carlsagandotcom
5 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2011–2026
3:31 · 8.8M views · Mar 24, 2009
Carl Sagan's narration of the Pale Blue Dot passage, reflecting on the Voyager photograph of Earth as a tiny speck in space. It is a short meditation on humanity's smallness and shared home.
HN commenters return to it for perspective, comfort and Sagan's soothing voice, and suggest watching it periodically.
15 comments from Hacker News
Ah, legacy. It always makes me happy to listen to Carl Sagan's words on his text "The Pale Blue Dot": From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider 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 pos
James May of Top Gear has flown with a U2 spy plane once [0][1]. When they reached to the edge of space, May said "If everybody could do that once, it would completely change the face of global politics, religion, education, everything". I can't agree more. Another thing I believe needs to be watched periodically is Pale Blue Dot [2]. [0]: [LINK] [1]: [LINK] [2]: this video
I really loved the Pale blue dot by Carl Sagan. His voice is soo smooth and relaxing that sometimes I just hear it for his voice even though the content is nothing less than amazing. P.S. Unfortunately Sagan died before the book recording could be completed so some chapters are in a different voice. Still, listening to it is real zen like. Here is a sample[1] [1] this video
I'm sorry for your loss. When something bad happens I often find myself going back to Carl Sagan's words on the Pale Blue Dot [0]. Puts everything in perspective, and makes everything feel insignificant, when compared with the vastness of what lies out there. [0] this video
Here's a YouTube link to the entire Pale Blue Dot bit by Sagan: this video Sagan is absolutely amazing. It really does put things in perspective.