Don’t you want to know what you are?
Don’t you wonder about that?
What’s inside of me? And what’s beyond the knowable universe? Don’t you want to know how we began to understand all the amazing stuff we know?
Cosmos is a book with powerful, selfless intentions to bond humanity together by providing truth, wisdom and inspiring a new way of thinking.
Having read the book along with watching Cosmos the television series I’ve realized what an immensely important work this is. As Neil De Grass Tyson proclaims, it’s an “opus of Carl Sagan’s life, work and knowledge.”
Nearly 40 years old and yet it still rings profoundly true. The information feels somehow fresh and timeless. Then again, 40 years on the cosmic calendar is as brief as a blink.
Carl compiled and shared his building blocks and foundational steps of understanding the Cosmos, the layers of ideas that led to his own understandings to what we know today and what we’re still searching to understand.
It’s truth — and with that comes hard discomforting realities. But Carl is never too harsh, a heart and skill of an empathetic poet, he communicates with great respect for life and is always full of optimism for humanity — stressing the value of being skeptical, and caution of being cynical. And there’s just something about the sound of his voice, it’s just so damn dreamy.
Each episode of Cosmos begins and ends with the futuristic retro space-age theme song Heaven & Hell by Vangelis — after a few episodes in, it had me wiggling my perched feet on the ottoman with giddiness. It was a special time on my couch, attention full at the television as I embarked in a new chapter to uncover another trove of scientific gold. It was a challenge to my understandings, an abandonment of superstitions, ignorance — my mind flowered to new and what were previously vaguely understood concepts. It was as if climbing aboard a rocket ship of scientific knowledge. The Cosmos is a personal journey into discovering what we all are as human beings. And I’m finding I share this with many other fans.
If you haven’t already started on this Cosmic journey, it will change the way you think. Making you wonder deeper about the reality of life and our place in the universe.
It’s full of big ideas that make you feel a little smaller. This earth for starters — if feels like quite a grandiose place — overwhelming at times, but from the edge of our solar system, it’s merely a small dot. From there, that solar system, our tiny cosmic neighborhood is again a small collection of planets, among billions of other star systems in our Milky Way galaxy. And furthermore, our galaxy billions and billions of stars strong is a spiraling cluster expanding away from billions and billions of other galaxies in a perhaps infinitely colossal, cosmic territory. This is what is going on out there, folks. It’s what we know.
Take a look and zoom around on this pic.
We humans haven’t been around long. Our Earth, our home, is 4.5 billion years old. With the right mix of cosmic gas and dust and being the right distance from the heat of our sun, evolution of what we call life began. I sure am summarizing but.. single celled organisms. Fish with lungs that could move on land. Yadda yadda yadda. Plants had made the atmosphere ready to breathe. Chimps. Blockhead men who could walk upright. And then us, with our five fingers and two hands and two eyes, some are using these attributes to build an International space station while a heaping amount use them to for Instagram scrolling.
Overtime we developed new layers on our brains. The mighty and powerful crown of the cerebral cortex gives us intellectual thought and the ability to store information outside our bodies, but it’s clear we’re still struggling with the old reptilian layer, the one that thinks up fear and violence. We have evolved from this wonderful cosmos and slowly became aware, a way for whatever this thing we are in, to know itself. To start unraveling the discoveries and mysteries of who and what we really are. While there isn’t much evidence for a golden place we all go to after death, there is a glorious reason for optimism and purpose. And plenty of motivation for showing our fellow humans our profound strength of love.
As for God, (the one all those Catholic people kept telling me about) well the reality is there doesn’t seem to be much credible evidence around the idea of a man sitting in the sky with a great white beard. Or perhaps any of the other Gods cultures have confidently dreamed up. But if we use some sharper language and maybe a different idea, a more modern construction of what god could be, there’s still something to be awed and adored. The nature of what drives the Cosmos. It’s fundamental laws of physics. Something of its existence is to be amazed by. Something, the force propelling it, it is divinely majestic, heavenly, and god willingly awesome.
II.
To me, the biggest problems or challenges of our life time seem to be avoiding destroying ourselves. Be it either our own technological advancements or our inability to sustain our earth. The other is to evolve to a new consciousness where we unify and treat life and each other with absolute kindness. The best I can do for either of these at the given moment, seems to be type about it.
Creating a sustainable planet, a safe home. And uniting as one global population. Respecting our home and each other. Those to me are the most important human challenges of our time. They are key for the future of all human survival and life on earth. One has to do with energy and food and the other has to do with understanding kindness and love. And just some new ways to all get along. We can totally figure out both.
Climate change is real. And 40 years ago Cosmos was ringing the alarm that was sounding within the scientific community, educating the public that this was a matter of urgent attention and action. Sea levels are rising on up. And with our earth getting warmer, we could end up like Venus. Hot gassy and hellish. Or a barren land with nowhere to breathe like Mars. Of course, our sun is inevitably expanding and will engulf the earth in a few billion years anyway. But if we want to keep this home for as long as we can, we need to take care of it. And in the meantime we should also find a way to fling this rock into a wider orbit or we’ve eventually got to start planet hopping.
