Twenty years ago, Voyager 1, a robotic space probe, took a photograph of our planet Earth from a record distance, presenting a 'pale blue dot'. Today, I stumbled on a website that displayed the photograph, as well as an excerpt from Carl Sagan's 1994 book, "Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space". The excerpt is as follows:
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.
After reading Carl Sagan's words, I wallowed through blurred vision toward the nearest tissue to wipe the tears from my eyes. Here I am, on this planet that orbits a large star that is part of a galaxy that in turn, is part of an ever-expanding universe. I am nothing. We are nothing. Everything we ever thought, every great idea, does not matter. Or does it?
I have been an atheist long before I came across this picture. For me, the existence of an omniscient higher being who is concerned with everything and everyone on this grain in space, is hard to grasp. I cannot accept the notion that our own actions and thoughts are so important to one being. Yet so many people have died so that others can please a 'God'. Nevertheless, I am not writing to depict the idiocies of religion and worship, nor explain how religion blinds us from our own insignificance. I do not have the time, nor the patience to elaborate on such concepts.
I'm writing to remind everyone that we do have value on our planet, our home. In regard to the entire universe, yes, we are unimportant. We earthlings have virtually no impact on our Milky Way, let alone on other galaxies. Nevertheless, we are here, and have been here for thousands of years. We have accomplished impressive feats in such a short span of time. We continue to live, to reflect, to change.
The effect we have on our planet is immeasurable. This impact is not due to some supreme being, but by our power to think, to desire, and to feel. I'm here because I want every person to always strive for progression; when advancement is impossible, venture for change. Celebrate each other's differences, as it is evident that we are not all that different. We do matter and every single living thing has significance. Because no matter what science ascertains, we have made an impact, and will continue to do so until our days are over on this tiny particle we call 'Earth'.
