“Better Light a Candle Than Cursing the Darkness” Carl Sagan
Immemorial nights where the pitch ignited the contemplation of the stars and other celestial bodies.
We still didn't know that they were other suns, other planets, other moons, other transhuman icy rocks.
Today, millennia later, we can contemplate these same stars with visual acuity enhanced and borrowed by telescopic and space technologies.
Today, millions of moons later, we can gaze at night from the space terrace. We contemplate the luminosity of civilizations. Luminous fruit of electronic technology and science. We contemplate through satellites, composite fruits of aerospace engineering, the use of photoelectricity resulting, in one way or another, from the accumulation of solar energy on the planet's surface during billions of orbits around the "star king".
Who could imagine that this light, with which we illuminate our presence on the planet's night face, makes it difficult for us today to contemplate the stellar amplitude of the Cosmos?
The light of nocturnal humanity dazzles the gaze of nestling in the glow of unreachable stars, ancient dream food, north of the paths to be discovered.
We illuminate the terrestrial paths and today we almost only see the stars with our “feet” in the extraterrestrial viewpoint, up there where the air is rare.
Today, we see technologically further in time and space. But we no longer have space without light, to travel with neuronal time through the stars of other worlds.
It is ironic that only in undeveloped western places on Earth, in lands where hunger is our daily bread, it is ironic that this continuous survival grimace, in which thirst flows through the clothing of darkened bones by modernity, be nourished by the contemplation of the Cosmos and only with the hope that the day dawns… Wake up closer to some solidarity, to a humanity lit by a candle that takes you away from the ignorant darkness and the disdain of fraternal hypocrisy.
As I look at the lit Christmas tree, I feel that it is better to behold a star in the darkness than to illuminate vain ignorance.
Author Antonio Piedade
Science in the Regional Press
Image credits: Nasa Earth Observatory/NOAA NGDC
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