Starry Messenger: Cosmic Perspectives on Civilization

by Neil deGrasse Tyson

One nebula (PSR B1509–58), imaged by NASA’s orbiting Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) in x-ray light, resembles a huge glowing hand in space with a clearly visible wrist, palm, outstretched thumb, and fingers.

In this very moment a harmonic intersection of Earth’s land, sea, and air supports every one of them. We are all in this together. One genetic family on spaceship Earth. Biology can be beautiful.

Maybe that’s why the world needs poets. Not to interpret what is plain and obvious, but to help us take pause and reflect on the beauty of people, places, and ideas—things we might otherwise take for granted. Simple beauty that emanates from simple truths.

If God wanted us to have a space program, he would have given Earth a Moon.

Nature carries no obligation to accommodate our limited capacity to interpret reality.

To live an affliction-free life, we must confess to nature that we’re a sack of chemicals occasionally (or frequently) in need of help from other chemicals to live our fullest life. Given how often illness befalls us, from childhood through old age, and given how often our body parts malfunction, perhaps we should instead be amazed that the human body works at all.

maybe the knowledge of death creates the focus that we bring to being alive. If you live forever, then what’s the hurry? Why do today what you can put off until tomorrow. There is perhaps no greater de-motivating force than the knowledge you will live forever. If true, then knowledge of your mortality may also be a force unto itself—the urge to achieve, and the need to express love and affection now, not later. Mathematically, if death gives meaning to life, then to live forever is to live a life with no meaning at all.