In The 1970s, I Think That There

In The 1970s, I Think That There Was Probably A Higher Degree Of Respect For Science, Of Hope About The Future, And The Future-oriented Vision.

It Is A Great Tragedy That Science, This Wonderful Process For Finding Out What Is True, Has Ceded The Spiritual Uplift Of Its Central Revelations: The Vastness Of The Universe, The Immensity Of Time, The Relatedness Of All Life, And Life's Preciousness On Our Tiny Planet.

Carl Did Not Want To Believe. He Wanted To Know.

I Remember That One Time Carl Sagan Was Giving A Talk, And He Spelled Out, In A Kind Of Withering Succession, These Great Theories Of Demotion That Science Has Dealt Us, All Of The Ways In Which Science Is Telling Us We Are Not Who We Would Like To Believe We Are. At The End Of It, A Young Man Came Up To Him And He Said: "what Do You Give Us In Return? Now That You've Taken Everything From Us? What Meaning Is Left, If Everything That I've Been Taught Since I Was A Child Turns Out To Be Untrue?" Carl Looked At Him And Said, Do Something Meaningful.

Ten Long Trips Around The Sun Since I Last Saw That Smile, But Only Joy And Thankfulness That On A Tiny World In The Vastness, For A Couple Of Moments In The Immensity Of Time, We Were One.