This morning I woke to the first images from the Artemis II lunar flyby. The Moon fills the frame, ancient and cratered, and Earth, just a sliver of blue light peeking over the horizon. I’ve been moved by this mission from before launch. Tears, more than once.
It’s staggering to think we did this over 50 years ago, at the dawn of the computer age. The phone in my pocket has more processing power than anything that existed in the 1960s, and yet we strapped people to controlled explosions, aimed them at a rock 240,000 miles away, let gravity do its thing, and brought them all home. And now we’re back, with our eyes on something even further.
Then I turned the corner and read the worst thing I’ve ever seen come from an American president. Or perhaps anyone.
This is the same species. The same moment in history. The people who built the Orion capsule and the people cheering that post are all living on that pale blue sliver in the photograph. And we have to choose what we are.
Which path are we on? Are we reaching outward toward understanding, toward our fellow human beings, toward something larger than ourselves? Or are we contracting toward cruelty, toward power hoarded by a few, toward the erasure of people we’ve decided don’t matter?
We are momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. What we do with it is the only question that has ever mattered.
So: If you’ve never heard Carl Sagan read this, listen now. It may be the most pertinent short speech ever written.
If you'd like these field notes and more by email, subscribe to my newsletter. Free.
