Consider once again that dot. That's here. That's house. That's us. On More Details enjoy, everybody you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, countless confident religious beliefs, ideologies, and financial 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 mom and daddy, hopeful kid, innovator and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every 'super star,' every 'supreme leader,' every saint and sinner in the history of our types lived there on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.
Think about the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that in splendor and accomplishment they could become the short-term masters of a fraction of a dot. Think about the endless cruelties checked out by the residents of one corner of this pixel on the rarely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner.
Our posturings, our thought of self-importance, the delusion that we have some fortunate position in deep space, are challenged by this point of pale light. Carl Sagan, in 1980. Our world 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 somewhere else to save us from ourselves.
Created at 2021-06-22 20:47
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