Earth from a distance: the Pale Blue Dot

[Pluto]

I've mentioned this before, but figured I'd give it a thread of its own.


Photographed by Voyager 1 in 1990, Earth from 6 billion kms away appears as a speck in the rightmost band of light.

Astronomer Carl Sagan, who had requested the photograph in the 1980s, commented on the so-called Pale Blue Dot photograph in his 1994 book of the same title:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again 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.

So what are the implications of this perspective? Are we and our problems infinitely small? Or are we inseparably one with something vast?
Do we glimpse the profound while trapped in a swamp? Is the entirety of life awe-inspiring? Or is there nothing here but an old Kodak moment?

 

[ClownMe]

This makes me feel tiny and insignificant.

 

[Pluto]

This makes me feel tiny and insignificant.

 

[ShanaRei]

We really are specks of dust. It's why I have a hard time with religion. If God existed why would he concern himself with us? It's like a human concerning himself with the lives of ants

 

[Meaninglessness]

Man is a completely meaningless animal in a gigantic Universe.

 

[another@]

We really are specks of dust. It's why I have a hard time with religion. If God existed why would he concern himself with us? It's like a human concerning himself with the lives of ants

To go even further, like a human concerning himself with a singular virus. Tbh the scale might be infinite so even that might not be enough. The observable universe is as far as we see for now.

 

[Tiberius85]

The ancient Stoics talk a lot about this. Their "view from above" is a key theme, that is supposed to help us realise how trivial we as individuals are, how tiny our space in the vastness of the universe is and that Earth is just tiny part of it. Hence, we shouldn't concern ourselves with what other people think about us, reputation or other externals, because we are gone soon, so are all the people they knew us and those that knew them.

Marcus Aurelius says as two examples (many more to find in his "Meditations"):

"Human lives are brief and trivial. Yesterday a blob of semen; tomorrow embalming fluid, ash."

"Consider the lives once lived by others long before you, the lives that will be lived after you... how many have never even heard your name, how many will soon forget it... Reflect that neither memory nor fame, nor anything else at all, has any importance worth thinking of."

Ultimately I concur with the view: our individual lives are trivial, meaningless and certainly Homo sapiens, yes even planet Earth, is a tiny, negligible part of the universe. Nothing truly matters. We only have power over own actions and view on things; these better be sincere and virtuous, as what's left if not even that?

 

[Rounded Apathy]

It was your embedded posting of this photo somewhere else around that led me to changing my pfp to my current one - Pale Blue Dot Revisited, from 2020 (doesn't wanna cooperate with being pasted directly into the post! ).

I think it just speaks wonders to the amazingly imperceptible vastness of creation. This past spring I played a lovely video game called Everything where you start out as a dot of light in the darkness, and after moving about you are a horse in verdant fields (I don't know if this always happened, but it was what happened to me). You're taught to move about and interact with other horses, and soon can "join" them and suddenly you're controlling a whole team. Then you're given the ability to "become" something bigger - boulders, trees, whatever. Eventually you're able to be groups of different things, scale up to planets, or down to subatomic particles, passing through each level of perception.

Throughout the game you can find things that initiate audio clips of Alan Watts lectures, and despite knowing of him for years, it was my first time engaging with his philosophy. It was so fitting and fascinating; talk of how the world of our cells and mitochondria is, in its way, comparable to ours, and the same for the macro world. Micro and macro. It was very neat to move through these in play. Everything is just a combination of smaller things and all have a world of their own.

It's hard on the day-to-day to recall that there's all that out there beyond us, but being equipped as we are only with the sensory system to actually perceive existence from this one perspective of this body-container-thing, it's sadly kind of forever just out of reach, I think. How magnificent to be able to directly perceive existence as a mitochondrion, or a planet, or something more ethereal like a storm or a sunbeam. It become hard to fathom at that level, but it's there.


View attachment 1669263089152.png

 

[Pluto]

If God existed why would he concern himself with us?

