Sunday 9 August 2009

Are you here?


"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, Pale Blue Dot, 1994 (Source: www.planetary.org)

2 comments:

modediktat said...

Hi there,
I've stumbled about your amazing blog after doing a search for my favourite guys Calvin & Hobbes.
What I'm telling you now sounds ridiculous, but I swear it's the truth - that's why I had to stop and to write you!
It was yesterday that I was talking about with a friend about life, earth, universe - all the philosophy stuff. If the only thing we will leave here is somebody who will remember us. What if these people have been left? And and and and.... The most worries, at least obviously all are unneccessary... A friend has emailed me a powerpoint ppt, it's starting with our planet system, earth in relation to saturn in relation to the sun. Next side our sun in relation to bigger stars. And so on. It ended with a big, big massed star - our sun was only a fly shit compare to its size... Mmmmhm...
Yesterday I was talking about Truman Show with the Mr.
Three days ago I left a comment on another blog about one of my favourite movies: Bringing up baby.
Today: Was watching a show of "Scrubs" on TV - one of the main characters was using the exact same quote of Harry and Sally!
That's such an amazing coincidence. What do you think? :)
Will add you to my blogroll.
Happy weekend to you!
sofie

Jacie said...

that's amazing sofie - I love synchronicity ...oh and e e cummings too (I checked out your blog and it's packed full of interesting stuff) Thanks for dropping by - oh if you like Calvin and Hobbes as much as I do then check out this link http://www.marcellosendos.ch/comics/ch/index.html
you have a good weekend too!
Jacie