Putting things in perspective
Fostering Ecological Hope
Today from Margaret Swedish:
I just want to put things in perspective. It’s easy to focus on the bad news and lose the sense of the greater beauty and magnificence of which we are a part. Many cosmologists, evolutionary biologists, paleontologists, etc. will tell you that our essential role in evolution is to be the universe becoming conscious of itself. While we cannot pretend to know what is going on way ‘out there,’ at least what we know as of now is that we are the only beings able to do this –
Hubble Space Telescope - October 2008
to be aware, to know, to be able to say to one another that there is a universe — and that it is beautiful!
Our role is to gaze out on that universe and say, Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!! We are meant to be stricken with beauty. We are intended for the experience of awe.
I was gleeful today to hear that the malfunction that caused the Hubble Space Telescope to cease sending pictures for weeks has been temporarily resolved. And so this photo, placed, I imagine, with no small amount of glee on the Hubble website.
If we could only understand how precious this gift of consciousness, of awareness. If we could only begin to appreciate how we have cheapened that gift with the banality of that to which we give our attention, the emptiness, the pettiness of so much of our lives.
So tonight, with great joy and a consciousness trembling with delight and awe, I share this photo.
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Photo from Hubble Space Telescope website.
November 11th, 2008 at 7:52 am
Dear Margaret,
This thread provides all of us with a wonderfully timely and perspicacious perspective. Thanks for all you are doing to protect biodiversity from mass extinction, to preserve Earth’s body from wanton dissipation, to halt relentless degradation of the environment and, with a bit of luck and a great deal of work, to save the family of humanity from reckless endangerment as well as to spare the human species from an even worse threat.
Make no mistake, the SEH Blog is making a positive difference. Even though the ‘talking heads’ in the mainstream media, the ones who are owned by economic powerbrokers and their bought-and-paid-for politicians, wish all of us would go away, we need to keep going.
Sincerely yours,
Steve
Steven Earl Salmony
AWAREness Campaign on The Human Population,
established 2001
http://sustainabilityscience.org/content.html?contentid=1176
November 15th, 2008 at 5:51 am
As the Earth is being ravaged and its wealth commandeered by a few greedy people, it is ironic that additional billions of dollars in bailouts and year-end bonuses are being directed to the “wonder boys” on Wall Street. These self-proclaimed Masters of the Universe have turned a great capitalist system into a paltry gambling casino. In the light of all their avaricious risk-taking and conspicuous hoarding behavior, they can no longer be called by any name other than “thieves of the highest order”.