- 1 day ago
Category
😹
FunTranscript
00:00:00Satsang with Mooji
00:00:30I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day
00:00:51that I have set before thee life and death,
00:00:56the blessing and the curse.
00:00:58Therefore, choose life that thou mayest live, thou and thy seed.
00:01:19Nearly 200 years ago, in the Gulf of Alaska,
00:01:22at a place called Lituya Bay,
00:01:24two cultures that had never met, experienced a first encounter.
00:01:30The Tlingit people lived more or less as their ancestors had for thousands of years.
00:01:35They were nomads, moving often by canoe between numerous campsites,
00:01:39where they caught the plentiful fish and sea otters
00:01:42and traded with neighboring tribes.
00:01:44The creator they worshipped was the raven god,
00:01:56whom they pictured as an enormous black bird with white wings.
00:02:00And one July day in 1786, the raven god appeared.
00:02:04The Tlingit were terrified.
00:02:10They knew that anyone looking directly at the god would be turned to stone.
00:02:14From the other side of the planet had come an expedition
00:02:25led by the French explorer La Perouse.
00:02:29It was, in fact, the most elaborately planned scientific voyage
00:02:32of the 18th century, sent around the world
00:02:36to gather knowledge about the geography, natural history,
00:02:39and peoples of distant lands.
00:02:45But to the Tlingit, whose world was confined
00:02:49to the islands and inlets of southern Alaska,
00:02:52this great vessel could have come only from the gods.
00:03:01There was one among them who dared to look more deeply.
00:03:05He was an old warrior and nearly blind.
00:03:09He said that his life was almost over.
00:03:12For the common good, he would approach the raven
00:03:14to learn whether the god really would turn his people to stone.
00:03:19He set out on his own voyage of discovery
00:03:37to confront the end of the world.
00:03:40andGuide vaccine.
00:03:42for the old boycznie is martyred in theès
00:03:43and was the ace-toid Hmonges,
00:03:44because of many of those people circulating
00:03:48of the bear.
00:03:49And I'd like to see them ignore that even more of you do.
00:03:50¶¶
00:04:20¶¶
00:04:49The old man made himself look hard at the raven
00:04:52and saw that it was not a great bird from the sky,
00:04:56but the work of men like himself.
00:05:03This first encounter turned out to be peaceful.
00:05:07The men of the La Perouse expedition were under strict orders
00:05:10to treat with respect any people they might discover,
00:05:14an exceptional policy for its time and after.
00:05:18La Perouse and the Tlingit exchanged goods,
00:05:21and then the strange ship sailed away, never to return.
00:05:24Not all encounters between nations had been so peaceful.
00:05:32Before 1519, the Aztecs of Mexico had never seen a gun,
00:05:37and they too believed at first
00:05:38that their strange visitors had come from the sky.
00:05:41The Spaniards under Cortes
00:05:57were not constrained by any injunctions against violence.
00:06:01Their true nature and intentions soon became clear.
00:06:04Unlike the La Perouse expedition,
00:06:22the conquistadores sought not knowledge, but gold.
00:06:26They used their superior weapons to loot and murder.
00:06:30In their madness, they obliterated a civilization.
00:06:42In the name of piety,
00:06:44in a mockery of their religion,
00:06:47the Spaniards utterly destroyed society
00:06:49with an art, astronomy, and architecture
00:06:52equal of anything in Europe.
00:06:57We revile the conquistadores
00:06:59for their cruelty and short-sightedness,
00:07:02for choosing death.
00:07:04We admire La Perouse and the Tlingit
00:07:06for their courage and wisdom,
00:07:08for choosing life.
00:07:10The choice is with us still,
00:07:13but the civilization now in jeopardy
00:07:15is all humanity.
00:07:19As the ancient myth-makers knew,
00:07:22we're children equally of the earth and the sky.
00:07:25In our tenure on this planet,
00:07:27we've accumulated dangerous evolutionary baggage,
00:07:31propensities for aggression and ritual,
00:07:34submission to leaders,
00:07:35hostility to outsiders,
00:07:37all of which puts our survival in some doubt.
00:07:41We've also acquired compassion for others,
00:07:44love for our children,
00:07:45a desire to learn from history and experience,
00:07:48and a great, soaring, passionate intelligence,
00:07:52the clear tools for our continued survival
00:07:55and prosperity.
00:08:01Which aspects of our nature will prevail
00:08:04is uncertain,
00:08:06particularly when our visions and prospects
00:08:09are bound to one small part
00:08:12of the small planet Earth.
00:08:14But up there in the cosmos,
00:08:16an inescapable perspective awaits.
00:08:20National boundaries are not evident
00:08:21when we view the Earth from space.
00:08:24Fanatic ethnic or religious
00:08:25or national identifications
00:08:27are a little difficult to support
00:08:29when we see our planet
00:08:30as a fragile blue crescent,
00:08:33fading to become an inconspicuous point of light
00:08:36against the bastion and citadel of the stars.
