Man in His Arrogance Thinks Himself A Great Work

By: Carl Sagan (first aired September 28, 1980)

'See that star?”

"You mean that bright red one?” his daughter asks in return.

"Yes, it might not be there anymore. It might be gone by now, exploded or something. Its light is still crossing space, just reaching our eyes now. But we don't see it as it is, we see it as it was.”

Many people experience a stirring sense of wonder when they first confront this simple truth. Why? why should it be so compelling. The immense distances to the stars and the galaxies mean that we see everything in the past. Some as they were before the earth came to be. Telescopes are time machines.

Long ago, when an early galaxy began to pour light out into the surrounding darkness no witness could have known, that billions of years later, some remote clumps of rock and metal, ice and organic molecules would fall together to make a place called Earth. And surely nobody could have imagined that life would arise, and thinking beings evolve who would one day capture a fraction of that galactic light and would try to puzzle out what had sent it on its way.

We can recognize here a shortcoming, in some circumstances serious, in our ability to understand the world. Characteristically, willie-nilly we seem compelled to project our own nature onto nature. Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work worthy of the interposition of a deity. Darwin wrote telegraphically in his notebook, more humble, and I think truer to consider himself created from animals.

We're johnny-come-lately's; we live in the cosmic boondocks; we emerged from microbes in muck; Apes are our cousins; our thoughts and feelings are not fully under our own control, there may be much smarter and very different beings elsewhere, and on top of all that we're making a mess of our planet and becoming a danger to ourselves.

The trapdoor beneath our feet swings open. We find ourselves in bottomless free fall. We are lost in a great darkness and there is nobody to send out a search party. Given so harsh a reality, of course we are tempted to shut our eyes and pretend that we are safe and snug at home, that the fall is only a bad dream. If it takes a little myth and ritual to get us through a night that seems endless, who among us cannot sympathize and understand?

We long to be here for a purpose. Even though, despite much self-deception, none is evident. The significance of our lives and our fragile planet is then determined only by our own wisdom and courage. We are the custodians of life's meaning. We long for a parent to care for us, to forgive us of our errors, to save us from our childish mistakes. But knowledge is preferable to ignorance. Better, by far, to embrace the harsh truth than a reassuring fable.

Modern science has been a voyage into the unknown, with a lesson in humility waiting at every stop. Our common sense intuitions can be mistaken. Our preferences don't count. We do not live in a privileged reference frame. If we crave some cosmic purpose, then let us find ourselves a worthy goal.

A MILESTONE TO SUCCESS

By: Neil Urian Secretaria Mabulay

         (Originally written on March 30, 2016)

How do we define success? For me, success is when you reach your dreams. But right now, I may be halfway there but I still have a long way to reach it. Life has always been hard for me. I was a product of a broken family. I grew up in a desolate place, and neither of my parents supported me. But when I was a kid, I had big dreams. I always wanted to be an astronomer. Every night I used to stare at the night sky wondering about my future. Back then, I thought going to college was impossible. But impossible as it may seem, I was able to graduate college and got a degree in Aerospace Engineering.

Studying was a struggle for me, but it was a challenge conquered. Life became a little easier after that. I got a decent job and I was able to send my younger brother to school. Back then I thought that my life would always be like that. During that time, I was content. I didn’t have a high salary but it was enough for me. Then an opportunity came at my doorstep. I heard about a job that can change a person’s life. Maybe I’m just exaggerating but that’s how I describe it. So I took a shot at it and took the exam.

The entrance exam alone was hard. There were more than 5,000 examinees all over the country and they will only get 100 people. After the exam I never thought that I could pass, but luckily, I was able to pass and joined the training. The result was unexpected, so I immediately took a plane ticket to Manila. I knew it was a start of a new beginning and I had my hopes up. But little did I know that the training itself was way harder than the entrance exam. It was harder than anyone could ever imagine. It was, I think, the hardest one I had. I could still remember the first day, on one side of the room were highly intelligent people, and on the other side were sons and daughters of influential people. Then there was me; I was the weakest of them all. But I didn’t flinch. My reason to go on was bigger than my reason to back out. As a guy who used to live in the streets, I had nothing to lose. I needed the job more than anyone in that room.

The training lasted for ten months. It was the longest ten months of my life. As days went by, people were kicked out one by one - from a hundred, down to forty, from forty down to thirty, and from thirty, down to twenty-four. There were times that I was terrified but I kept telling myself that I can do it and that I have a higher sense of purpose than of those who were kicked out. There were days that I doubted myself, but I knew I had to fight those devils in my head. Ten months finally passed and I managed to finish the training. I did it.

I’m not sure if it was luck that made me survive the training or it was something else. Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t. All I know is, I learned a lot from it. In all the challenges that I faced in my life, I learned a lot from them. It was all worth it.