It was only several hundred years ago that scientists realised that the universe does not revolve around the Earth as Christianity had indicated. We felt even smaller upon realising that the stars were other 'suns' just like our own. Geologic time turned out to be on a scale of billions, rather than thousands of years. Then in the 1920s, Edwin Hubble discovered that the blob called Andromeda was an entirely separate galaxy. Then things really got big.

Man is a completely meaningless animal in a gigantic Universe.

The philosophers of ancient India made the observation that whatever process is unfolding, the individual life forms obviously do not matter all that much. Hence, attention turned to the nature of the ultimate macrocosmic entity, which they called Brahman. From this perspective, man is like one of the trillions of cells in the human body - tiny, short-lived yet inseparable from something vast. The central question of 'proper' (non-religious) spirituality pertains to pursuing a direct experience of our ultimate, superegoic nature beyond identifying with a short-lived biological organism called the body.

Tbh the scale might be infinite so even that might not be enough. The observable universe is as far as we see for now.

The scale can be best expressed using the speed of light. At the speed of light, it takes hundredths of a second to travel around the planet, and about 1.3 seconds to reach the moon. It takes about 8 minutes 19 seconds to reach the sun.

The Pale Blue Dot image represents a few 'light-hours' of travel from Earth. The nearest star is 4.2 light years away. Andromeda is 2.5 million light years distant.

The observable universe's diameter is around 93 billion light years. Even this doesn't account for other dimensions within a 'multiverse'.

The ancient Stoics talk a lot about this.

Amazing that the ancients reached this conclusion without even a modicum of modern astronomy. Those quotes are great!

It was very neat to move through these in play. Everything is just a combination of smaller things and all have a world of their own.

The vast scale goes the other way, too. The human body is a vast universe compared to a subatomic particle. People like to point out that the number of neurons in the human brain is very roughly similar to the number of stars in the galaxy (~100b). That game sounds like a clever way to express this principle. It is ultimately very humbling for the human mind to acknowledge its own smallness and futility.

I noticed your avatar only after making this thread. The revisited picture was a good way to add modern imaging to an historically significant photograph.

I've read commentary by people who have successfully achieved revelations based on similar philosophy to Alan Watts (Zen Buddhism, etc.). They sometimes report that the state of a very young child - not thinking, lacking a rigid sense of self, living purely in the moment and feeling immense wonderment at one's immediate surroundings - is what a spiritually advanced state feels like. A restoration of what we all once had via removing the dead weight of ego. People make statements that don't make much sense from a conventional human perspective, like feeling the totality of the cosmos within everyday objects such as a flower.

 

[Rounded Apathy]

The vast scale goes the other way, too. The human body is a vast universe compared to a subatomic particle. People like to point out that the number of neurons in the human brain is very roughly similar to the number of stars in the galaxy (~100b). That game sounds like a clever way to express this principle. It is ultimately very humbling for the human mind to acknowledge its own smallness and futility.

I noticed your avatar only after making this thread. The revisited picture was a good way to add modern imaging to an historically significant photograph.

I've read commentary by people who have successfully achieved revelations based on similar philosophy to Alan Watts (Zen Buddhism, etc.). They sometimes report that the state of a very young child - not thinking, lacking a rigid sense of self, living purely in the moment and feeling immense wonderment at one's immediate surroundings - is what a spiritually advanced state feels like. A restoration of what we all once had via removing the dead weight of ego. People make statements that don't make much sense from a conventional human perspective, like feeling the totality of the cosmos within everyday objects such as a flower.

It was a neat "game" if it can really be called that - I think the trailer won an Oscar or something. Definitely worth a try if the means are available. And yes it is me - funny enough I'd begun to identify with my old photo and it did feel strange changing it. But in the grand scheme it's just something on that dot, heh.

Funny, that statement makes sense to me but I think I am (and from what I gather you too) of that bent to begin with. There is no real distinction between any one thing and the rest of creation; every individual thing is an essential part of everything after all. Memory is hazy but the Watts talks in the game go on those trains; the "necessity" of all things, so to speak. Inseparability of any piece from the puzzle. Something I think is really true and irrefutable but hard to actively see a lot of the time...harder still to notice any beneficial effect on my "self" from the recognition.