00:08:41There are not yet obvious signs
00:08:43of extraterrestrial intelligence,
00:08:45and this makes us wonder
00:08:46whether civilizations like ours
00:08:48rush inevitably headlong to self-destruction.
00:08:52I dream about it,
00:08:54and sometimes they're bad dreams.
00:08:57In the vision of a dream,
00:09:12I once imagined myself
00:09:14searching for other civilizations
00:09:16in the cosmos.
00:09:18Among a hundred billion galaxies
00:09:20and a billion trillion stars,
00:09:23life and intelligence
00:09:24should have arisen on many worlds.
00:09:27Some worlds are barren and desolate.
00:09:33On them, life never began
00:09:35or may have been extinguished
00:09:37in some cosmic catastrophe.
00:09:40There may be worlds rich in life,
00:09:42but not yet evolved to intelligence
00:09:44and high technology.
00:09:47There may be civilizations
00:09:48that achieve technology
00:09:50and then promptly use it
00:09:52to destroy themselves.
00:09:53And perhaps there are also beings
00:09:57who learn to live with their technology
00:09:59and themselves,
00:10:01beings who endure
00:10:02and become citizens of the cosmos.
00:10:05Immersed in these thoughts,
00:10:21I found myself approaching a world
00:10:23that was clearly inhabited,
00:10:24a world I had visited before.
00:10:27I saw a planet encompassed by light
00:10:30and recognized the signature of intelligence.
00:10:34But suddenly,
00:10:41darkness,
00:10:43total
00:10:43and absolute.
00:10:45And absolute.
00:10:45In my dream,
00:10:58I could read
00:10:59the Book of Worlds,
00:11:01a vast encyclopedia
00:11:03of a billion planets
00:11:04within the Milky Way.
00:11:05What could the galactic computer
00:11:25tell me
00:11:26about this
00:11:27now darkened world?
00:11:29They must have survived
00:11:41some earlier catastrophe.
00:11:46Locally initiated contact,
00:11:50maybe their television broadcasts.
00:11:53Their biology was different from ours.
00:11:57High technology.
00:12:02I wondered what those lights
00:12:03had been for.
00:12:07There must have been signs
00:12:09they were in trouble.
00:12:10Probability of survival in a century,
00:12:13less than 1%.
00:12:14Not very good odds.
00:12:18Communications interrupted.
00:12:21Their world society had failed.
00:12:24They had made the ultimate mistake.
00:12:27I felt a longing
00:12:30to return to Earth.
00:12:33The television transmissions of Earth
00:12:36rushed past me,
00:12:37expanding away from our planet
00:12:39at the speed of light.
00:12:40The nuclear test ban treaty
00:12:54was signed to me.
00:12:55Something has happened
00:12:56in the motorcade route.
00:12:57Stand by, please.
00:12:58$64,000.
00:13:01What's this bombing of Hanoi
00:13:02was designed to cripple
00:13:03the morale of the American
00:13:04American in the homicide
00:13:06of the president
00:13:06of the president of Salvador Allende?
00:13:08There can be no whitewash
00:13:10at the White House.
00:13:11A series of record oil companies
00:13:13for all this world.
00:13:15If the serious course of events
00:13:16continued,
00:13:18foreign ministers
00:13:18are at this moment.
00:13:20Oh, please stand by.
00:13:22Stand by.
00:13:27Then, suddenly,
00:13:30silence.
00:13:32Total and absolute.
00:13:34But the dream
00:13:36was not yet done.
00:13:38Mm-hmm.
00:13:42ORGAN PLAYS
00:14:12Had we destroyed our home, what had we done to the earth?
00:14:28There had been many ways for life to perish at our hands.
00:14:32We had poisoned the air and water.
00:14:34We had ravaged the land.
00:14:37Perhaps we had changed the climate.
00:14:38But could it have been a plague or nuclear war?
00:14:44I remembered the galactic computer.
00:14:56What would it say about the earth?
00:14:57There was our region of the galaxy.
00:15:15There was our world.
00:15:16I had found the entry for earth.
00:15:22Humanity third from the sun.
00:15:25They had heard our television broadcasts and thought them an application for cosmic citizenship.
00:15:38Our technology had been growing enormously.
00:15:41They got that right.
00:15:42200 nation-states, about six global powers, the potential to become one planet.
00:15:52Probability of survival over a century.
00:15:55Here also, less than 1%.
00:15:58So it was nuclear war.
00:16:07A full nuclear exchange.
00:16:10There would be no more big questions.
00:16:14No more answers.
00:16:16Never again a love or a child.
00:16:20No descendants to remember us and be proud.
00:16:23No more voyages to the stars.
00:16:26No more songs from the earth.
00:16:34I saw East Africa and thought, a few million years ago, we humans took our first steps there.
00:16:42Our brains grew and changed.
00:16:45The old parts began to be guided by the new parts.
00:16:48And this made us human, with compassion and foresight and reason.
00:16:54But instead, we listened to that reptilian voice within us, counseling fear, territoriality, aggression.
00:17:04We accepted the products of science.
00:17:07We rejected its methods.
00:17:11Maybe the reptiles will evolve intelligence once more.
