From this distant vantage point the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different! Consider again 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 the 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 harbour 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.

Flying Scot wrote:Beautiful, it never fails to move me. Perspective is everything.

From this distant vantage point the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different! Consider again 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 the 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 harbour 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.

natselrox wrote:I have always felt the need to create a video providing the perspective from the opposite direction, the microscopic world. If only I could write that well...

Spearthrower wrote:

natselrox wrote:I have always felt the need to create a video providing the perspective from the opposite direction, the microscopic world. If only I could write that well...

Sounds great, I'll help!

natselrox wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

natselrox wrote:I have always felt the need to create a video providing the perspective from the opposite direction, the microscopic world. If only I could write that well...

Sounds great, I'll help!

So it's final this time! We're doing this!

Spearthrower wrote:

natselrox wrote:

Spearthrower wrote:

natselrox wrote:I have always felt the need to create a video providing the perspective from the opposite direction, the microscopic world. If only I could write that well...

Sounds great, I'll help!

So it's final this time! We're doing this!

I'll be happy to help with the writing part, but I have no digity-whatsamabob-audiothingammy skills. I'm also no expert on the microscopic world, but I feel equally passionate about its grandeur, space, and possibility as of the macroscopic one!

Spearthrower wrote:I thought I'd write it out - perhaps Made of Stars could cut the text below and add it to the sticky?

thomasac13 wrote:lol, I even made an Indonesian translation of it on my facebook page, and my fellow Indonesian Atheists loves it so much that we decided to put the translation on a website.