Website review: Powerful words by Carl Sagan | Smar...
actionhero789 discovered this in Astronomy
•62 reviews since Nov 16, 2006
philosophy, astronomy, carl-sagan
•smart-kit.com/s225/powerful-words-by-carl-sag...
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actionhero789 discovered 20 months ago- This helps put things into perspective.
- MarkInSTL rated 5 weeks ago
- Years ago, I was on a camping trip & life was, for one reason or another, causing me to feel burdened by my own reality and that of the world around me. I remember staring up at a sky full of stars, seldom seen with such clarity by a young man from a big city. Something else became clear to me that night. I realized that no matter what happens - no matter what tragedy occurs, what bad news I am presented with, what love goes astray or what dream fails to come true - nothing is worth bringing me down to the point that I lose my ability to smile, laugh or love. I realized that, even though my actions may cause a slight, limited ripple, eventually my presence on this planet will end and any evidence of my existence will fade away. I realized that, in the scheme of things, nothing is worthy of stealing my inner-peace or causing me to feel deep anguish for any extended amount of time. Although I don't advocate a person not taking responsibility for their own actions, I do believe in putting things in perspective and realizing that no matter what happens, it will all be forgotten and will have no lasting effect. This understanding has helped me to work through many life tribulations. So, when I StumbledUpon this site, you can imagine how much I related to it. I am no Carl Sagan. Here's what he had to say about it... Powerful words by Carl Sagan November 15th, 2006 From the page: If you look carefully at the NASA photo below, you will see a little white dot. This minute speck is Earth seen from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it exits the solar system, nearly 4 billion miles away. The photo was taken back in 1990. 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 & forager, every hero and coward, every creator & 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.
- Ikin92 rated 6 weeks ago
- Powerful words. It all seems so futile now...
- Plactic rated 7 weeks ago
- That little speck is the hope of mankind.
- KariFlack rated 2 months ago
- Oh. I thought this one had cycled through already. Er, excuse me--I meant to publicly praise Carl Sagan because he is so awesome and oh my god put things in perspective!!!
- johnwatchtower rated 3 months ago
- If you look carefully at the NASA photo below, you will see a little white dot. This minute speck is Earth seen from the Voyager 1 spacecraft as it exits the solar system, nearly 4 billion miles away. The photo was taken back in 1990.
- compuveg rated 3 months ago
- Hard to believe that little pixel's Earth.
- JohnShepler rated 3 months ago
- My screen is so full of dust that I see lots of Earths in that picture.
- Redrolla rated 5 months ago
- Amazing. Alot to give thought about.
- Dudley3 rated 5 months ago
- We are not alone in this. There has to be life out there besides humans. This shows a small dot that is Earth.