00:17:14Perhaps, one day, there will be civilizations again on earth.
00:17:20There will be life.
00:17:21There will be intelligence.
00:17:23But there will be no more humans.
00:17:26Not here.
00:17:27Not on a billion worlds.
00:17:29Every thinking person fears nuclear war.
00:17:56And every technological nation plans for it.
00:18:02Everyone knows its madness.
00:18:05And every country has an excuse.
00:18:09There's a dreary chain of causality.
00:18:13The Germans were working on the bomb at the beginning of World War II.
00:18:20So the Americans had to make one first.
00:18:23If the Americans had one, the Russians had to have one.
00:18:26Then, the British, the French, the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis.
00:18:35Many nations now collect nuclear weapons.
00:18:39They're easy to make.
00:18:41You can steal fissionable material from nuclear reactors.
00:18:46Nuclear weapons have almost become a home handicraft industry.
00:18:51The conventional bombs of World War II were called blockbusters.
00:18:57Filled with 20 tons of TNT, they could destroy a city block.
00:19:01All the bombs dropped in all the cities of World War II amounted to some 2 million tons of TNT.
00:19:08Two megatons.
00:19:09Coventry and Rotterdam, Dresden and Tokyo, all the death that reigned from the skies between 1939 and 1945.
00:19:20100,000 blockbusters.
00:19:22Two megatons.
00:19:23Today, two megatons is the equivalent of a single thermonuclear bomb.
00:19:30One bomb with the destructive force of the Second World War.
00:19:35But there are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons.
00:19:38The missile and bomber forces of the Soviet Union and the United States have warheads aimed at over 15,000 designated targets.
00:19:46No place on the planet is safe.
00:19:48The energy contained in these weapons, genies of death patiently awaiting the rubbing of the lamps, totals far more than 10,000 megatons.
00:20:01But with the destruction concentrated efficiently, not over six years, but over a few hours.
00:20:09A blockbuster for every family on the planet.
00:20:13A World War II every second for the length of a lazy afternoon.
00:20:19The bomb dropped on Hiroshima killed 70,000 people.
00:20:29In a full nuclear exchange, in the paroxysm of global death, the equivalent of a million Hiroshima bombs would be dropped all over the world.
00:20:40But in such an exchange, not everyone would be killed by the blast and the firestorm and the immediate radiation.
00:20:48There would be other agonies.
00:20:50The loss of loved ones, the legions of the burned and blinded and mutilated.
00:20:56The absence of medical care, disease, plague, long-lived radiation poisoning the soil and the water.
00:21:03The threat of tumors and stillbirths and malformed children and the hopeless sense of a civilization destroyed for nothing.
00:21:13The knowledge that we could have prevented it and did not.
00:21:16The global balance of terror, pioneered by the United States and the Soviet Union, holds hostage all the citizens of the earth.
00:21:30Each side persistently probes the limits of the other's tolerance.
00:21:34Like the Cuban Missile Crisis, the testing of anti-satellite weapons, the Vietnam and Afghanistan wars.
00:21:44The hostile military establishments are locked in some ghastly mutual embrace.
00:21:51Each needs the other.
00:21:53But the balance of terror is a delicate balance with very little margin for miscalculation.
00:21:59And the world impoverishes itself by spending a trillion dollars a year on preparations for war
00:22:10and by employing perhaps half the scientists and high technologists on the planet in military endeavors.
00:22:20How would we explain all this to a dispassionate extraterrestrial observer?
00:22:25What account would we give of our stewardship of the planet earth?
00:22:30We have heard the rationales offered by the superpowers.
00:22:34We know who speaks for the nations.
00:22:37But who speaks for the human species?
00:22:40Who speaks for earth?
00:22:43From an extraterrestrial perspective, our global civilization is clearly on the edge of failure
00:22:50in the most important task it faces, preserving the lives and well-being of its citizens
00:22:55and the future habitability of the planet.
00:22:59But if we're willing to live with the growing likelihood of nuclear war,
00:23:04shouldn't we also be willing to explore vigorously every possible means to prevent nuclear war?
00:23:09Shouldn't we consider in every nation major changes in the traditional ways of doing things
00:23:16a fundamental restructuring of economic, political, social, and religious institutions?
00:23:22We've reached a point where there can be no more special interests or special cases.
00:23:28Nuclear arms threaten every person on the earth.
00:23:30Fundamental changes in society are sometimes labeled impractical or contrary to human nature,
00:23:41as if nuclear war were practical or as if there were only one human nature.
00:23:47But fundamental changes can clearly be made.
00:23:51We're surrounded by them.
00:23:53In the last two centuries, abject slavery, which was with us for thousands of years,
00:23:58has almost entirely been eliminated in a stirring worldwide revolution.
00:24:03Women, systematically mistreated for millennia,
00:24:07are gradually gaining the political and economic power traditionally denied to them.
00:24:12And some wars of aggression have recently been stopped or curtailed
00:24:17because of a revulsion felt by the people in the aggressor nations.
