Thursday, March 27, 2014

Pale Blue Dot - through the Yoda-Speak translator

This distant vantage point from, the earth might seem of any particular interest not. But for us, different, it is different.  Consider again that dot.  Here, that is.  Home, that is.  Us, that is.  You love on it everyone, you know everyone, you ever heard of everyone, every human being who ever was, their lives lived out.  Of our joy and suffering the aggregate, of confident religions thousands, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, of civilization every creator and destroyer, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, of morals every teacher, every corrupt politician, every "Superstar,"  Every "Supreme leader,"  Of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam every saint and sinner in the history.  


Very small stage in a vast cosmic arena, the earth is.  Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in glory and triumph, become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot, could they.  Of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner think.  Their misunderstandings how frequent, to kill one another, how eager they are, their hatreds how fervent.  Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that, some privileged position in the universe, have we, of pale light are challenged by this point.  Lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark, our planet is.  In our obscurity – in all this vastness –, no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves, there is.  


The only world known, the earth is, so far, to harbor life.  Nowhere else, there is, 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, our stand, make we.  Humbling and character-building experience, it has been said that astronomy is.  Perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world, there is.  To me, to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot it underscores our responsibility, the only home, ever known, have we.  Hmmmmmm.



Pale Blue Dot - Wikipedia
The Yoda-Speak - translator

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