From this distant vantage point, the Earth
might not seem of 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.
