Alright, this post isn’t about photography. Hopefully, that’s not a problem for you. I think this post is about something far more important; thinking about what’s possible. I mean sure, you can apply this to photography if you want I guess. It isn’t really limited.
Over the past couple weeks, the news has been centered (among other things) the Artemis II mission. If you happen to have heard zero about it, we went back to the moon. Well, we did a fly by. This mission was mostly a shakedown, but we successfully orbited 4 humans around our moon. They broke the Apollo record for distance and speed, and a couple other records I think. That got me thinking and remembering my childhood.
I grew up in the 80’s, square in the middle of the shuttle missions. I was born well after the Apollo missions (though now I feel old since they ended in ’72 and I was born in ’79. The first shuttle launch was when I was almost two in 1981. I wanted so much to go to space camp, but unfortunately my parents couldn’t afford it. I had a model of the shuttle. I fell in love with Star Trek TNG ( I don’t hate the original series, just never could get into it. Sure, there are episodes I like, but I digress….). My entire childhood was science everything. I love learning, I love discovering, I love asking “what if?”. I read about countries coming together to do research in space. We built the ISS…we humans BUILT A FREAKING SPACE STATION! We have walked on the moon. We have (had) robots on mars and probes on other planets. Recently, we found out that we were able to knock an asteroid off its orbit. We’ve collected samples from an asteroid. My point is, we are capable of absolutely amazing accomplishments.
That got me thinking, all those amazing accomplishments were done by a group of nerds (no offense, I’m one too) that all love science more than pretty much anything. Sure, we needed to convince the politicians that we needed to do it and to give the money. I am also not so naive to the fact that the moon missions were really just in fear of the Russians getting there first and putting weapons on it. The fact still remains that we did it. The science and technology that was created over the course of the Gemini and Apollo missions, and the strides we mad with the shuttle missions have driven technologies we use in every day life. And we did all of that on a small fraction of a penny of your taxes. A fraction that has been steadily shrinking for decades.
I wonder what we as a society could accomplish if we were able to set aside some of our differences and work together for the common good of society and humanity? One of the ideals that I love in Star Trek is the idea that we as a society have gotten to the point that we work to make the world and ourselves better, not financially, but better as a person. I know we all have different ideas on how to accomplish things. That’s fine, we need differences, it’s what makes us stronger. Diversity is a good thing, and not some boogeyman to fear. I think of this quote from Carl Sagan and this image frequently:
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.
Image:
THE PALE BLUE DOT OF EARTH “That’s here. That’s Home. That’s us.”Image: NASA / JPL
One day, I hope that we realize how small and insignificant we actually are in the grand scheme of things. We have one planet right now. We all need to share it somehow, and that means we need to actually work together for the greater good, not for ourselves. Right now, things look pretty bleak. There is a lot of negative going on in the world right now, and only we have the power to stop it. No one else is going to come save us.
So, go out today and try to make things better. Just small actions help. Just be nice, just offer a hand, just work to make the world a tiny bit better. If we can get 8 billion people to all make small, seemingly insignificant gestures of kindness and cooperation, just think of what we can accomplish.