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.
Carl Sagan,
Pale Blue Dot,
(1994)
Rest in peace...
