From this distant vantage point the
earth might not seem of any particular
interest. But for us it's different.
Consider again 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
the 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
 
