I'm Right...You're Wrong

So, this is nothing new. In fact, I believe its been going on longer than we could ever imagine. What is that you ask? It’s a war of ideas and beliefs. For reasons I feel incapable of explaining, humans have always seemed to have this propensity to disagree, dig in their heels and insist that their particular ideas about a wide-ranging number of things are absolutely correct, the only truth and beyond questioning. Truthfully, this is so mysterious to me. Where does this come from?

This shows up most often in religion, politics and cultural preferences. What is most intriguing and sad is the vicious and forceful manner in which it has occurred throughout our history. Lives destroyed, murders committed, people enslaved or isolated all in the name of ideas or beliefs that were different. More often than not this has been all based in someone’s belief that they were right and the other person or group was wrong. The ensuing carnage and destruction has been mind-boggling. Strangely, this ugly reality persists from age to age with the beliefs and ideas changing and morphing but the certainty and zealous attitudes of various individuals or groups raging on and on; leading to yet more death, isolation and destruction.

Here are just few examples from history to illustrate; truth be known there are millions that could be cited.

Take for instance the story of Giordano Bruno. Bruno was Italian philosopher who lived from 1548 to 1600. He questioned the belief that the earth was the center of the universe as well as other concepts commonly held at the time and was burned at the stake as a result. You can read his story here:

http://www.biographybase.com/biography/Bruno_Giordano.html

Another story close to my heart is arrival of the Conquistadores in Peru. In 1533, Atahuallpa, the last Incan Emperor was killed by strangulation by Pizzaro. His crime, he wouldn’t convert to Christianity.

You can read his story here:

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/pizarro-executes-last-inca-emperor

Then there was this guy, Adolf Hitler, who believed in a superior race and was a vicious anti-Semite. He believed that it was his calling to purge the earth of all who were not Aryans.

You can read his story here:

https://www.history.com/topics/world-war-ii/adolf-hitler

We can’t leave out the American story of Dr. Martin Luther King. His crime? Impassioned speeches and non-violent protests in the name of equality for all. He died by assassination.

You can read his story here:

https://www.history.com/topics/black-history/martin-luther-king-jr-assassination

Though these appear to be a somewhat random selection of stories, so is the nature of the issue I am putting in front of you. That adds yet another layer of depravity to this human failure. We are far too certain of ourselves at times. Far too confident in our beliefs. So unwilling to consider other ideas, beliefs or practices that differ from ours.

What I believe is desperately needed more than anything by each of us is more humility. A humbleness that recognizes our smallness, limitations and fleeting existence. Unfortunately, some equate humbleness with being weak, I would argue quite the contrary. One of the best discussions I have heard on humility comes from the late astronomer, Carl Sagan.

Carl Sagan had a way of bringing things into perspective. In discussing the metamorphosis of us believing the earth was the center of the universe, he artfully dissects our millennia of philosophical debate. First, we had to accept that we were not the center of the universe, that the Sun was. Then we had to swallow the further revelation that the Sun was but “one lonely star in a great self-gravitating assemblage of suns called the milky way galaxy. Far from being at center of the galaxy, our Sun with its entourage of dim and tiny planets lies in an undistinguished sector of an obscure spiral arm, thirty thousand light years from the center”. The argument then moved to declaring ourselves the only galaxy, only to learn that the milky way galaxy is in fact just one of billions, perhaps hundreds of billions of galaxies.

He often described us as a pale blue dot suspended in a sunbeam. I leave you this week with a direct transcription of what Carl had to say about life on this pale blue dot. My wish for us all is to be kinder to each other, more humble and truly appreciative of what a miraculous thing it is to live here on this planet.

“Consider again 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, 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, 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. The earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so in glory and triumph they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot. Think of the endless cruelties inflicted by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel, on scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner. How frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another. How fervent their hatreds. Our posturing’s, our imagined self-importance, the illusion that we have some privileged position in the universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in great enveloping cosmic dock. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves. The earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is no where else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes… settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment, the earth is where we make our stand. It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another and to preserve and cherish, the pale blue dot, the only home we have ever known.”