From Those Who are Unaffiliated | Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space by Carl Sagan

Read by Kate Hoeting, MTS II

Seasons of Light is hosted by Harvard Divinity School's Office of Religious and Spiritual Life under the direction of Christopher Hossfeld, Director of Music and Ritual, and Kerry A. Maloney, Chaplain and Director of Religious and Spiritual Life.

The full video recording of Seasons of Light 2020 can be found on the HDS YouTube page: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVuYb9d7tCc&t=587s

TRANSCRIPT:

Hi everyone!

I’m going to be reading a passage

from Carl Sagan’s book Pale Blue Dot,

in which he is reflecting on the famous photo

which you can see here, titled Pale Blue Dot,

taken from the Voyager I spacecraft

on its way out of our solar system of Earth.

It’s a little self portrait,

and you can see in the middle-right,

sort of in that orange sunbeam,

is a tiny pixel which is Earth.

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… 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 [parent], 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 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.

— Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space (New York: Random House, 1994), 8-9.