I’ve been rereading some books by Carl Sagan, and thoroughly enjoying everything he has ever said. To say that he was intelligent is an understatement, and in a hundred lifetimes, I will never be as accomplished and as amazing as he was.
I came across a quote of his from the book “Cosmos”, and decided I needed to share it. I hate to post and run, but this was all I had to say for now.
We have held the peculiar notion that a person or society that is a little different from us, whoever they are, is somehow strange or bizarre, to be distrusted or loathed. Think of the negative connotations of words like alien or outlandish. And yet the monuments of cultures of each of our civilizations merely represent different ways of being human.
An extraterrestrial visitor, looking at the differences among human beings and their societies, would find these differences trivial compared to the similarities.
The Cosmos may be densely populated with intelligent beings. But the Darwinian lesson is clear: There will be no humans elsewhere. Only here. Only on this small planet. We are a rare as well as an endangered species. Every one of us is, in the cosmic perspective, precious. If a human disagrees with you, let him live. In a hundred billion galaxies, you will not find another.
Really think about that for a minute. Let it sink in. In a hundred billion billion galaxies, stars, planets, and billions and trillions of years, there will never be another being (human, alien, or otherwise) just like you. Ever. EVER. That person that cut you off on the freeway today? There will never be another person like him either. Every one of us, no exceptions, is precious.