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 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.
