As Margaret noted, we are all thrown upon ourselves. This reminds me of the writings of George Ivanovitch Gurgieff, a controversial mystic from the early 20th century. He presented an ancient tradition which he named, “The Fourth Way. “. This tradition included the principles of “as above, so below,” and “as within, so without. “ He saw an analogy between the microcosm ( humanity) and the macrocosm (the universe). Another way of saying this is that in studying the world, we study ourselves and in studying ourselves, we study the world. 
So thank you, Margaret, for bringing these esoteric teachings to mind. i am inspired to get out a couple of books I have on Gurgieff, and read up again on his teachings! Nancy Dallman