Friday, April 20, 2012

A Little Blue Ball

"The only real recourse is for each of us to realize that the elements we have are not inexhaustible. We’re all in the same spaceship." -- Frank Borman, commander of Apollo 8 

As people get ready to celebrate Earth Day on April 22nd, I want to remind you of a famous picture:

I think it no coincidence that the first Earth Day was celebrated a mere 16 months after this picture was taken.  I'm not saying that this image itself was the impetus for Earth Day, but images do have power.  The space program gave us a unique viewpoint we never had before.  Our planet is immensely large from our own personal perspective.  Even traveling one quarter of the way around it in a jet airplane feels like a major undertaking.  When looking at a map or a globe, all the details we see make it seem large.  From a spaceship hundreds of thousands of miles away, however, our planet is just a little blue ball hanging in space.  We need to be grateful for the blessing this world is in our otherwise harsh universe.

This perspective is critical to guiding our path on the Long Ascent.

3 comments:

  1. The sad thing is that our planet is worse off now than at the time they first started celebrating this 'Earth Day'. Thus far people haven't learned that it's not eco-green ideas, solutions or all the tens of thousands of commercially marketed products that are the answer, it's people doing the right things and living the right way that create a greener earth and it's every man woman and child being on the same page with this that makes a difference. Unfortunately for the moment such a world is simply a dream which will never become reality under the present governments.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The good news is that as collapse progresses the present governments will fall too.

    The bad news is that they will probably be replaced with something worse.

    The good news is that they too will fall.

    The bad news is at that point there will be massive suffering and death.

    Eventually when the dust settles only small fiefdoms and city-states will be left.

    That's when we can truly start building that dream world. Our job for now is to make sure that vision of a greener earth survives to that point.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey, I think I saw thaqt movie with Kevin Costner as it's star - "The Postman"

    *smile*

    ReplyDelete