Thursday, April 22, 2010

We Make Our Stand HERE!!


My thanks to Brother Jaquandor of Byzantium's Shores for finding this gem. It should be must reading for every kid in school and especially before any alien invasion.

"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 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"

3 comments:

M. D. Jackson said...

Harry Nillson said much the same thing but he set it to music:

"You come to the end
And the light there is dimmer
And chances are slimmer
Of findin' your way
You find that you stay out
Of trouble and danger
'Cause everything's stranger
Than it used to be
You're a scary old place out there world
But I couldn't be happy without you
And I swear all my thoughts are about you
The most beautiful world in the world

Well the light can be bright there
And everything's right there
The end of the night there might be a big band
Or a heavenly chior--Or it might be the fire
But no matter what happens
I bet it's OK
You're a scary old place out there world
But I couldn't be happy without you
And I swear all my thoughts are about you
The most beautiful world in the world

Your mountains when you're mad
Your rivers when your sad
And those deep blue seas
I love you for your snow
Your deserts down below
I love the way you wear your trees
The most beautiful world in the world
And though there are times when I doubt you
I just couldn't stay here without you

So when you get older
And over your shoulder
You look back to see if it's real
Tell her she's beautiful
Roll the world over
And give her a kiss and a feel."

Wings1295 said...

Mikey: Don't you realize? The next time you see sky, it'll be over another town. The next time you take a test, it'll be in some other school. Our parents, they want the best of stuff for us. But right now, they got to do what's right for them. Because it's their time. Their time! Up there! Down here, it's our time. It's our time down here. That's all over the second we ride up Troy's bucket.

M. D. Jackson said...

I don't remember THE GOONIES being so profound.