Carl Sagan: Reflections on a Mote of Dust

under_believer

In 1996, the year he died, Sagan gave a commencement address. The following is an excerpt from it. (The picture was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it left our solar system.) I found this text at http://obs.nineplanets.org/psc/pbd.html.

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every 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 in 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 the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. 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. It is up to us. It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building experience. To my mind, 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 and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

nvrgnbk

Hello under-believer,

I deeply appreciate your sharing this gem. These three paragraphs are more thought-provoking and humbling than all the WT literature ever produced combined.

Thankful,

Nvr

under_believer

Nvr,

I hadn't thought of it that way but you are absolutely right. If the Witnesses could write like that I might still be a Witness. :)

magoo

.................humans on a planet so small...in a non ending existence.........kinda' makes a human feel even smaller......yet, there is so much importance placed on following rules to the letter.......hummmmm.............

Hippie magoo

tetrapod.sapien

thanks u_b! ain't that the truth!

i really do not forsee us being able to gather the psychological drive and strength to really try and survive, and get off the blue dot, with the God concept still strong in the minds of the majority. i really don't. i mean, why would we need it if he is gonna come make it all better for us? unless of course we get so religiously insane that we decide to take our religion to the rest of our light cone. cosmic missonaries. scary.

tetra

ps: LOL magoo. that is a great gif! :)

nvrgnbk

I don't know tetra,

I'm just a little older than you, but I'm liking what I'm seeing from people your age and younger. It seems like many of the new generation are just simply not buying what the establishment(religious, governmental, economic, etc.) is selling. It just appears that, while serious problems continue to plague humanity, each consecutive generation gets a little smarter, a little tougher to fool. This gives me hope. Ex.- I think the fanatical Islamic movement is already opening the eyes of a whole generation of young, forcing them to reconcile their religious traditions with reality.

Critical optimist,

Nvr

Twitch

:-)

The man speaks a truth, no?

I have utmost respect for his legacy of words, hopes, dreams and actions.

Darth Yhwh

Carl Sagan ROCKS!

tetrapod.sapien

hey nvr!

oh, for sure, i agree. which is why i do not forsee us being able to really do it with the God concept. well, not the literal one. god as a metaphor for the divinity in ourselves might actually really help us out with our priorities back here on the blue dot. you know, as an archetype. but the literal one is not really helping us out. i would argue that it is stifling us, psychologically, actually (i mean, i think it's getting hot in here!). after all, it's just a layer that needs to be peeled off before we will understand just how small and pale this blue dot is.

tetra

nvrgnbk

it's just a layer that needs to be peeled off

Oh tetra, it's a peelin' even as we speak.

Nvr

Carl Sagan: Reflections on a Mote of Dust

Share this