"A Pale Blue Dot", by Carl Sagan, 1976
A Pale Blue Dot
– Carl Sagan
From this distant vantage point,
the Earth might not seem of any
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.
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.
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.
~~~ ~~~
ps If you're not able to see a circle around a dot, then try taking your phone in a windowless bathroom and turn off the lights.
If you still can't see it, let me know- there are thousands of copies of this image and they're usually put through filters to make it brighter, or much brighter, and the colors are fully saturated.
I used this photo because it's the one I remember seeing in 1976.
Comments
Post a Comment