Around here..
they like to say
everybody knows everything.
But what if the truth was
nobody knows anything?
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.
I'm coming back.
