Humankind - A Global Perspective


The current emotionally-charged patriotic atmosphere in America, complete
with massive runs on American flags and near-epidemic declarations of how
great America is, has left me longing for human beings -- especially
American-born human beings -- to think less in nationalistic terms and more
in terms of sharing a common humanity with human beings everywhere. Not, of 
course, that we shouldn't take pride in the particular culture we are born 
in, and not that the current patriotic fervor isn't understandable 
considering what has happened, but why not spend at least a few minutes 
pondering our deeper, more fundamental connections with one another, and our 
planet. 

For beneath the surface of all the things that tend to separate one 
human being from another -- race, religious beliefs, cultural and national
identity, gender, differences of opinion and perspective, arbitrary lines
drawn on maps -- we all share the same DNA, trace our ancestors back to the
same primordial soup, and wrestle with the same fundamental questions and
problems. 

Here's a few links that encourage us to see ourselves in a broader context. 
David Sunfellow 

CARL SAGAN'S DEEP SPACE VIEW OF EARTH 
 Joan Borysenko
E-Newsletter 
9/14/01 
[Thanks to Bob Stilger.]
http://www.newstories.org/911/borysenko.htm 

Carl Sagan contemplated a picture of Earth, taken from our Voyager
spacecraft in deep interplanetary space, and said:
"We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at
 it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you
ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The
aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions,
ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and 
coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and
peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and
father, every 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 in 
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 
the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the
dot. 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. It is up to us. It's been said 
that astronomy is a humbling, and I might add, a character-building 
experience. To my mind, 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 and compassionately with 
one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home
we've ever known.