Right now, I still can’t consider myself as successful. There’s still a lot of things that I need to learn but I know I’m halfway there and it’s only a matter of time. I think, the most important thing that a person should have in order to succeed is “composure and perseverance”. These two words animate your spirit to fight. Whenever I want something, I strive. “Come what may” has always been my line. I don’t know why I have these but I’m glad I do. Challenges may break you, either emotionally, mentally, or physically. People may break your heart, your mind, or your body. But never let them break your spirit, because it’s what you need to succeed.

5 Simple Rules of Science

The final episode of "Cosmos: A Spacetime Oddyssey" has left us with a very important lesson. Thank you Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson for the amazing and powerful speech that underscores the very pillars of Science. As an engineer and aspiring scientist myself, I want to teach my children how science and human ingenuity can practically solve any problem there is to stumble upon.

5 SIMPLE RULES OF SCIENCE:

By: Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist / director of Hayden Planetarium

(Courtesy of Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey)

How did we, tiny creatures living on that speck of dust, ever manage to figure out how to send spacecraft out among the stars of the milky way?

Only a few centuries ago, a mere second in cosmic time, we knew nothing of where or when we were. Oblivious to the rest of the cosmos, we inhabited a kind of prison, a tiny universe bounded by a nutshell.

How did we escape from the prison? It was the work of generations of searchers who took five simple rules to heart.

(1) Question authority. No idea is true just because someone says so, including me.

(2) Think for yourself. Question yourself. Don't believe anything just because you want to. Believing something doesn't make it so.

(3) Test ideas by the evidence gained from observation and experiment. If a favorite idea fails a well-designed test, it's wrong. Get over it.

(4) Follow the evidence wherever it leads. If you have no evidence, reserve judgment.

And perhaps the most important rule of all...

(5) Remember: you could be wrong. Even the best scientists have been wrong about some things. Newton, Einstein, and every other great scientist in history -- they all made mistakes. Of course they did. They were humans.

Science is a way to keep from fooling ourselves, and each others.

Just a Healthy Reminder

Disclaimer: Photo not mine. I just found it on the internet.

I just want to remind everyone that in the evening when you look at the stars, you are actually looking back in time. The farthest stars that you see in the night sky are the stars that you may have seen long ago. But since light travels at a finite speed and cosmic distances are so vast that light takes a long time to reach us, thats why you only see them now.

Sounds pretty cool right?
So everytime you wish upon a star, you are actually a few million years late. The star might be dead, just like your wish.

INSANE DRAWING

By: Neil Urian Secretaria Mabulay

        (Originally written on November 27, 2011)


"My pencil suddenly fell on the floor as my eyes were blinded by the rays of sunlight. It was when I realized that the time was running out. The clock continued to tick and the time continued to run. I made a series of sharp picking up the pencil under my seat. I swiped my hand on the paper without looking. I never knew what I had exactly drawn but I’m very sure it was a curve. The bell rang and I passed my paper with a quivering heart."

February the 20th 1991, I was born in the hospital near our village. My father was a driver and my mother was an accounting clerk. Since I was young, my parents knew that I have an eye for art so they brought me to a painting school. Like my mentor, I am also left handed. I was six years old when I won my first painting contest. That was the first time that I joined a competition and I won a gold medal. It was an immense victory knowing that my opponents were graders.

Now I am here in a painting contest, sitting inattentively and having no idea what to draw. I looked at the other contestants and they were busy rubbing their papers with a wet brush. I placed my right hand under my cheek and took a deep sigh. The clock continued to tick and the time continued to run. At that moment I knew that I had no chance of winning. I nearly lost my hope but I never gave up. I transferred on the next seat near the window, I tried to think several times but still I have no idea what to draw.

My pencil suddenly fell on the floor as my eyes were blinded by the rays of sunlight. It was when I realized that the time was running out. The clock continued to tick and the time continued to run. I made a series of sharp picking up the pencil under my seat. I swiped my hand on the paper without looking. I never knew what I had exactly drawn but I’m very sure it was a curve. The bell rang and I passed my paper with a quivering heart.

I felt a deep shame when I noticed that the judges were tittering at my work. I felt a strange feeling towards myself for being that careless. Everyone was silent when I went downstairs with teary eyes. But as I took the last step, I suddenly heard a loud voice saying that the entry number–seven is excellent and the crowd began to clap. I was stunned of what I heard knowing that the entry was mine. I ran upstairs with embarrassment. I asked the judges why it was excellent and they answered me, “We measured it thoroughly and proved it. What you have drawn is a perfect circle! It is excellent because no one can ever draw a perfect circle in freehand; but you did it as if it was very easy for you. This is a phenomenon and therefore you are amazing.”

I took my insane drawing and saw it. I faced the crowd with humbleness and said; “Ladies and gentlemen, this circle was insanely and accidentally drawn. Honestly, I had no idea what to draw until I ran out of time. But I would rather lose than to give up. My optimism brought me this victory. I never neglected any trivial possibility of winning; because there might be a lot of difficult things in this world. But nothing is impossible.” That day, I learned a lesson.