Pale Blue Dot

[alman9898]

has anyone else come across this quote? it's an interesting read, and sums up alot of my feelings on meaning and significance.

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.

[I Have a Clever Name]

The quote goes with this image, taken by Voyager 2 approximately 4 billion miles away from Earth.



That neat little passage is by Sagan, I think. The image is of significance to myself also - those who speak of the meaning or innate purpose of the universe are in denial. When faced with the image I cannot honestly see how any anthropocentric doctrine still holds firm - it renders anything, even an otherwise admirable concept such as love, utterly redundant. The answers theology would have us adopt become laughable when contrasted with that image. It is clear when confronted with such a bleak reality that the value we place on our lives cannot stem from without, but from within.

In fact, I really ought to print off a few copies. Great way to shut people up, at least temporarily.

[Idwayreth]

yes that is very sombering.

[Zenith Darksea]

The answers theology would have us adopt become laughable when contrasted with that image.

I don't think that that follows at all, to be honest. Perhaps it's just an emotive response to what you find to be an overwhelming image, but in my view, since God is so magnificent and mysterious (there's the Orthodox in me speaking), there's nothing surprising in his creation being so magnificent as well.