This image is one of the grandest ones ever taken. It has much history to it, shot as it was from The Voyager on February 14, 1990, even as the exploratory mission was being called off and ground control was ordering all cameras be shut down. This grainy image is one among the last it sent down to mission control at NASA.
Planet Earth appears as an insignificant dot.
On staring at the image and much pondering over it later, Carl Sagan was struck by how significant the image actually is. He could see the beauty and philosophy embedded in the image as well. Not just that, this image offers much perspective on how utterly insignificance all that people live and fight for, are about.
It was inevitable then, the scientist in Sagan attempt to communicate much of his thoughts in a book he wrote later called the The Pale Blue Dot.
“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 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 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. 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.
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.”
While poring over these passages then, it was inevitable then mind veer around contemporary conversations of our times. Whose God is mightier? Whose nationalism is greater? Whose wealth is more?
Does it matter really?
Why is it so difficult to comprehend us humans are not just frail creatures, but specks of dust in a cosmos we haven't even begun to comprehend? If that sounds implausible, there is a thought experiment Carl Sagan points to in the book.
“Ann Druyan suggests an experiment: Look back again at the pale blue dot of the preceding chapter. Take a good long look at it. Stare at the dot for any length of time and then try to convince yourself that God created the whole Universe for one of the 10 million or so species of life that inhabit that speck of dust. Now take it a step further: Imagine that everything was made just for a single shade of that species, or gender, or ethnic or religious subdivision. If this doesn’t strike you as unlikely, pick another dot. Imagine it to be inhabited by a different form of intelligent life. They, too, cherish the notion of a God who has created everything for their benefit. How seriously do you take their claim?”
Imagining humans as the masters of the universe or the faith they follow as the most superior then comes across as such an utterly absurd thought.
How can anybody possibly indulge themselves in it?