Stop distracting me and let me think!

[Tarantism]

the problem comes in presidential elections with the elecotoral college

[Kriminal99]

Yeah its fine if your talking about local elections. I don't have presidential candidates coming to me explaining their views unless you count speeches which as I said are carefully designed. Everything about their tactics seems to be designed with the goal of making people percieve them a certain way. They aren't necessarily all devious tactics, they could be things you have to do to keep your opponents from using something you said in a way you really did not means etc.

 

The pamphlets are just more information designed to make you like them. My point is, unless I know I am seeing something where noone with ulterior motives has any control of what I am seeing, then to me what I see is meaningless.

[Tarantism]

yes! sometimes the elected officials strike me as hollywood too, good points kriminal.

[cwes99_03]

meditatition.

Interesting, since the original definition of the word meant to think long and hard about a topic. I'm sure you mean to clear your mind of all thoughts, which actually means to meditate on nothing.

[TheBigDog]

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, 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 hopeful child, every mother and father, every 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 in 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 the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. 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.

Quotes like this one sicken me. How they attempt to minimize and marginalize the significance of man so as to make the pursuits not espoused by the speaker seem so insignificant as to being ridiculous. Why should the fact that there is a vast universe beyond my reach have a bearing on my needs right now? How does it feed and nuture and shelter and protect myself and my family? There are things on this planet that are significant and worth the blood of conviction to protect and to defend. And unlike the things of the great beyond they are real and they are tangible now; a time that you would acknowledge is of the greatest significance.

I think you missed the point, and you missed it hard. The quote has little to do with space, and everything to do with being humble in the face awesomeness, brave in the face of insurmountable odds, and hopeful in the face of nothingness.

Respectfully, I believe you are taking liberties with your interpretation, or you have read more by Sagan where he has added meaning to this speech.

 

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.

 

What part of that final sentence supports your claim of the meaning of his speech? He first paints a broad picture of mankind and mankind's acheivements, and then slams down that it is all unimportant, and that thinking otherwise is proven false by the picture that proves how insignificant we are. We are just riding dust in a sunbeam after all. That is very uplifting.

 

The solipsistic view that the world doesn't exist outside of you is an empty one.

Did you spend too much time studying for spelling bees? I have to admit that my first instinct was "mis-spelling", but I can usually figure those out. So I went with the fact that you had stumped me to the dictionary. This would not have been so bad had it stumped Shannon too, but adding insult to injury, she not only knew the word, but mentioned a Henry Rollins book that uses it in the title. Damn you and your big words!

 

Bill

[TheFaithfulStone]

Respectfully, I believe you are taking liberties with your interpretation, or you have read more by Sagan where he has added meaning to this speech.

 

Possibly. I know that Sagan was not a nihilist, so I know what he meant. I know that's where the whole "nothing is valuable unless it is important" goes to.

 

What part of that final sentence supports your claim of the meaning of his speech? He first paints a broad picture of mankind and mankind's achievements, and then slams down that it is all unimportant, and that thinking otherwise is proven false by the picture that proves how insignificant we are. We are just riding dust in a sunbeam after all. That is very uplifting.

 

Are you being sarcastic about it being uplifting? I find it to be so.

 

The BIG point, was that the universe is HUGE and we are so very, very small, that on the grand scale of things, we don't matter. The universe is NOT looking out for us - only we are.

 

But I think you are confusing "important" and "valuable." You have value as a human being - but to the functioning of the world at large you are not important.

 

You know, no one can save us but us. We can't be significant to anyone but each other - so we should be significant to each other.

 

I don't know, I guess you could argue that God, with his infinite love, loves us above all other species in the universe, and that of all the billions, and billions, and billions (and on and on) stars in the universe, ours alone warrants the attention of the Almighty.

 

But doesn't that belittle infinity? Isn't that tribalism? What makes the alien from Alpha Centauri less valuable than a person from THIS star?

 

You can believe that you are special and unique and valuable without being important or necessary.

 

TFS

[Boerseun]

I guess you could argue that God, with his infinite love, loves us above all other species in the universe, and that of all the billions, and billions, and billions (and on and on) stars in the universe, ours alone warrants the attention of the Almighty.

 

But doesn't that belittle infinity?

Indeed, and if God existed, it would belittle Him to the point of insignificance if this one single planet out of the multitude out there was all that He was worried about.

 

Good thread, good quotes! You gotta hand it to the late & great Carl Sagan, though - the dude had a way with words. If he wasn't a scientist, he would've been a poet, I'm sure.

[InfiniteNow]

Just feeling like our 24 hour news cycle is preventing appropriate reflection on the current events for many... but don't know it that's accurate.

Calling a member of the audience Mucocca...

 

Discounting the Geneva convention...

 

Clinton speaking his mind...

 

Pakistan needs better living conditions...

 

North Korea is going to test a nuke...

 

Governmental heads charged with protecting youths from predators engage in the very acts they should stop...

 

Why would you shoot people in an Amish school...

 

Who knew what and when?

 

 

 

It's mid-term time. You can tell by the intensity of the stories and the timing of their release.

 

Pay attention to all the smoke and mirrors, but try not to let yourself get distracted by them.

[infamous]

Nothing simplifies life as well as the "Hokey Pokey". After all, that's what its all about.

 

Bill

Actually, I'm a fan of tiddly-winks myself................Infy

[Kriminal99]

Voting? The answer is to replace these stupid monkeys we vote for and can never really know anything about with codes of morality or ethics that we vote for that can be applied to any situation and that whoever is in power must follow.

[Tormod]

It's hard to think when threads get so messy as this one.

 

BigDog, shame on you for slapping Carl Sagan, he's one of the reasons this forum exists and as such is not open for criticism. :hihi:

[Boerseun]

...and what if the Hokey Pokey is actually what it's all about?!?:esmoking:

[InfiniteNow]

.

Us and them mentailities. Working against each other, differently, perpetuating disconnection.

<...>

This is often good in a communal sense... helping neighbors, supporting one another and whatnot... however, this also instigates tribal behavior, gang like wars. That is an extreme example, but association is not the problem. It's disassociation from members of other groups. Violence stemming from nothing more than a difference in the latitude and longitude which describes the place of our birth.

<...>

I see locality as the Earth, and not just limited to humans. That's the broader point I suppose, and admittedly it discounts some of the functions which government helps to ensure... roads, running water and the like... Locality should be more than south central or the east-side... Eastern and Western Germany, North and South Korea... Us and them mentality, which served us well in our evolutionary past is now becoming more detrimental to society and all of our modern conveniences.

<...>

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, 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 hopeful child, every mother and father, every 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 in 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 the dot on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner of the dot. 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.

[InfiniteNow]

Time for another election... time for more nonrelevant distractions.