 

[Pluto]

There is no real distinction between any one thing and the rest of creation; every individual thing is an essential part of everything after all.

That's a lovely way of looking at it. In modern times, a lot of common science could add material substance to the philosophy, too. The most numerous molecule in the human body is the same as that in the ocean (not to mention extraterrestrial oceans like Europa). The most numerous atom in the human body, H, is also the most numerous in the sun. One could go on and on.

As for living from this advanced perspective in a practical sense, it seems to take a lot of dedication and a willingness to make this the most important thing. And yet, it seems it cannot be used as a mechanism to evade our worldly purpose. I still haven't figured this one out!

It certainly adds substance to the various artistic and spiritual movements that place a high value on love. From this perspective, it's not about being 'nice', but acknowledging the reality that that we are not separate.

 

[Rounded Apathy]

That's a lovely way of looking at it. In modern times, a lot of common science could add material substance to the philosophy, too. The most numerous molecule in the human body is the same as that in the ocean (not to mention extraterrestrial oceans like Europa). The most numerous atom in the human body, H, is also the most numerous in the sun. One could go on and on.

As for living from this advanced perspective in a practical sense, it seems to take a lot of dedication and a willingness to make this the most important thing. And yet, it seems it cannot be used as a mechanism to evade our worldly purpose. I still haven't figured this one out!

It certainly adds substance to the various artistic and spiritual movements that place a high value on love. From this perspective, it's not about being 'nice', but acknowledging the reality that that we are not separate.

Quarks! Void! There is less substance than non-substance in the thing that I call my body! What a time to be alive. It's stuff like this that makes for a head-scratching backdrop when considering questions like "why does suffering seem so intrinsic to what we call and perceive of as life?". I seriously think humans are in this unfortunate, protracted stage of cosmic toddlerhood. We have ostensibly learned so much in such a short period of time, and the desire hasn't been close to sated, but we still know SO LITTLE and might obliterate ourselves before we can figure out the big stuff. Sigh. I wonder if mitochondria ever feel this way?

Reminding me of that Buddhism thread we were both on. I know we rose above the whole "institution vs. aim" thing but it was another one that never sat well with me; espousing being accessible to all, but concurrent incompatibility with certain types of minds. And I'm not just talking about people who, for cognitive/developmental/whatever reasons cannot do things like meditate, but those for whom meditation seems to have adverse effects (seemingly there are quite a few). I expect one institutional response to the latter issue might be lack of proper guidance and context, and possibly supplemented with the answer to the former that such folk just drew the shit lot in this round of karmic lottery...which is fucking depressing and seems kind of a cop out. The point of all this being that maybe even with the awareness of these seemingly pervasive truths, maybe it isn't enough to elevate this life. You or I or whoever else might "know", but we may never know.

 

[Pluto]

espousing being accessible to all, but concurrent incompatibility with certain types of minds.

That definitely happens, and even for people with no real disabilities, there needs to be a certain combination of events - challenges to disrupt the comfortable numbness, followed by learning about this topic, plus a genuine openness to it - for any progress to be possible on that front. Seeking ultimate truth is certainly not for all people in all lifetimes.

When meditation causes harm, it will probably be because it disrupts our normal habit of evading trauma or pain through constant distraction. Often in these situations, genuine inner peace needs to be 'earned' through emotional work or other methods of dealing with those blockages. Someone was recently commenting about therapy making their feelings worse, which is likely a similar phenomenon.

We could say that some people have bad luck, which is especially true when we consider even worse situations like children who die at a young age. But in the end, we do not know why an individual has incarnated or what their purpose was. The nature of having a human mind is that there is no true knowledge about anything, just gradations of ignorance. I am told that we experience states of total knowing at a later stage, and the holiday of ignorance is relatively brief in the bigger picture.

 

[LonelyEmerald]

I've mentioned this before, but figured I'd give it a thread of its own.

