On Looking at Things from a Distance, Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot Speech in 1990

The violence has always been abundant on planet Earth. Perhaps it is an inevitable part of thermodynamics, of existence, of life and an absolute truth as of recorded in history. Although we can't run away from it and sometimes feel helpless at the hands of fate and frustration it brings, i believe the way to put up a good fight is to stop and spend some time watching us and our history from a distant point. Like old prophets had done from atop the mountains, Carl Sagan does that from somewhere deep in space looking at the pale blue dot, our home, Earth.

Here's what he said:

"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 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 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."

References

1. The script of the Pale Blue Dot Speech is taken from the internet site cited below: 26 years ago, Carl Sagan gave us an incredible perspective on our planet by Paul Szoldra, February 14, 2014

http://www.techinsider.io/pale-blue-dot-carl-sagan-2016-1