#SoG102 - Pale Blue Dot
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SoG 102 - Pale Blue Dot
This will be a short one. Like really short. Just a handful of words. And I have spoken about this in the past.
So Pale Blue Dot is a photo of our Mother Earth, our planet, our terra firma, our home. Taken by a spacecraft that was leaving our solar system to go beyond to the infinity that none of us knows of.
Carl wrote the following text.
Every time I feel grandiose about a thing that I achieve in life or I get depressed about the lack of money in my bank, I see this image. And I read what Carl wrote.
Here's full text. Emphasis Mine.
Or see this video if you like visuals. You WILL get goosebumps!
[Quote]
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.
[Unquote]
You get the drift? Hope you do.
Lesson for the day?
No lesson. Find your own meaning.
Thanks,
@saurabh
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Tags: Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, Ego, #noLetter
Notes:
1. I have realised that the day I dont write the letter first thing in the morning, I have a high chance of missing out. Like today for example. Its 1030 PM and I am tired af and I have a million things that went down in the day and I dont know if I want to invest time in writing and all that. But then a promise is a promise And thus I have to resort to these shortcuts. Of sharing things that have shaped my thinking. And more importantly, MUST shape thinking of EVERYone who wishes to be better. Ok, rant later. Time to sleep :)