DA PASMABILIDADE

As máquinas vão
e depois vêem por e para nós:
Saturno segundo Cassini,
como outrora segundo as Voyager,
e é o sonho,
a transposição do impossível,
o trânsito da máquina para o pasmo
em tempo real, quando o sol está por detrás.
E nós, aqui, neste pontinho azul,
esquecidos da insignificância preciosa
de que tudo o que nos diz respeito se reveste.
Isto mesmo escreveu Sagan:
«Look 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 position in the Universe,
are challenged by this point of pale light.
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.
The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life.
There is nowhere else, at least in the near future,
to which our species could migrate.
Visit, yes. Settle, not yet.
Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.
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.
To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another,
and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.»
Joaquim Santos

Comments

Unknown said…
Caro Joaquim
Este teu post lembrou-me do extraordinário livro "Cosmos" do Karl Sagan - já para não falar da famosa série televisiva.

"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."

Que palavras sábias de KS..."este pontinho de luz ténue" - "this point of pale light", é tudo o que nos resta...o homo, dito "sapiens" como espécie dominante continua a não respeitar a biodiversidade, a não ter consciência da escassez de recursos, a conspurcar irremediavelmente o tal "pontinho azul" com um estilo de vida que "queima" tudo à volta...
"This point of pale light" pode apagar-se um dia...
Grato pela visita ao "Under the Sea"
Mi casa es tu casa :-)

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