Blijedo Plava Tacka

Sa ovog udaljenog mijesta, Zemlja mozda izgleda beznacajna, ali za nas je drugacije. Pogledajte ponovo tu tacku. To je ovde. To je dom. To smo mi. Na njoj, svi koje volite, svi koje poznajete, svi za koje ste ikad culi, svako ljudsko bice koje je ikad postojalo zivjelo je tu. Skup svih nasih radosti i patnji, hiljade samouvjerenih religija, ideologija i ekonomskih doktrina, svaki lovac i svaki skupljac, svaki heroj i svaki plasljivac, svaki stvaralac i razarac civilizacije, svaki kralj i seljak, svaki mladi zaljubljeni par, svaka majka i svaki otac, dijete puno nade, pronalazac i istrazivac, svaki ucitelj morala, svaki korumpirani politicar, svaka superzvjezda, svaki vrhunski vodja, svaki svetac i gresnik u istoriji nase vrste svi smo zivjeli tamo, na cestici prasine zaklonjenoj zrakom Sunca.
Zemlja je veoma mala scena u nepreglednoj kosmickoj areni. Sjetite se rijeka krvi koju su prolili svi oni generali i vladari, da bi u slavi i trijumfu postali momentalni vladari dijelica tacke. Sijetite se beskrajnih okrutnosti pocinjenih od strane stanovnika jednog piksela prema jedva prepoznatljivim stanovnicima nekog drugog coska, njihovih toliko cestih nesporazuma, tolike njihove zelje da ubiju jedni druge, njihove zarke mrznje.

Nase zablude, nase umisljeno samouvazavanje, obmana da imamo neki privilegovani polozaj u svemiru su suocene sa ovom blijedom tackom. Nasa planeta je usamljena mrlja prekrivena velikom kosmickom tamom. U nasoj bezizrazajnosti u svom tom prostranstvu, ne postoji nikakav znak da ce pomoc doci s nekog drugog mijesta da nas spasi od nas samih.
Zemlja je jedino mijesto za koje znamo da sadrzi zivot. Ne postoji ni jedno drugo mijesto, bar ne u skoroj buducnosti, dje bi nasa vrsta mogla migrirati. Posjetiti, da. Naseliti, ne jos. Svidjalo vam se ili ne, Zemlja je mijesto dje se trenutno nalazimo.
Kazu da je astronomija pokorno iskustvo koje izgradjuje karakter. Vjerovanto ne postoji bolji pokazatelj gluposti, ljudske sujete od ove slike naseg svijeta sa udaljenosti. Za mene, ona naglasava nasu odgovornost da se jedni prema drugima odnosimo ljubaznije, i da sacuvamo i negujemo blijedo plavu tacku, jedini dom za koji znamo...

Letter to a Christian Nation

"Indeed, religion allows people to imagine that their concerns are moral when they are highly immoral - that is, when pressing these concerns inflicts unnecessary and appalling suffering on innocent human beings. This explains why Christians like yourself expend more "moral" energy opposing abortion than fighting genocide. It explains why you are more concerned about human embryos than about the lifesaving promise of stem-cell research. And it explains why you can preach against condom use in sub-Saharan Africa while millions die from AIDS there each year."

“A three-day-old human embryo is a collection of 150 cells called a blastocyst. There are, for the sake of comparison, more than 100,000 cells in the brain of a fly. If our concern is about suffering in this universe, it is rather obvious that we should be more concerned about killing flies than about killing three-day-old human embryos… Many people will argue that the difference between a fly and a three-day-old human embryo is that a three-day-old human embryo is a potential human being. Every cell in your body, given the right manipulations, every cell with a nucleus is now a potential human being. Every time you scratch your nose, you’ve committed a holocaust of potential human beings… Let’s say we grant it that every three-day-old human embryo has a soul worthy of our moral concern. First of all, embryos at this stage can split into identical twins. Is this a case of one soul splitting into two souls? Embryos at this stage can fuse into a chimera. What has happened to the extra human soul in such a case? This is intellectually indefensible, but it’s morally indefensible given that these notions really are prolonging scarcely endurable misery of tens of millions of human beings, and because of the respect we accord religious faith, we can’t have this dialogue in the way that we should. I submit to you that if you think the interests of a three-day-old blastocyst trump the interests of a little girl with spinal cord injuries or a person with full-body burns, your moral intuitions have been obscured by religious metaphysics.” 

Evolution: It's a thing - crash course biology

If death is the only certainty, is there then meaning to life

THINK
Sartre was a great novelist but I found his attempt at phenomenology too dry for comfort.
Camus on the other hand, is equally comfortable in both domains. Camus began his thesis by proclaiming that there is one question in life, and that is whether to commit suicide. If life has no meaning, then what is the point of living?
His title is apt. Sisyphus is that tragic figure in Greek mythology who was condemned to eternal toil in Hell.
He was tasked with pushing a huge rock up the slope, and as he reached the peak, the rock would roll down back to its position. Then the same toil repeats itself, for eternity. If you think about it, Sisyphus fate is a little like our daily life.
We were born, protesting and crying, without the right to be consulted. Then we will all die, crying again at leaving our loved ones. In between, there is just a huge blank for us to fill in.
Everyday, we go though the motion of living a life, a routine of going to work, eat, sleep...
We are bound by layers and layers of social norms and obligations that thwart our puny will to be ourselves.
We mortgage our freedom to our business, our family, our nation, and our tribe. We live through an entire life, without knowing who we are as individuals.
You know how modernity is.
It celebrates life, hope for tomorrow, and the greatness of the human spirit, those elements that make Hollywood movies so popular. Rambo and Rocky immediately come to mind. Nobody wants to talk about death and dying.
Yet, death is the only ultimate certainty in life. You can never get out of this life alive. The more you celebrate the human spirit, the joy of life, and the hope for tomorrow, the greater disappointment it will be when you face certain death.
This is the ultimate absurdity of human existence. This is the most fundamental alienation of our being!
The sick feeling in the realisation of this contraction has been variously described as angst or ennui, festering beneath the surface of every person’s facade of a normal life, coming back in the dark depth of night, when he is confronted with himself alone, or when he has just suffered a personal catastrophe.
Sartre used to say that we are all amateurs in this business of feeling lonely, and every man lives in quiet desperation.
For Camus, he provides the answer to his question of suicide in his book The Rebel. Life may or may not have meaning, but it is up to us to create our own meaning.
That is how existentialism got its slogan: existence before essence. For him, the act of rebellion against the absurdity of existence itself, especially through art, is the path for the absurd man to live.
“Every act of rebellion expresses a nostalgia for innocence and an appeal to the essence of being,” he wrote.
I just wonder: how many people today are closet existentialists, especially among the younger generations. People do not like to discuss such deeply sensitive subjects as the meaning of life with our friends. We do not want to be seen like freaks.
Camus’ question does not bother me any more. Do not ask me my formula, because I have lived a relatively long life to find my own answer, and my answer may not be suitable for you. You have to find your own answer.
So, what is the meaning of your life? Or is it not a relevant question for you?