other than itself, cannot legitimately make), we will never know what is absolutely true.
     If we are in a bubble, we hope that it is a bubble in a bigger bubble still.