Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
The astronomer Carl Sagan is one of my intellectual heroes, and one of the great secularists of the twentieth century. Almost ten years ago, I posted this video of his—one of the most moving short videos I’ve ever seen. Its message so resonates in our troubled times.
In 1989, after both Voyager spacecraft had passed Neptune and Pluto, Sagan wanted a last picture of Earth from “a hundred thousand times” as far away as the famous shots of Earth taken by the Apollo astronauts. No photo has ever put the human condition in better perspective; it is worth seeing and hearing at least once a year for the rest of one’s life. Thank you, Carl Sagan.
The text:
“Look again at 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 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. 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.
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.”
Yes. great man. He, more than anyone, got me interested in philosophy, giving me sparks of ideas which led to others, and so on. Thanks for sharing this, Dr.
I agree with Mr. Sagan’s perspective on the World we live on and agree that there is no help coming, we are alone, trapped by our emotions,in our human perspective living out our lives on Earth just like any other creature that rises and flourishes, reached it’s zenith, and then begins it’s demise!
We are evolutionary creatures. Three and a half, or so, million years ago Lucy, the Proto human on display at the British Museum in London, walked barefooted through some mud and those foot prints are deemed to be the first human foot prints. This is all arbitrary of course, but people like to have numbers and starting dates, they trust their ruminations more when they are based on ‘Facts’.
Have we, as a species, reached our zenith?
Two topics ago we discussed modern Medicine
Before we discuss Medicine and the passage of time, let me assure you that I have great respect for The medical Profession, I’ve had cataract surgery to both eyes with perfect results, and I’ve had two tumors removed by a young Doctor trained in micro surgery also with very good results, this was a surgery that if done in the ‘old way’ would have been very invasive, and would have required a long convalescence with much more chances for ‘complications’, so what I might say now is not a criticism of the profession but simply an observation on the troubling but unexpected things that sometimes appear.
“Be thankful you no longer live in a world dominated by supernatural explanations. It wasn’t that long ago that infections were life threatening or that half of all children born never saw adulthood.”
I was born in the nineteen thirties so I some what remember what a sensation Penicillin caused, it was the first antibiotic and was hailed as a miracle drug. (I should say that at that time we had absolute faith in our Doctors, a Doctor might make a mistake but they would never lie and i don’t think that they did!)
Penicillin is seldom prescribed now, the diseases have become too powerful, improper use of antibiotics, beginning with penicillin, has caused a secondary effect, the microbes have, and are, mutating into more virulent and antibiotic resistant strains.
Half the children never saw adulthood, Dr. Edward Dutton, a British Cultural Anthropologist posits that 1859 was the Zenith for human intelligence, harsh Darwinian selection was removing the weak genes from the gene pool, wasn’t Darwin’s dictum; the survival of the fittest?
Second-order effects generate unintended consequences. (First-order effects: actions have consequences. Second-order effects: consequences have their own consequences.) C. H. Smith
I don’t expect an epiphany, the Herd will run off the cliff once again, but this will probably be the last time!
We are all creatures of 2024, we no longer have the strength and determination of Lucy or of the people of 1859. Here is something about the Antibiotic Crisis; theantibioticcrisis youtube.com
2050 seems to be a big date on the calendar of collapse, Dr Sheina Snow from Mount Sinai Hospital NY
predicts that males will be completely impotent by 2050, what effect are the damaged sperm having on the population now?
Are these things the ‘unintended’ consequences of of other actions? I don’t know but we now live in 2024, how old are we really? Who knows, we have nothing to measure ourselves against!