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Phisto Sobanii's avatar

If we’re just a little more kind, maybe we can live together. Anywhere.

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John McConnell's avatar

Thank you for sharing this.

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Emma Lewis's avatar

One of my heroes and a prophet ahead of his time. His message resonates even more strongly now in 2023. Thank you SO much for sharing.

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mahesh pherwani's avatar

Yes, indeed ee... There is no Planet B...so let's all of us take care of everything inanimate and sentient, even into deepest reaches of the Mariana Trench and of course, of this majestic BlueDot. 🌌🫂🧘🌌🌻🫂

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Patris's avatar

Awe.

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Weston Parker's avatar

Now that is perspective.

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Maha's avatar

Beloved scholar and prophet. Such an important voice for our times.

I just love “thousands of confident religions”!

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Shannon McCloud Johnson's avatar

Carl Sagan - Bravo....and I love Astronomy and study the sky much of my time. I love The Constellations.

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Sean Garrisson's avatar

Peace, prosperity, responsibilities, accountabilities, magic everywhere. Not yet. Slumber, fear, free rides, groups, domination, waving of rights, war, sicknesses imposed, sicknesses welcomed.

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vernon's avatar

It’s coming

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Dian Parker's avatar

PLEASE HEED!

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Andrew Salerno-Garthwaite's avatar

I think the original referenced a different picture

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Beth Miner's avatar

Earth is a lovely place. How do you suppose it came into being? Before nothing was nothing. So a Being was before being could be.

I’m preparing to celebrate His Being Incarnate for 30+ years!

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Pilar Tischler's avatar

Great excerpt! 🙏🏼

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Eleanor Mac Gregor's avatar

We need to relate to the universe, not just to planet earth.

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Minor Fossil's avatar

I've always loved this passage. It puts a lot into perspective.

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Sloan Bashinsky's avatar

Bravo! Kapow!

Although I once encountered an extraterrestrial airship and have had many experiences with supernatural beings and a few experiences with other intelligent non-human beings, Sagan was, still is, so dead on. Humanity has no place to physically go to start over. Humanity lives and dies on a small blue dot in an incomprehensibly vast universe, just one of other universes, some more vast. if humanity keeps despoiling the planet, and the planet, or something, doesn’t intervene, humanity will kill the planet and cease to exist. Meanwhile, humanity does not seem to have learned much, given how it continues to behave as Sagan painted it so beautifully and horribly. Thus, each person is left to rise, or not, in his or her own way above the various human miasms Sagan knew all too well. 

In Sagan's novel, Contact, which I read maybe in 1993, there is an alien artifact in deep space, which comes online sometimes and beams something this way and that, including toward the small blue dot. So somewhere inside of himself, Sagan knew something is out there, which is more advanced and intelligent than what lives on the small blue dot. I imagine Sagan learned more about that after he left this life, as will we all, regardless of what we believe, or don’t believe. Meanwhile, Sagan laid it out, and how it plays out on the small blue dot not even Elon Musk and Space X can escape. 

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Dec 2, 2023
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Sloan Bashinsky's avatar

Can’t open that link.

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