Pale Blue Dot

The 20th century was the bloodiest, most destructive, century in human history. The first decade of the 21st century, fraught with death and destruction, does not bode well for humanity. It is abundantly clear that things cannot go on like this. It is also abundantly clear that existing institutions have not been effective in significantly reducing the level of violence. The United Nations, while of value, is not up to the job precisely because its components are nations each of which is still playing the balance of powers game. What is obviously needed is a united people of the world. This, I suggest, requires a paradigm shift in human socio-political attachment from the nation, tribe, and religion to the Earth itself. Further, this attachment must be rational and evidentiary as in science, so that adjudication among the people has a better chance at fairness.

This suggestion is different from the one-world community's focus on bringing the nations together to form a world society. It is also different from Earth First, which is concerned with our impact on our physical home, the environment, as important as that obviously is. This proposal is about conditioning human beings, as we do with good citizenship in our public schools, to see the Earth as our only home, as small, as fragile, as alone in the vastness of space and upon which we are utterly dependent. This awareness must be the mother's milk of childhood education and as pervasive in day to day human affairs as the weather. With this pervasive awareness, the conflict, death and suffering we visit on each other will be seen as the pure folly it is. For this to happen we need a concept and a symbol so powerful that it can overcome narrow allegiances and the emotional ties humans have to them. I believe the absolute loneliness of our pale blue dot in the vastness of space as Carl Sagan has described it, and the NASA photograph of that profound isolation, can serve this purpose. As Sagan wrote in his book Pale Blur Dot, "Apart from that, (the warmth ad light we receive from the sun) this small world is on its own."

Bob Newhard