View attachment 101433
Photographed by Voyager 1 in 1990, Earth from 6 billion kms away appears as a speck in the rightmost band of light.

Astronomer Carl Sagan, who had requested the photograph in the 1980s, commented on the so-called Pale Blue Dot photograph in his 1994 book of the same title:

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again 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.

So what are the implications of this perspective? Are we and our problems infinitely small? Or are we inseparably one with something vast?
Do we glimpse the profound while trapped in a swamp? Is the entirety of life awe-inspiring? Or is there nothing here but an old Kodak moment?

For me, it depends on if we are alone or not in our galaxy. Some estimates say there's tons of intelligent life, and some say there's none. Until we find some I'm leaning towards the latter. The beauty of consciousness is a gift. We are inseparably one with a vast galaxy if we are the only creatures with the ability to colonize it. Life is awe inspiring, but so is just plain nothingness as well as the beauty of "abiotic" cosmos and rock formations.

 

[Rounded Apathy]

That definitely happens, and even for people with no real disabilities, there needs to be a certain combination of events - challenges to disrupt the comfortable numbness, followed by learning about this topic, plus a genuine openness to it - for any progress to be possible on that front. Seeking ultimate truth is certainly not for all people in all lifetimes.

When meditation causes harm, it will probably be because it disrupts our normal habit of evading trauma or pain through constant distraction. Often in these situations, genuine inner peace needs to be 'earned' through emotional work or other methods of dealing with those blockages. Someone was recently commenting about therapy making their feelings worse, which is likely a similar phenomenon.

We could say that some people have bad luck, which is especially true when we consider even worse situations like children who die at a young age. But in the end, we do not know why an individual has incarnated or what their purpose was. The nature of having a human mind is that there is no true knowledge about anything, just gradations of ignorance. I am told that we experience states of total knowing at a later stage, and the holiday of ignorance is relatively brief in the bigger picture.

I think for the general populace living in any part of the world where engagements with the outside world that're non-essential to life (i.e. distractions) are common, the first task of stopping and looking inward is new to most people and can be very difficult and a source of great discomfort, and even pain, even without trauma history. Things like therapy that are guided probes into the sources are by extension like the next level of this, and I agree that most of the time, the end result will be beneficial.

You make reference to it and I don't know to what extent this is only in the modern/western mass adoption and dissemination of Meditation as the panacea of the day and to what extent it is initially, but it's those "other methods of dealing with blockages" you speak of that I feel are often left out of discourse. I don't think many people who're survivors of things like sexual trauma, war, and other such scarring atrocities are going to find themselves "cured" of the lingering horrors of the aftermath of those experiences with any amount of sitting on a cushion and just turning attention to their mind. In my time closer to traditions I experienced examples of both direct acknowledgement of additional measures of intervention needed for these kinds of cases, as well as pretty broad ignorance of them.

Anyway, as you say it's all a drop in the ocean of the infinity of the cosmos...even if it's the entirety of our discreet human lives. Time will tell what lies outside...or not!

 

[sserafim]

I can't wait to escape this pale blue dot

 

[Pluto]

 

[Pluto]

Two addenda.

Earth can be seen as a blue dot underneath the rings of Saturn.​

1) Cassini
The Day the Earth Smiled is a composite photograph taken by the NASA spacecraft Cassini on July 19, 2013. During an eclipse of the Sun, the spacecraft turned to image Saturn and most of its visible ring system, as well as Earth and the Moon as distant pale dots.

2) Overview effect
There's a famous video James May visiting space in a U2. He appears genuinely quite stunned by the experience. Turns out it's a phenomenon with a name.

The overview effect is a cognitive shift reported by some astronauts while viewing the Earth from space. Researchers have characterized the effect as "a state of awe with self-transcendent qualities, precipitated by a particularly striking visual stimulus". The most prominent common aspects of personally experiencing the Earth from space are appreciation and perception of beauty, unexpected and even overwhelming emotion, and an increased sense of connection to other people and the Earth as a whole. The effect can cause changes in the observer's self concept and value system, and can be transformative.