this picture of earth (its the bright white pixel) was taken by voyager 1 on february 14, 1990 at the suggestion of carl sagan as it was traveling through the outer reaches of our solar system and about to leave our neighborhood.
carl sagan later recorded his thoughts on the image and articulated, among others, these beautiful words...
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 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.
when i think about the glory of my insignificance, it makes me smile :- )
Excellent post. Add it to your facebook page? Likely a lot more people in your circle will come across it.
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