The Earth Is Where We Make Our Stand

The Earth Is Where We Make Our Stand

The above is an animation of the wonderful web comic done by Zen Pencils which is originally based on a quote by Carl Sagan which in turn was inspired by the famous Pale Blue Dot photograph.

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.

This is along the same lines at what I was getting at the other day, when I talked about the myth that we can’t afford to explore space. The fact of the matter is that we’ve screwed up this place too much and eventually we’re gonna have to abandon it. Might as well start sooner than later. Although, maybe the real point is this: even if we do manage to escape the Earth, we won’t ever escape ourselves.

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