This morning, Ojo Taylor, posted a great quote and picture by Carl Sagan on Facebook. Carl Sagan was a respected scientist whose awe of the cosmos was often expressed in poetic and philosophical language. Here is the text to the picture in the above right:
"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."
Immense and wonderful words that should cause us to think and reflect deeply. Regardless of nationality, politics, philosophy, or religion ... these are words that should cause us to contemplate.
Not the Fundie though! Such words are lost on him. Below the post, a Fundie wrote:
"A very intelligent but also a very lost man."
The Fundie is not moved by Sagan's words. On the contrary, the Fundie feels a little threatened. The Fundie does not like this feeling, so the Fundie feels a need to give themselves a superior position. The Fundie condescendingly admits to Sagan's intelligence... but then asserts his ultimate superiority.
Sagan is lost, the Fundie is not.
Gotta laugh, or I'll loathe. :)
1 comment:
this is nice. :) #2 only further illuminates the incredible irony of #1.
for, to my surprise, i found myself agreeing with mr piper. specifically when he said, 'we're the problem.'
"Yes, john, you're right.
For here we are on a tiny mote of dust in an unfathomably big universe - a planet that supports life in a complex and diverse ecosystem we barely understand & currently features 6 billion *unique* human lives at any one time. each one as wonderfully mysterious as the universe, with the capacity to not only imagine but to speak complex languages & tell stories of love & pain so as to make sense of their place on the planet & wonder what is up in the stars above.
humans with the capacity to work out how to record this meaning-making as literature with written alphabets, & develop technologies to reproduce it in book form...
All so that you could then hold just one fragment of all those thousands of years of complex human stories in your hand &, in your wisdom, declare that this world is... wait for it..."Boring!"
there's your problem, John, right there."
you gotta cue up the laughter track. it's the best medicine.
LB
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