December 20, 2006
We are made from star stuff
December 20th marks the 10th anniversary of Carl Sagan's passing. Even though my childhood falls squarely into the 80's. (Transformers, M.A.S.K., The A-Team) I was around for a little bit of the 70's. (Banana Splits, Welcome Back Carter, The Electric Company) I can remember Carl Sagan's outfit from his Cosmos TV series. A turtleneck, often paired with a brown sport jacket that had those elbow patches on it. Not to mention his mopy haircut. Very iconic.
It wouldn't be until after I had gone to college that I really took an interest in what Carl Sagan had to say. I was struggling with "What I Believed." I had some friends who were confident in their spiritual beliefs, but I was still on the fence.
One of the greatest things I learned from Carl Sagan, and the thing that the Catholic Church could never reconcile with me, was the grander of Man's smallness. Everything I learned going to Catholic School told me that we lived snugly within God's blessed cross-hairs. It would take The Church hundreds of years to admit we weren't the center of the Universe... Not only are we not the center, we're barely even on the map, and more than 99% of the map is a complete mystery to us!
"If we long to believe that the stars rise and set for us, that we are the reason there is a Universe, does science do us a disservice in deflating our conceits?....For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring."
We've recently lost a close member of our family. It was very difficult, and this system of belief I've adopted offers little in the way of comfort. In fact, it offers none. While this seems like a recipe for despair... in fact, it instills in me a love and respect for life. This life we live that clings as a film to the surface of a rocky ball that orbits an unremarkable star in the suburbs of an average galaxy. It's fleeting, and the people in it need to be appreciated. We may not be the center of this Universe, but the fact that we exist at all in an environment so hostile is amazing enough!
These are the ideas that give me pause, and a reason to reflect on life. It took a man like Carl Sagan, who brought the grand concepts of the Universe to my living room, to help me see what's so great about Universe without dressing it up to be more than it is.
"We are a way for the Cosmos to know itself"
Many people are writing posts this week to celebrate Carl Sagan and the contributions he has made to both Science and Humanity. Check out more Celebrate Sagan Blog-o-thon posts here. Look here for previous clunkyrobot posts about Carl Sagan.
See Carl Sagan talking about the golden plaque he helped design for The Pioneer Spacecraft:
Here is the opening to Carl Sagan's Contact:
I, too, have struggled with the eternal questions as I watched family members pass on lately. And while the fact that I'm going to die brings me no comfort, I find the prospect of going to a perfect Cloud-City with streets of gold to be ridonkulous. (This is actually what they told me back in the day. That Heaven is a city in the clouds where everything is perfect, and you receive riches [something like ten times what you gave to the church!])
I find myself thinking that death isn't really so bad. It's dying that sucks.
Posted by: rp at December 19, 2006 7:38 PMI have Cosmos on DVD. And I didn't copy it. I OWN it. One of the best xmas presents ever.
Posted by: Overdroid at December 20, 2006 3:04 AMwhen my mom died, THE BIGGEST thing that got me through that first week was "I will see you again, I will see you again...." ad nauseum. I had to believe that or i'm not sure how my brain would have processed it. It was like it was the only thing keeping my whole chest from caving in on itself.
7 years later, i can look at it analytically, and talk about it like this, but you are absolutely right-on about the grasping of the here and now, appreciating and communicating the appreciation of the people we love and depend on, b/c from where i stand, that's what we know we have and that's what's important.
That is why I always say, LIVE,LOVE,LEARN.
DAD
Posted by: DAD at December 21, 2006 1:26 PMi agree. we are here and now, and this will definitely end sometime. it's good to be in the present, but like your dad says, you have to learn. and we can only do that by soaking up the past. understanding it all from a scientific viewpoint helps the rational mind.
Posted by: ablebody at December 26, 2006 2:01 PMyou want to soak up the past, clunky wants it destroyed. takes the skin right off my hide.
Posted by: mary k at December 26, 2006 4:00 PM
