IN THE MIDST OF CHAOS: Carl Sagan's 'Pale Blue Dot' Is A Reminder Of How Fragile We All Are

“From this distant vantage point the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us it’s different. Consider again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us."

By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (8/26/24)

Awaking again to fresh images and news of brutal Israeli/American atrocities in Gaza and more US/Nato military strikes in Russia with our Ukrainian sock puppet, the likelihood of escalating cruelty, stupidity and nuclear annihilation is boundless.

Carl Sagan’s beautiful short essay Pale Blue Dot from long ago came to mind.

The Pale Blue Dot was inspired by an image taken, at Sagan's suggestion, by NASA’s Voyager 1 on February 14, 1990. Just as the spacecraft was departing our planetary neighborhood for the far, empty fringes of the solar system, it was turned around for one last look back at its home planet; the pale blue dot hanging in a sunbeam in the black void of space.

It was a profound act of beauty and if humanity had the capacity to really grasp its significance, it would be seen as the most beautiful and profound image ever produced by humankind. For within that tiny pixel of light we all exist; all we have known and ever could be. Elon Musk — what passes for intelligence today — is welcome to hustle his fragile ego off to colonize Mars (please), but for all the rest of humanity, this is it.

Here.

What is beneath our feet

As Sagan notes, “…the only home we've ever known.”

Or ever will know.

Despite that, we are ruled by the most ignorant, self-destructive and arrogant leaders humankind has subjected itself to. They are the worst of all the history of humanity because the consequences of their actions can literally torch and contaminate our precious, essential Pale Blue Dot to the point where life itself will not be possible.

Many young people have probably never seen this profound video. Literally the most important four minutes of video ever produced. Obviously, most in my generation have forgotten it. I watch it several times a year to try to stay grounded in reality in the midst of the Idiocracy our nation and the west has devolved to.

In a nation of empty church-hustle-for-your-dollar spirituality, I invite you to take four minutes for some true spiritual reflection. Follow that for a moment to consider how to turn reflection into action to help protect and preserve the Pale Blue Dot we — and our children — will either thrive or die on.

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Pale Blue Dot — Carl Sagan

“From this distant vantage point the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us it’s different. Consider 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 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: A Vision of the Human Future in Space