ON FEBRUARY 14, 1990, at a distance of billions of miles from the Sun, NASA’s Voyager 1 took a photo of what looks like a tiny bluish speck in the middle of a single ray of light. That tiny dust-like particle is Earth, and the photo was named the “Pale Blue Dot.”
Voyager 1 has a twin, conveniently called Voyager 2, and both spacecraft were launched by NASA in 1977, which fell perfectly within the window of a “once-in-a-lifetime” planetary alignment.
45 years and counting, the Voyager Program holds the record for the longest running NASA mission. Much to the amazement of scientists, both spacecraft are still traveling at incredible speeds and continue to send data back to us from great distances.
Installed in each Voyager was a Golden Record of humanity and the natural environment. In the creation of this Golden Record, a committee led by astrophysicist Carl Sagan selected images representing life on Earth, a variety of audio and musical recordings, and spoken greetings from different cultures—all of which were encrypted in each record. As I am a historian, the thoughts that pieces of humanity’s past and our diverse identities are currently flying through interstellar space, and that they were saved in records intended to last for billions of years, definitely stirred my interest and curiosity.
The photo of the “Pale Blue Dot” depicted the planet Earth, our home, as a tiny, floating speck in the vast and expanding universe. Reflecting on that lonely photo, I could not stop myself from making references to that tiny speck of dust on a clover in the well-known children’s book “Horton Hears a Who!” by Dr. Seuss.
In the jungle of Nool, a gentle elephant named Horton heard a faint cry of help from a tiny, floating speck of dust, and on that speck was the bustling town of Who-ville. Horton befriended the town’s mayor and made a solemn promise to protect the Whos from harm because, “after all, a person’s a person, no matter how small.”
The other animals of the jungle strongly doubted Horton’s claims that people were actually living on that speck. They even went as far as caging poor Horton and preparing piping-hot beezle-nut oil to boil the speck in!
Horton encouraged the Whos to cry out louder, so that the other animals will finally believe that they actually exist—that they too matter. “We are here! We are here! We are here!” The Whos desperately cried out from that speck until they were finally heard. “They’ve proved they are persons, no matter how small,” Horton said.
From an insignificant pale blue dot suspended in space to just a tiny speck of dust floating in the jungle of Nool, these unconventional views of humanity and our world compels us to reconsider the countless instances in the past (and arguably in the present) when we have let hubris, injustice, and senseless wars, destroy the lives of innocent people.
No matter how strong they cry out “We are here! We are here! We are here!” their desperate pleas were always drowned out by selfish desires for power—and for what? For control over just a miniscule part of that tiny pale blue speck of dust?
I quote Sagan, “Think of the rivers of blood spilled by all those generals and emperors so that, in glory and triumph, they could become the momentary masters of a fraction of a dot.”
As a historian, I am haunted by these narratives of violence, destruction, and death. I find it very troubling that cries for help continue to be heard in our country and other countries around the world. History already presents to us the numbers and the facts. But, what astounds me are the blatant attempts to distort and whitewash the bloodstained pages of our past for a misleading present and a rose-tinted yet untrue view of the future.
More often than not, we have decided to ignore the recurring calls for justice and truth-telling. Or, just like the proud yet ignorant animals from the jungle of Nool, we dismiss those who hear and respond to those calls as fools.
I guess the silver lining in this personal reflection is that fortunately the Golden Records do not have any information on our wars, hatred, and greed. Because if they were included in the Golden Records, and let’s say (hypothetically) an advanced spacefaring civilization intercepts them, I’d be very ashamed to say that I am from that pale blue dot.
Bianca Angelien Aban Claveria is an instructor at the Ateneo de Manila University’s History Department. Claveria is also an Editorial Assistant for Philippine Studies: Historical and Ethnographic Viewpoints.