00:24:22The old appeals to racial, sexual, and religious chauvinism
00:24:28and to rabid nationalist fervor are beginning not to work.
00:24:34A new consciousness is developing which sees the earth as a single organism
00:24:39and recognizes that an organism at war with itself is doomed.
00:24:46We are one planet.
00:24:48One of the great revelations of the age of space exploration
00:24:54is the image of the earth, finite and lonely, somehow vulnerable,
00:25:00bearing the entire human species through the oceans of space and time.
00:25:06But this is an ancient perception.
00:25:09In the third century B.C., our planet was mapped and accurately measured
00:25:14by a Greek scientist named Eratosthenes, who worked in Egypt.
00:25:18This was the world as he knew it.
00:25:22Eratosthenes was the director of the great library of Alexandria,
00:25:27the center of science and learning in the ancient world.
00:25:33Aristotle had argued that humanity was divided into Greeks and everybody else,
00:25:38who he called barbarians, and that the Greeks should keep themselves racially pure.
00:25:45He taught it was fitting for the Greeks to enslave other peoples.
00:25:50But Eratosthenes criticized Aristotle for his blind chauvinism.
00:25:55He believed there was good and bad in every nation.
00:25:59The Greek conquerors had invented a new god for the Egyptians,
00:26:03but he looked remarkably Greek.
00:26:06Alexander was portrayed as pharaoh, in a gesture to the Egyptians.
00:26:12But in practice, the Greeks were confident of their superiority.
00:26:18The casual protests of the librarian hardly constituted a serious challenge
00:26:22to prevailing prejudices.
00:26:24Their world was as imperfect as our own.
00:26:27But the Ptolemies, the Greek kings of Egypt who followed Alexander,
00:26:31had at least this virtue.
00:26:33They supported the advancement of knowledge.
00:26:36Popular ideas about the nature of the cosmos were challenged,
00:26:40and some of them discarded.
00:26:42New ideas were proposed and found to be in better accord with the facts.
00:26:46There were imaginative proposals, vigorous debates, brilliant syntheses,
00:26:51and the resulting treasure of human knowledge
00:26:53was recorded and preserved for centuries on these shelves.
00:26:58The Ptolemies didn't merely collect old knowledge.
00:27:10They supported scientific research and generated new knowledge.
00:27:15The results were amazing.
00:27:16Eratosthenes accurately calculated the size of the Earth.
00:27:21He mapped it, and he argued that it could be circumnavigated.
00:27:26Hipparchus anticipated that stars come into being,
00:27:30slowly move during the course of centuries,
00:27:33and eventually perish.
00:27:34It was he who first catalogued the positions and magnitudes of the stars
00:27:40in order to determine whether there were such changes.
00:27:44Euclid produced a textbook on geometry
00:27:46which human beings learned from for 23 centuries.
00:27:50It's still a great read full of the most elegant proofs.
00:27:55Galen wrote basic works on healing and anatomy
00:27:58which dominated medicine until the Renaissance.
00:28:01These are just a few examples.
00:28:03There were dozens of great scholars here
00:28:05and hundreds of fundamental discoveries.
00:28:14Some of those discoveries have a distinctly modern ring.
00:28:18Apollonius of Perga studied the parabola and the ellipse,
00:28:22curves that we know today describe the paths of falling objects
00:28:25in a gravitational field and space vehicles traveling between the planets.
00:28:31Huron of Alexandria invented steam engines and gear trains.
00:28:35He was the author of the first book on robots.
00:28:39Imagine how different our world would be
00:28:41if those discoveries had been explained
00:28:44and used for the benefit of everyone,
00:28:46if the humane perspective of Eratosthenes
00:28:49had been widely adopted and applied.
00:28:51But this was not to be.
00:28:53Alexandria was the greatest city
00:28:59the Western world had ever seen.
00:29:03People from all nations came here
00:29:05to live, to trade, to learn.
00:29:07On a given day,
00:29:09these harbors were thronged
00:29:12with merchants, scholars, tourists.
00:29:15It's probably here that the word cosmopolitan realized its true meaning
00:29:21of a citizen, not just of a nation,
00:29:24but of the cosmos.
00:29:26To be a citizen of the cosmos.
00:29:30Here were clearly the seeds of our modern world.
00:29:36But why didn't they take root and flourish?
00:29:40Why instead did the West slumber
00:29:42through a thousand years of darkness
00:29:44until Columbus and Copernicus and their contemporaries
00:29:48rediscovered the work done here?
00:29:50I cannot give you a simple answer.
00:29:54But I do know this.
00:29:56There is no record in the entire history of the library
00:30:00that any of the illustrious scholars and scientists who worked here
00:30:04ever seriously challenged
00:30:07a single political or economic or religious assumption
00:30:11of the society in which they lived.
00:30:13The permanence of the stars was questioned.
00:30:18The justice of slavery was not.
00:30:37Science and learning in general
00:30:40were the preserve of the privileged few.
00:30:43The vast population of the city
00:30:46had not the vaguest notion
00:30:48of the great discoveries being made within these walls.
00:30:52How could they?
