Time whizzes by and I, I write of glimpses I steal

Sunday, February 05, 2006

The Dot

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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.
Quote from Carl Sagan

9 comments:

Shashi Iyer said...

may well be true. perceptions assume varied shapes (person-specific).. but i believe that its more than a dot we adore. its more than a dot we despise. its more than a dot that instigates emotional torrent and joys of living. let us not trivialise it.

btw, this is shashi

Vijay said...

...and we remain but mere specks of dust in this vast universe...

so true..

Speech is Golden said...

yes and a no.

yes! we r mere specks of dust in the universe. and yes! we shouldn't trivialise our own existence.

no! despite being dust we r intelligent dust and in the realm of the known world, we r very significant. and no! we are so trivial tht even if all human kind were to become extinct, the universe wud still go abt its daily chores without as much as a pause.

Shashi Iyer said...

what does it matter that you are an oblivion to things you yourself don't know? thats like saying "i want to be remembered after death"! no ram. i don't think its right to find solace in the FACT that we are, afterall, specks of dust. don't tell me that u're merely acknowledging the truth.

Speech is Golden said...

i agree with u on one thing for sure... we cannot let the fact that we r mere specks control our lives. you can't go on living ur lives saying things like wat does it matter that i failed my exam, the universe is still alive or what does it matter that i murdered 20 people, they are but motes of dust.hell! no.

yes! the speck of dust thing will have to be taken with a pinch of salt.

but it is fascinating when we get arrogant over our paltry achievements. if space and time are our prominent parameters, in comparison with the universe we have lived for too short in too small a place that we are insignificant.

Shashi Iyer said...

our achievements may well be paltry, but somewhere down the line we're probably living today because of somebody's achievement. in my opinion, paltry achievements would mean paltry life; and that i can't take.

arrogance does not come because one has achieved... it comes because one's morality is not in place.

Speech is Golden said...

paltry achievements would mean paltry life, why???? our measly achievements, if anything indicate the infinite possibilities present in life and ennoble life. give it a greater meaning.

and arrogance... well! i dunno abt 'morality'. i prefer not to use tht word at all, if possible. too big a word for me.

all i can see is tht ppl who achieve have something to be arrogant abt and those who haven't achieved anything don't have that.... so i jus figured out tht achievement is wat breeds the feeling of self-importance, vanity and arrogance.

and a wider perspective reveals that mankind is arrogant b'coz in the evolutionary ladder it has climbed where other creatures haven't. we can 'think' (ofcourse can doesn't mean we do...only tht we r capable of it). so in his 'arrogance' he domesticates animals, takes their habitat, wages war against his own kind (but of lesser accomplishment), tries to convert everyone in to an image of himself (read 'Americanization') and blah! blah! blah!

Shashi Iyer said...

well... i was ambivalent abt using the word morality. but since i wear a halo, its okay ;).

ah... possibilities. i missed that point. right you are :).

the arrogant part of it, i'd rather stick to my theory.

p.s: let me know if i should quit doing this!

Speech is Golden said...

good one on the halo. yup! now u have all the right in the world to use morality.

don't quit keep going. i love it.

arrogance... man has mastered the fine art of arrogance and delusion that we wudn't recognise it in us, if it stripped naked and did a samba