Condensing Sagan (help, but not a high priority)

[wonderingmind42]

A certain passage from Carl Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" is tremendously powerful to me, and I would like to include as much of it as I can in the book somewhere. Unfortuneatly, I have two problems. One is, the passage is WAY too long to qualify for "fair use." And two, I've watched YouTube videos of him narrating the passage so much that I can't read it without his voice in my head, and so I can't guage how well a given condensing of it will work to the reader, who doesn't have the benefit of Sir Carl's voice in their head.

So, this is not a high priority item, but if people were inclined, I would love to get back several different versions to choose from of this passage edited down to around 200 words, while retaining the main "uumph."

And if you haven't seen any of the several YouTube versions of this, I highly recommend. When I'm getting all cranked up, it calms me down. And when I'm despondent, it motivates me. Strange,that. This one is my favorite. (But don't go watch it until you've taken a stab at condensing the passage, or you'll face the same problem I do!)

I miss Carl.

(BTW, as a huge fan of both Sagan and the The Matrix, this video had me in tears. Whodda thought?

From Sagan's "Pale Blue Dot" (note that this is actually already a condensed version of the text version):

"The spacecraft [Voyager I] was a long way from home. I thought it would be a good idea, just after Saturn, to have them take one last glance homeward. From Saturn, the Earth would appear too small for Voyager to make out any detail. Our planet would be just a point of light, a lonely pixel hardly distinguishable from the other points of light Voyager would see: nearby planets, far off suns. But precisely because of the obscurity of our world thus revealed, such a picture might be worth having." (88 words)

"It had been well understood by the scientists and philosophers of classical antiquity that the Earth was a mere point in a vast, encompassing cosmos -- but no one had ever seen it as such. Here was our first chance, and perhaps also our last." (45 words)

"So, here they are: a mosaic of squares laid down on top of the planets in a background smattering of more distant stars. Because of the reflection of sunlight off the spacecraft, the Earth seems to be sitting in a beam of light, as if there were some special significance to this small world; but it's just an accident of geometry and optics. There is no sign of humans in this picture: not our reworking of the Earth's surface; not our machines; not ourselves. From this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential: a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal." (123 words)

"Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you've ever heard of, every human being who ever was lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every hunter and forager; every hero and coward; every creator and destroyer of civilizations; every king and peasant, every young couple in love; every mother and father; every hopeful child; every inventor and explorer; every teacher of morals; every corrupt politician; every supreme leader; every superstar; every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there -- on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam." (117 words)

"The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. 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. 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. Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light." (107 words)

"Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity -- in all this vastness -- there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. Like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand." (51 words)

"It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. It underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the only home we've ever known: the pale blue dot." (58 words)

[Nick Palmer]

How about this Greg? It's about 213 words including my "set up" sentence at the beginning



In Earth’s night sky, planets and stars are mere points of light.



Earth too, viewed from near Saturn by the Voyager spacecraft, is a lonely pixel, a pale blue dot.


There is no sign of humans in this picture; from this vantage point, our obsession with nationalism is nowhere in evidence. We are too small. On the scale of worlds, humans are inconsequential; a thin film of life on an obscure and solitary lump of rock and metal.
Consider again that dot. That’s home. Everyone you know, every human being there ever was, every king and peasant, every mother and father, every hopeful child, every supreme leader lived there on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam; thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines; every creator and destroyer of civilisations.


Think of the rivers of blood spilled by generals and emperors to become momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.


In all this vastness - there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The Earth is where we make our stand.


This distant image of our tiny world underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish the only home we've ever known: the pale blue dot.

[wonderingmind42]

Sweet, Nick! Thanks!

I'm going to leave this thread as "yellow" in case someone else feels inspired. Choosing from a couple great possibilities ensures an amazing result.

Cheers,