The Significant Insignificance | Teen Ink

The Significant Insignificance

June 10, 2015
By Seth_Kitchens BRONZE, Selma, Oregon
Seth_Kitchens BRONZE, Selma, Oregon
1 article 0 photos 0 comments

Favorite Quote:
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 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. 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.

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.

-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994


“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.”~ (Carl Sagan).

From the dawn of time humanity has always attempted to find a purpose to its existence, believing that it is the superior race destined to rule the planet. Today it has gotten to a point where humans believe they are masters of the natural world and separate themselves from nature, creating a sort of cosmic prison. Fear is a part of nature, a drive that keeps all organisms alive, it  is something no one being connected with nature can escape. Fear is why the cosmic prison can not truly exist, for one cannot exempt oneself from something one is, without changing the very self of that being. That being said within the imagination no limits exist an individual can make its own meaning, the imagination is the only true cosmic prison. Humanity's impact in the cosmos may be infinitesimally small, heightened even so if this view was held by an individual upon the comet Hale-Bopp; although with self awareness comes the ability to create one's meaning so nothing is insignificant unless thought of as so.
The comet Hale-Bopp was first seen on July 23, 1995. Hale-Bopp was on journey from its distant home at the edge of the oort cloud and is estimated return shortly before 5,000 years have passed. The view from the comet Hale-Bopp would make earth minuscule by even the bodies within earth's own solar system. From a strictly scientific view the individual on this flying piece of ice with a nuclease of at least nineteen miles in diameter, would see a nearly null effect from this planet on the cosmos. Now this section speaks of the planet as an object in combination with humans, because the two are in one biosphere and to be looked at from a logical perspective they cannot be separated. As physics would suggest by means of the chaos theory, that the simplest of things on earth can have massive repercussions innumerably far away; such as the flap of a butterfly's wing causing a supernova millions of light-years in distance from earth. However this is merely a theory and too theoretical to argue for earth's significance, that is if logic is the point taken in this section. Earth in terms of its gravitational effect is minuscule in comparison to just the bodies within its home solar system. Nevertheless even this small gravitational force has an effect on the passage of time on the planet, this is due to the compounding of space time, that heightened gravity puts upon space time. The only other physical effects that earth (and its inhabitants) have are the radio and magnetic waves that it spreads through the cosmos, be that by human born waves or those produced from the earth's own magnetic poles. Logic suggests that humanity and the rock which it inhabits has next to zero effect upon the cosmos, as this individual upon the comet could see. The cosmic effects of earth would be diminished even further by all that this “watcher” on Hale-Bopp could experience.
This lone watcher upon Hale-Bopp would see the most beautiful shows that the cosmos have to offer. After several thousand years of hurtling through space at hundreds of  thousands of miles per hour, it may see beautiful black holes surrounded by a blanket of light which they bend with their infinitely dense cores. It would see the most powerful displays the universe has to offer such as gamma ray burst that rush through space propelled by the explosive destruction of a star. This watcher would view the birth of stars as well as their inevitable cold slow deaths. True infinity would be experience by this individual not in terms of space itself, but also in terms of heat, gravitational waves, time fluctuations, spacial anomalies and the way the universe conduct itself as a whole. Know as this watcher thinks back upon humanity and its feeble attempts at calculating the conditions of single objects be them massive or be them minuscule, would it not think of how worthless an attempt this is? After this creature has seen so much, experienced so much and felt the true infinity of the cosmos, would it truly feel that a tiny dot on an infinite sea of darkness, which  harbors some of the most complex molecular combinations known, has any true effect upon anything other than itself. From the watcher’s current perspective one can do nothing but agree with this hypothesis. Be that as it may, think if the watcher could also see the metaphysical realm in which the imagination of humans live, the realm which holds reality together for that being. If this watcher could see reality from the perspective of a human its view would be radically changed.
From the eyes of a being who holds the power of imagination the effect that that entity has upon the world is exactly what that creature makes of it. When one has the power to question reality and its makeup, that conscious object also contains the power to effect that reality, whether that power derives from psychology or quantum physics, it nonetheless exists. Therefore if this entity upon the comet could see from the perspective of a conscious and imaginative being it would see the fabric of reality being shaped in front of it. Even from way above upon that comet the watcher would see that this is no insignificant task, the individual repercussions even on this small scale are enormous.
Just as the planet and its inhabitants were grouped into one, the universe and its inhabitants are the very same way. On a grand scale from the eyes of this watcher (who is able see the wonders of the universe in all its forms other than simply the spectrum visible to human eyes) the earth and its inhabitants would be nothing more than a pale blue dot, especially after all this organism has seen. Nevertheless this is not all that this watcher must take into account if it is to truly analyze the effects of humanity. The watcher must be able to peer within the imagination and thoughts of the humans and see the constant effect one has on its individual reality, which is nonetheless the cosmos. If this watcher was to truly analyze the effect of humanity on the cosmos it would say that physically humanity is no more than a single atom within an entire solar system, but it is also part of the cosmos and with its ability to morph its own reality humanity is simultaneously a super-massive black hole, twirling the universe to its desires.    

 

http://www.planetary.org/explore/space-topics/earth/pale-blue-dot.html?referrer=https://www.google.com/ (Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot)



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