Tuesday, September 8, 2009

The Pale Blue Dot


CREDIT: NASA/JPL/VOYAGER




"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, May 11, 1996.

From the Wikipedia entry.

2 comments:

  1. Wow Cheez, I was just about to go on and on about how profane that last post was... until I got to the by line.

    I get where you're coming from. Relatively, we are but a speck, our time here a blip. Yet, it is what we do during our time here, in the space that we have here.

    Make your mark on this Earth. Out there in North Carolina where we (western civilization) made our first successful attempts at flight. Do it for YOU. Relatively, all of this is gobbledygoop. But to you, B, me, the few who care about the launch of this earthship, this is as great an endeavor as Carl Sagan or the Wright Brothers ever could have imagined.

    Aloha - in all senses of the word.

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  2. DON'T PANIC!!!

    I just spoke with Cheez. The team is currently at a Lowes Hardware around 20 miles from the site.

    There is no cellular reception at the earthship site. In addition, there is no internet there. So, the next post may be a ways off and any callers will have to accept voicemail as a primary means of communication.

    Base camp will be set up today. Supplies are stocked and spirits are high. Groundbreaking for the initial shelter should commence tomorrow.

    Sit tight folks. Up until now, we were all just reading a prologue.

    Chapter one: The NC Earthship Adventure Begins...

    ...I can't wait to turn the page...

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