00:30:54The new findings were not explained or popularized.
00:30:58The progress made here benefited them little.
00:31:01Science was not part of their lives.
00:31:04The discoveries in mechanics, say,
00:31:07or steam technology,
00:31:09mainly were applied to the perfection of weapons,
00:31:13to the encouragement of superstition,
00:31:16to the amusement of kings.
00:31:18Scientists never seemed to grasp
00:31:20the enormous potential of machines
00:31:23to free people from arduous and repetitive labor.
00:31:29The great intellectual achievements of antiquity
00:31:31had few practical applications.
00:31:34science never captured the imagination of the multitude.
00:31:39There was no counterbalance to stagnation,
00:31:42to pessimism,
00:31:44to the most abject surrender to mysticism.
00:31:48So when, at long last,
00:31:51the mob came to burn the place down,
00:31:55there was nobody to stop them.
00:31:56Let me tell you about the end.
00:32:18Let me tell you about the end.
00:32:22It's a story about the last scientist to work in this place,
00:32:26a mathematician, astronomer, physicist,
00:32:29and head of the school of neoplatonic philosophy in Alexandria.
00:32:35That's an extraordinary range of accomplishments
00:32:37for any individual in any age.
00:32:40Her name was Hypatia.
00:32:43She was born in this city in the year 370 A.D.
00:32:50This was a time when women had essentially no options.
00:32:54They were considered property.
00:32:57Nevertheless, Hypatia was able to move freely,
00:33:00unselfconsciously through traditional male domains.
00:33:06By all accounts, she was a great beauty.
00:33:10And although she had many suitors,
00:33:12she had no interest in marriage.
00:33:15The Alexandria of Hypatia's time,
00:33:19by then long under Roman rule,
00:33:21was a city in grave conflict.
00:33:24Slavery, the cancer of the ancient world,
00:33:28had sapped classical civilization of its vitality.
00:33:32The growing Christian church was consolidating its power
00:33:37and attempting to eradicate pagan influence and culture.
00:33:42Hypatia stood at the focus,
00:33:46at the epicenter of mighty social forces.
00:33:51Cyril, the bishop of Alexandria, despised her,
00:33:56in part because of her close friendship
00:33:57with a Roman governor,
00:33:58but also because she symbolized,
00:34:01she was a symbol of learning and science,
00:34:04which were largely identified by the early church
00:34:07with paganism.
00:34:09In great personal danger,
00:34:12Hypatia continued to teach and to publish
00:34:15until, in the year 415 A.D.,
00:34:19on her way to work,
00:34:20she was set upon by a fanatical mob
00:34:24of Cyril's followers.
00:34:26They dragged her from her chariot,
00:34:29tore off her clothes,
00:34:31and flayed her flesh from her bones
00:34:34with abalone shells.
00:34:38Her remains were burned,
00:34:39her works obliterated,
00:34:41her name forgotten.
00:34:43Cyril was made a saint.
00:34:45The glory you see around me
00:34:51is nothing but a memory.
00:34:56It does not exist.
00:34:57The last remains of the library
00:35:01were destroyed within a year
00:35:03of Hypatia's death.
00:35:05It's as if an entire civilization
00:35:07had undergone a sort of self-inflicted
00:35:11radical brain surgery,
00:35:13so that most of its memories,
00:35:15memories, discoveries, ideas,
00:35:17and passions were irrevocably wiped out.
00:35:22The loss was incalculable.
00:35:28In some cases,
00:35:29we know only the tantalizing titles
00:35:33of books that had been destroyed.
00:35:35In most cases,
00:35:36we know neither the titles nor the authors.
00:35:39We do know that in this library
00:35:42there were 123 different plays
00:35:45by Sophocles,
00:35:46of which only seven have survived to our time.
00:35:50One of those seven is Oedipus Rex.
00:35:53Similar numbers apply to the lost works
00:35:55of Aeschylus, Euripides, Aristophanes.
00:36:00It's little as if the only surviving works
00:36:03of a man named William Shakespeare
00:36:05were Coriolanus and A Winter's Tale,
00:36:10although we had heard
00:36:11that he had written some other things
00:36:13which were highly prized in his time.
00:36:15Plays called Hamlet, Macbeth,
00:36:19A Midsummer Night's Dream,
00:36:21Julius Caesar, King Lear, Romeo and Juliet.
00:36:24History is full of people
00:36:35who out of fear or ignorance
00:36:39or the lust for power
00:36:41have destroyed treasures
00:36:43of immeasurable value
00:36:45which truly belong to all of us.
00:36:49We must not let it happen again.
00:36:54We have considered
00:37:15the destruction of worlds
00:37:16and the end of civilizations.
00:37:19But there is another perspective
00:37:21by which to measure human endeavors.
00:37:22Let me tell you a story
00:37:24about the beginning.
00:37:27Some 15 billion years ago,
00:37:30our universe began
00:37:31with the mightiest explosion of all time.
00:37:35The universe expanded,
00:37:37cooled and darkened.
00:37:39Energy condensed into matter,
00:37:41mostly hydrogen atoms.
