Our Pale Blue Dot

VIDEO:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=p86BPM1GV8M&feature=player_embedded

A Moving Reminder of the Decency of Our People on this Speck of the Planet
www.jamaica-gleaner.com/gleaner/20101215/news/news2.html

Mr Glen Bromfield, mentioned in the column, is one of our St Bess (Bartons) neighbours, whose spirit of philanthropy and giving back is exemplary.

GB: There is a..."need to provide the kind of environment necessary to encourage a return to common decency, politeness, respect and civil behaviour."..."if you do good, good will follow you".

Read more:
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/39593_St-Elizabeth-gets--11-m-community-cent re#ixzz18CEyKrvA
www.jamaicaobserver.com/news/39593_St-Elizabeth-gets--11-m-community-centre

Carl Sagan, stoned or other-wise, from his eternity, is still a great teacher & in-spire-er:

QUOTES:
• The size and age of the Cosmos are beyond ordinary human understanding. Lost somewhere between immensity and eternity is our tiny planetary home.
In a cosmic perspective, most human concerns seem insignificant, even petty. And yet our species is young and curious and brave and shows much promise. In the last few millennia we have made the most astonishing and unexpected discoveries about the Cosmos and our place within it, explorations that are exhilarating to consider. They remind us that humans have evolved to wonder, that understanding is a joy, that knowledge is prerequisite to survival. I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this Cosmos in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky.

• We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it's forever.

• The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer.

• The suppression of uncomfortable ideas may be common in religion and politics, but it is not the path to knowledge; it has no place in the endeavor of science.

• Our intelligence and our technology have given us the power to affect the climate.
How will we use this power? Are we willing to tolerate ignorance and complacency in matters that affect the entire human family? Do we value short-term advantages above the welfare of the Earth?
Or will we think on longer time scales, with concern for our children and our grandchildren, to understand and protect the complex life-support systems of our planet? The Earth is a tiny and fragile world. It needs to be cherished.

• For as long as there been humans we have searched for our place in the cosmos. Where are we? Who are we? We find that we live on an insignificant planet of a hum-drum star lost in a galaxy tucked away in some forgotten corner of a universe in which there are far more galaxies than people.
This perspective is a courageous continuation of our penchant for constructing and testing mental models of the skies; the Sun as a red-hot stone, the stars as a celestial flame, the Galaxy as the backbone of night.

• I have...a terrible need...shall I say the word?...of religion. Then I go out at night and paint the stars. (quoting Vincent van Gogh)

• The neurochemistry of the brain is astonishingly busy, the circuitry of a machine more wonderful than any devised by humans. But there is no evidence that its functioning is due to anything more than the 10 (to the 14th power) neural connections that build an elegant architecture of consciousness.

• The choice is with us still, but the civilization now in jeopardy is all humanity. As the ancient myth makers knew, we are children equally of the earth and the sky.
In our tenure of this planet we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage — propensities for aggression and ritual, submission to leaders, hostility to outsiders — all of which puts our survival in some doubt.
But we've also acquired compassion for others, love for our children and desire to learn from history and experience, and a great soaring passionate intelligence — the clear tools for our continued survival and prosperity.
Which aspects of our nature will prevail is uncertain, particularly when our visions and prospects are bound to one small part of the small planet Earth. But up there in the immensity of the Cosmos, an inescapable perspective awaits us.
There are not yet any obvious signs of extraterrestrial intelligence and this makes us wonder whether civilizations like ours always rush implacably, headlong, toward self-destruction.
National boundaries are not evident when we view the Earth from space. Fanatical ethnic or religious or national chauvinisms are a little difficult to maintain when we see our planet as a fragile blue crescent fading to become an inconspicuous point of light against the bastion and citadel of the stars.

Travel is broadening.

• Human history can be viewed as a slowly dawning awareness that we are members of a larger group. Initially our loyalties were to ourselves and our immediate family, next, to bands of wandering hunter-gatherers, then to tribes, small settlements, city-states, nations.
We have broadened the circle of those we love. We have now organized what are modestly described as super-powers, which include groups of people from divergent ethnic and cultural backgrounds working in some sense together — surely a humanizing and character building experience.
If we are to survive, our loyalties must be broadened further, to include the whole human community, the entire planet Earth. Many of those who run the nations will find this idea unpleasant. They will fear the loss of power. We will hear much about treason and disloyalty. Rich nation-states will have to share their wealth with poor ones.
But the choice, as H. G. Wells once said in a different context, is clearly the universe or nothing.

Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.}