From: Amara Graps (amara@amara.com)
Date: Fri Aug 16 2002 - 23:29:05 MDT
I think this text must be famous, except that I only just encountered
it. Sagan's words are always good for seeing a bigger picture, even if
he and I would differ about what to call a dust mote. We could imagine
writing something like this in the future, with our 'dust mote'
as our solar system or as our galaxy.
Link to a Sagan poster with the images in this text
http://www.seds.org/billa/psc/pbd.html
Reflections on a Mote of Dust
Carl Sagan (1934-1996)
We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you
look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On
it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived,
lived out their lives. The aggregate of all of our joys and
sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and
economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward,
every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and
peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every
mother and father, every 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 in 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 the dot on a scarcely distinguishable
inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. How frequent their
misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill on 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. It is up to us.
It's been said that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a
character-building experience. to my mind, 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 and compassionately with one
another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only
home we've ever known.
Excerpted from a commencement address delivered May 11, 1996.
Some other useful links related to Carl Sagan:
Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit
http://www1.tpgi.com.au/users/tps-seti/baloney.html
Links to Sagan Material on the Web
http://www.carlsagan.com/revamp/links/carlsagan.html
Amara
-- ************************************************************************ Amara Graps, PhD | Max-Planck-Institut fuer Kernphysik Heidelberg Cosmic Dust Group | Saupfercheckweg 1 +49-6221-516-543 | 69117 Heidelberg, GERMANY Amara.Graps@mpi-hd.mpg.de * http://www.mpi-hd.mpg.de/dustgroup/~graps ************************************************************************ I'M SIGNIFICANT!...screamed the dust speck. -- Calvin
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