00:37:42And these atoms
00:37:43accumulated into vast clouds
00:37:46rushing away from each other
00:37:47that would one day become the galaxies.
00:37:52Within these galaxies,
00:37:54the first generation of stars was born,
00:37:57kindling the energy hidden in matter,
00:37:59flooding the cosmos with light.
00:38:02Hydrogen atoms had made suns and starlight.
00:38:06There were in those times
00:38:10no planets to receive the light
00:38:12and no living creatures
00:38:14to admire the radiance of the heavens.
00:38:17But deep in the stellar furnaces,
00:38:19nuclear fusion was creating the heavier atoms,
00:38:22carbon and oxygen, silicon and iron.
00:38:26These elements,
00:38:27the ash left by hydrogen,
00:38:29were the raw materials
00:38:30from which planets and life
00:38:32would later arise.
00:38:34At first,
00:38:35the heavy elements were trapped
00:38:36in the hearts of the stars.
00:38:38But massive stars
00:38:39soon exhausted their fuel
00:38:41and in their death throes,
00:38:43returned most of their substance
00:38:45back into space.
00:38:47The interstellar gas
00:38:48became enriched
00:38:48in heavy elements.
00:38:52In the Milky Way galaxy,
00:38:54the matter of the cosmos
00:38:55was recycled
00:38:56into new generations of stars,
00:38:58now rich in heavy atoms.
00:39:00a legacy
00:39:01from their stellar ancestors.
00:39:05And in the cold
00:39:07of interstellar space,
00:39:08great turbulent clouds
00:39:10were gathered by gravity
00:39:12and stirred by starlight.
00:39:18In their depths,
00:39:20the heavy atoms condensed
00:39:21into grains of rocky dust and ice
00:39:23and complex carbon-based molecules.
00:39:27In accordance with the laws
00:39:29of physics and chemistry,
00:39:30hydrogen atoms
00:39:31had brought forth
00:39:33the stuff of life.
00:39:42In other clouds,
00:39:44more massive aggregates
00:39:45of gas and dust
00:39:46formed later generations
00:39:48of stars.
00:39:49As new stars were formed,
00:39:51tiny condensations of matter
00:39:53accreted near them,
00:39:54in conspicuous moats
00:39:55of rock and metal,
00:39:57ice and gas
00:39:57that would become the planets.
00:40:00And on these worlds,
00:40:01as in interstellar clouds,
00:40:03organic molecules formed,
00:40:05made of atoms
00:40:06that had been cooked
00:40:07inside the stars.
00:40:09In the tide pools
00:40:10and oceans of many worlds,
00:40:12molecules were destroyed
00:40:14by sunlight
00:40:14and assembled by chemistry.
00:40:16One day,
00:40:17among these natural experiments,
00:40:20a molecule arose
00:40:21that quite by accident
00:40:23was able to make
00:40:24crude copies of itself.
00:40:25As time passed,
00:40:33self-replication
00:40:34became more accurate.
00:40:36Those molecules
00:40:36that copied better
00:40:37produced more copies.
00:40:39Natural selection
00:40:40was underway.
00:40:42Elaborate molecular machines
00:40:44had evolved.
00:40:45Slowly,
00:40:47imperceptibly,
00:40:48life had begun.
00:40:49Collectives of organic molecules
00:40:58evolved into
00:40:59one-celled organisms.
00:41:01These produced
00:41:02multi-celled colonies.
00:41:04Their various parts
00:41:05became specialized organs.
00:41:07Some colonies
00:41:08attached themselves
00:41:09to the sea floor.
00:41:11Others swam freely.
00:41:15Eyes evolved,
00:41:16and now the cosmos
00:41:17could see,
00:41:18living things
00:41:19moved on
00:41:19to colonize the land.
00:41:21The reptiles
00:41:22held sway for a time,
00:41:24but they gave way
00:41:25to small,
00:41:26warm-blooded creatures
00:41:27with bigger brains
00:41:28who developed
00:41:29dexterity
00:41:30and curiosity
00:41:31about their environment.
00:41:33They learned
00:41:33to use tools
00:41:34and fire
00:41:35and language.
00:41:36Star stuff,
00:41:37the ash of stellar alchemy,
00:41:39had emerged
00:41:40into consciousness.
00:41:49We are a way
00:41:54for the cosmos
00:41:55to know itself.
00:41:57We are creatures
00:41:58of the cosmos
00:41:59and have always hungered
00:42:01to know our origins,
00:42:03to understand
00:42:04our connection
00:42:05with the universe.
00:42:06How did everything
00:42:08come to be?
00:42:11Every culture
00:42:12on the planet
00:42:12has devised
00:42:13its own response
00:42:14to the riddle
00:42:15posed by the universe.
00:42:21Every culture
00:42:22celebrates the cycles
00:42:23of life and nature.
00:42:27There are many different ways
00:42:29of being human.
00:42:34But an extraterrestrial visitor
00:42:36examining the differences
00:42:37among human societies
00:42:39would find those differences
00:42:41trivial
00:42:41compared to the similarities.
