Saturday, March 12, 2011

The Pale Blue Dot

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Look again at that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

                                                                     Carl Sagan at Cornell University, 1994

15 comments:

  1. I enjoyed reading this. It made me think, I like that.

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  2. Very informative indeed aswell as a clever way of thinking about ones own surroundings in the vast universe

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  3. I just hope aliens don't eat my brain.

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  4. Wow, this was a really interesting read, please do post more.

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  5. heres looking forward to ur future posts :)

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  6. made me feel a little insignificant

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  7. What James said it makes me feel like i'm nothing.

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  8. interesting concept, keep up the posting :)

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  9. I couldn't agree more. incredible post. My latest post is similar to your's.

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  10. Ever seen the photo "Pale Blue Dot?"
    It's a picture that one of the Voyagers took of the earth from beyond pluto's orbit.
    Really makes you feel insignificant.

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  11. Wow! Very philosophical for your first post. Do you think you'll be continuing the trend, or end up easing up as you go along?

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  12. nice, I think you'd like my blog

    http://turqoisemoon.blogspot.com/

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