I live in a big city. There’s so much stuff happening. Traffic, planes, buildings, lights, noise, girls. I think it’s fun to imagine a time where there was nothing but trees, mountains, earth-made stuff. When you looked up at the sky you could see tons of stars, and the moon. It must’ve been like a form of entertainment. Looking up at those sparkly diamonds, trying to make sense of them. Trying to figure out the moon, “what the heck is that thing? What is it doing up there? Can you eat it?” Or seeing the sun, that great light in the sky. And having the incorrect thought of thinking the sun and moon revolves around us. Of course you would think that, why wouldn’t you? It’s interesting to think about how absurd something like that sounds, but then again I grew up and still am surrounded by people who teach things that are scientifically and absolutely false. People who choose to spread messages of what makes us feel special and important regardless of the truth. We’re still learning. We are on our own. In a vast dark void. Insignificant bits of dust. It’s a little terrifying but it’s all somehow comprehensible and I find that all absolutely fascinating.
III.
Religion is interesting. And I’m so fortunate that I was raised in a family and upbringing that valued morals. For the most part, Catholicism today is a religion that teaches respect, values and cherishes the virtue of love and human kindness. But as with many religions it fails to educate, acknowledge or popularize many objective truths. Science has come along way since the Bible. We know more. With so many religions and so many countries. The one thing that can unite our humanity in this time of need is a scientific way of thought. Proven through our relatively short existence science always keeps searching for the truth, for answers and keeps moving us forward.
In my life, I had one astronomy class. I almost feel deprived of the truth. The basic requirement of school clearly wasn’t enough to satisfy my deep curiosities. I’ve never looked through a real telescope. Shot signals from a radio telescope. Seen a rocket launch. But I still dream of working at JPL or Blue Origin. Diving into Cosmos has felt like a new beginning of personal education, a reawakening to understand.
We’re all humans. Every one of us. We’re all capable of science and kindness, isn’t that remarkable? We’re all capable of wonderful things. Like laughter and spreading joy. Look at this world. Look at the other things living around us. Our relatives are all around us. Chimps, whales, plants and trees. It’s all life. It’s all fauna of this earth, a micro orb floating along in a great galactic space.
Look out there. Look at all the stars. Think about all the planets. The odds of life are good. But it probably wouldn’t look like us. Because we developed under these particular earth-specific evolutionary circumstances. But with billions and billions of galaxies. Each with billions and billions of stars and solar systems like our own. That’d be a good bet to take.
We’re searching. We’re sending out satellites on missions and creative messages to some other form of life out there. But what do we want to share with our cosmic cousins? What do we want to tell them about earth? Our idiotic advertisements, our blood-laden news stories, do you think they’d enjoy our porn? A taste from Burger King. When you think about how distasteful the majority of our media and entertainment is, I’d feel a bit ashamed to present at the cosmic show and tell. But in the same token, we have done some amazing and wondrous things. There are many worth noting. And many of which are on The Golden Record which Carl and his wife Ann worked together to send soaring out into the Cosmos along with Voyager 1 & 2. I also wonder what someone will think when they discover that flying red Tesla.
Humanity needs to get it together. We’ve got to unite. And engineer our survival. We have to trust science and rational reason to move us along. We must use our hearts and minds.
This book, this tv series — it gives me so much to wrap my head around.
What’s fun is how it changes my way of thinking. Opens my mind. And gives me a powerful mental image of what the reality of our universe is, beaming my inspiration and thoughts to imagine the unknown. What is our universe? Is it one of many? Does it expand and collapse like a cycle? Is it like an expanding bubble? Time and science will tell. But we need more people to talk about science, learn about science, and actually do the science.
Carl also talks about the ancient libraries, the lost wisdom of intelligent cultures who embraced science. He expresses a sense of longing for what the world could be like if we continued to focus our monetary efforts and intelligence on science rather than military and destructive forces… in a lifetime you only have so much time, and with all the books written you only have time to read so few, but this is definitely one you should prioritize on your reading list.
IV.
And here’s Carl. His words from the book Pale Blue Dot. Inspired by the original photograph below taken by Voyager 1 approximately 4 billion miles away from Earth. You can see home from here, it’s a spec, less than a teenie pixel — but it’s all of us.
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.
-- Carl Sagan, Pale Blue Dot, 1994
Copyright © 1994 by Carl Sagan, Copyright © 2006 by Democritus Properties, LLC.
All rights reserved including the rights of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.
And if you want to hear him say it, with his golden caramel buttery voice and eloquent cadence. Listen to the soliloquy here.
Watch the original series for free: Cosmos Series
Buy Cosmos on Audible & book here.