00:42:51We are one species.
00:43:09We are star stuff
00:43:16harvesting starlight.
00:43:19Our lives,
00:43:20our past
00:43:21and our future
00:43:21are tied
00:43:22to the sun,
00:43:24the moon
00:43:24and the stars.
00:43:29Our ancestors knew
00:43:31that their survival
00:43:32depended
00:43:33on understanding
00:43:33the heavens.
00:43:35They built observatories
00:43:36and computers
00:43:37to predict
00:43:38the changing
00:43:39of the seasons
00:43:39by the motions
00:43:41in the skies.
00:43:42We are,
00:43:43all of us,
00:43:45descended
00:43:45from astronomers.
00:43:50The discovery
00:43:51that there is order
00:43:52in the universe,
00:43:53that there are laws
00:43:53of nature,
00:43:54is the foundation
00:43:55on which science
00:43:56builds today.
00:44:05Our conception
00:44:06of the cosmos,
00:44:07all of modern science
00:44:08and technology,
00:44:10trace back to questions
00:44:11raised by the stars.
00:44:15Yet,
00:44:16even 400 years ago,
00:44:17we still had no idea
00:44:19of our place
00:44:19in the universe.
00:44:21The long journey
00:44:22to that understanding
00:44:23required both
00:44:24an unflinching respect
00:44:25for the facts
00:44:26and a delight
00:44:27in the natural world.
00:44:28Johannes Kepler wrote,
00:44:34We do not ask
00:44:35for what useful purpose
00:44:36the birds do sing,
00:44:38for song is their pleasure
00:44:39since they were created
00:44:41for singing.
00:44:42Similarly,
00:44:43we ought not to ask
00:44:44why the human mind
00:44:45troubles to fathom
00:44:46the secrets of the heavens.
00:44:48The diversity
00:44:49of the phenomena
00:44:50of nature
00:44:50is so great
00:44:51and the treasures
00:44:52hidden in the heavens
00:44:54so rich,
00:44:55precisely in order
00:44:57that the human mind
00:44:58shall never be lacking
00:44:59in fresh nourishment.
00:45:00The human mind
00:45:30It is the birthright of every child to encounter the cosmos anew in every culture and every age.
00:45:52When this happens to us, we experience a deep sense of wonder.
00:45:57The most fortunate among us are guided by teachers who channel this exhilaration.
00:46:05We are born to delight in the world.
00:46:09We are taught to distinguish our preconceptions from the truth.
00:46:13Then new worlds are discovered as we decipher the mysteries of the cosmos.
00:46:27Science is a collective enterprise that embraces many cultures and spans the generations.
00:46:45In every age, and sometimes in the most unlikely places, there are those who wish with a great passion to understand the world.
00:46:52There is no way of knowing where the next discovery will come from.
00:46:57What dream of the mind's eye will remake the world?
00:47:01These dreams begin as impossibilities.
00:47:14Once, even to see a planet through a telescope was an astonishment.
00:47:19But we studied these worlds.
00:47:21We figured out how they moved in their orbits.
00:47:23And soon we were planning voyages of discovery beyond the Earth.
00:47:28And sending robot explorers to the planets.
00:47:36And the stars.
00:47:38We humans long to be connected with our origins.
00:47:52So we create rituals.
00:47:56Science is another way to express this longing.
00:47:59It also connects us with our origins.
00:48:01And it too has its rituals and its commandments.
00:48:05It's only sacred truth is that there are no sacred truths.
00:48:22Temperature systems.
00:48:24All assumptions must be critically examined.
00:48:28Arguments from authority are worthless.
00:48:29Basic mode is imaging three.
00:48:32AACS readout mode is telemetry.
00:48:34Transducer power is on.
00:48:42Whatever is inconsistent with the facts,
00:48:45no matter how fond of it we are,
00:48:47must be discarded or revised.
00:48:49Science is not perfect.
00:49:01It's often misused.
00:49:03It's only a tool.
00:49:05But it's the best tool we have.
00:49:07Self-correcting.
00:49:08Ever-changing.
00:49:10Applicable to everything.
00:49:11With this tool,
00:49:20we vanquish the impossible.
00:49:22With the methods of science,
00:49:50we have begun to explore the cosmos.
00:49:56For the first time,
00:49:58scientific discoveries are widely accessible.
00:50:04Our machines,
00:50:06the products of our science,
00:50:08are now beyond the orbit of Saturn.
00:50:10A preliminary spacecraft reconnaissance
00:50:20has been made of 20 new worlds.
00:50:23We have learned to value careful observations,
00:50:27to respect the facts,
00:50:28even when they are disquieting,
00:50:30when they seem to contradict conventional wisdom.
00:50:32The Canterbury monks faithfully recorded
00:50:36an impact on the moon,
00:50:39and the Anasazi people
00:50:40an explosion of a distant star.
00:50:43They saw for us,
00:50:45as we see for them.
00:50:47We see further than they,
00:50:48only because we stand on their shoulders.
00:50:50We build on what they knew.
