Category: humanity
- Labels: antiwar, deception, enemy, hubris, human, human condition, human rights, humanity, humility, philosophy, psychology, war
- Labels: awareness, compassion, happiness, humanity, indigenous, naked, nature, normal, peace, sustainable
- Labels: earth, ecology, environment, extinction, future, humanity, humility, sustainable
The Pioneer plaques are a pair of gold-anodized aluminium plaques which were placed on board the 1972 Pioneer 10 and 1973 Pioneer 11 spacecraft, featuring a pictorial message, in case either Pioneer 10 or 11 is intercepted by extraterrestrial life. The plaques show the nude figures of a human male and female along with several symbols that are designed to provide information about the origin of the spacecraft.
The Pioneer 10 and 11 spacecrafts were the first human-built objects to achieve escape velocity from the Solar System. The plaques were attached to the spacecraft’s antenna support struts in a position that would shield them from erosion by stellar dust.
The Voyager Golden Record, a much more complex and detailed message using (then) state-of-the-art media, was attached to the Voyager spacecraft launched in 1977.
The original idea, that the Pioneer spacecraft should carry a message from mankind, was first mentioned by Eric Burgess when he visited the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, during the Mariner 9 mission. He approached Carl Sagan, who had lectured about communication with extraterrestrial intelligences at a conference in Crimea.
Sagan was enthusiastic about the idea of sending a message with the Pioneer spacecraft. NASA agreed to the plan and gave him three weeks to prepare a message. Together with Frank Drake he designed the plaque, and the artwork was prepared by Sagan’s then-wife Linda Salzman Sagan.
Both plaques were manufactured at Precision Engravers, San Carlos, California.
The first plaque was launched with Pioneer 10 on March 2, 1972, and the second followed with Pioneer 11 on April 5, 1973.
According to astronomer Frank Drake, there were many negative reactions to the plaque because the human beings were displayed naked. (read more)
The Hollow Men
T. S. Eliot
Mistah Kurtzâhe dead.
A penny for the Old Guy
I
We are the hollow men
We are the stuffed men
Leaning together
Headpiece filled with straw. Alas!
Our dried voices, when
We whisper together
Are quiet and meaningless
As wind in dry grass
Or ratsâ feet over broken glass
In our dry cellar
Shape without form, shade without colour,
Paralysed force, gesture without motion;
Those who have crossed
With direct eyes, to deathâs other Kingdom
Remember usâif at allânot as lost
Violent souls, but only
As the hollow men
The stuffed men.
II
Eyes I dare not meet in dreams
In deathâs dream kingdom
These do not appear:
There, the eyes are
Sunlight on a broken column
There, is a tree swinging
And voices are
In the windâs singing
More distant and more solemn
Than a fading star.
Let me be no nearer
In deathâs dream kingdom
Let me also wear
Such deliberate disguises
Ratâs coat, crowskin, crossed staves
In a field
Behaving as the wind behaves
No nearerâ
Not that final meeting
In the twilight kingdom
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead manâs hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In deathâs other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of deathâs twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
V
Here we go round the prickly pear
Prickly pear prickly pear
Here we go round the prickly pear
At five oâclock in the morning.
Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
Between the conception
And the creation
Between the emotion
And the response
Falls the Shadow
Life is very long
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow
For Thine is the Kingdom
For Thine is
Life is
For Thine is the
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper.
According to Michael Onyebuchi Eze, the core of ubuntu can best be summarized as follows:
“A person is a person through other people” strikes an affirmation of oneâs humanity through recognition of an “other” in his or her uniqueness and difference.
It is a demand for a creative intersubjective formation in which the “other” becomes a mirror (but only a mirror) for my subjectivity.
This idealism suggests to us that humanity is not embedded in my person solely as an individual; my humanity is co-substantively bestowed upon the other and me.
Humanity is a quality we owe to each other. We create each other and need to sustain this otherness creation.
And if we belong to each other, we participate in our creations: we are because you are, and since you are, definitely I am.
The “I am” is not a rigid subject, but a dynamic self-constitution dependent on this otherness creation of relation and distance”.
- Labels: compassion, gift, humanity, humility, love, peace, philosophy
- Labels: above top secret, acceptance, aliens, art, disclosure, earth, future, humanity, mars, moon, Space, time, truth