00:50:52We depend on free inquiry,
00:50:54and free access to knowledge.
00:50:56We humans have seen the atoms
00:50:59which constitute all of matter,
00:51:01and the forces that sculpt this world,
00:51:03and others.
00:51:09We have found that the molecules of life
00:51:12are easily formed
00:51:13under conditions common
00:51:15throughout the cosmos.
00:51:16We have mapped the molecular machines
00:51:20at the heart of life.
00:51:23We have discovered a microcosm
00:51:25in a drop of water.
00:51:27We have peered into the bloodstream,
00:51:29and down on our stormy planet,
00:51:31to see the Earth as a single organism.
00:51:34We have found volcanoes on other worlds,
00:51:37and explosions on the sun,
00:51:39studied comets from the depths of space,
00:51:42and traced their origins and destinies.
00:51:44Listened to pulsars,
00:51:47and searched for other civilizations.
00:51:52We humans have set foot on another world,
00:51:56in a place called the Sea of Tranquility,
00:51:59an astonishing achievement for creatures such as we,
00:52:02whose earliest footsteps,
00:52:04three and a half million years old,
00:52:06are preserved in the volcanic ash of East Africa.
00:52:10We have walked far.
00:52:14The Sea of Tranquility
00:52:26The Sea of Tranquility
00:52:27The Sea of Tranquility
00:53:36These are some of the things that hydrogen atoms do, given 15 billion years of cosmic evolution.
00:53:50It has the sound of epic myth.
00:53:56But it's simply a description of the evolution of the cosmos as revealed by science in our time.
00:54:03And we, we who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos, we've begun, at last, to wonder about our origins.
00:54:15Star stuff contemplating the stars, organized collections of 10 billion, billion, billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter, tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps throughout the cosmos.
00:54:35Our loyalties are to the species and the planet.
00:54:42We speak for Earth.
00:54:44Our obligation to survive and flourish is owed not just to ourselves, but also to that cosmos ancient and vast from which we spring.
00:54:55We speak for Earth.
00:55:07¶¶
00:55:36The greatest thrill for me in reliving this adventure has been not just that we've completed the preliminary reconnaissance with spacecraft of the entire solar system,
00:55:50and not just that we've discovered astonishing structures in the realm of the galaxies,
00:55:56but especially that some of Cosmos' boldest dreams about this world are coming closer to reality.
00:56:04Since this series' maiden voyage, the impossible has come to pass.
00:56:11Mighty walls that maintain insuperable ideological differences have come tumbling down.
00:56:19Deadly enemies have embraced and begun to work together.
00:56:23The imperative to cherish the Earth and to protect the global environment that sustains all of us has become widely accepted.
00:56:33And we've begun, finally, the process of reducing the obscene number of weapons of mass destruction.
00:56:39Perhaps we have, after all, decided to choose life.
00:56:46But we still have light years to go to ensure that choice.
00:56:51Even after the summits and the ceremonies and the treaties, there are still some 50,000 nuclear weapons in the world.
00:57:02And it would require the detonation of only a tiny fraction of them to produce a nuclear winter,
00:57:09the predicted global climatic catastrophe that would result from the smoke and the dust lifted into the atmosphere
00:57:16by burning cities and petroleum facilities.
00:57:20The world scientific community has begun to sound the alarm about the grave dangers posed by depleting the protective ozone shield
00:57:29and by greenhouse warming.
00:57:32And again, we're taking some mitigating steps.
00:57:36But again, those steps are too small and too slow.
00:57:41The discovery that such a thing as nuclear winter was really possible evolved out of studies of Martian dust storms.
00:57:50The surface of Mars, fried by ultraviolet light, is also a reminder of why it's important to keep our ozone layer intact.
00:57:59The runaway greenhouse effect on Venus is a valuable reminder that we must take the increasing greenhouse effect on Earth seriously.
00:58:08The important lessons about our environment have come from spacecraft missions to the planets.
00:58:16By exploring other worlds, we safeguard this one.
00:58:20By itself, I think this fact more than justifies the money our species has spent in sending ships to other worlds.
00:58:28It is our fate to live during one of the most perilous and at the same time one of the most hopeful chapters in human history.
00:58:39Our science and our technology have posed us a profound question.
00:58:46Will we learn to use these tools with wisdom and foresight before it's too late?
00:58:53Will we see our species safely through this difficult passage so that our children and grandchildren will continue the great journey of discovery still deeper into the mysteries of the cosmos?
00:59:09That same rocket and nuclear and computer technology that sends our ships past the farthest known planet can also be used to destroy our global civilization.
00:59:26Exactly the same technology can be used for good and for evil.
00:59:32It is as if there were a god who said to us,
00:59:39I set before you two ways.
00:59:43You can use your technology to destroy yourselves or to carry you to the planets and the stars.
00:59:52It's up to you.
Recommended
1:01:14
|
Up next
1:00:53
44:05
44:33
43:12
1:00:27
42:04
1:00:08
1:01:39
46:01
46:03
43:57
42:36
44:08
59:41
43:10
1:03:38
7:05