Pointing the right way

If you immediately know the candlelight is fire, then the meal is cooked long ago.

If you already have a preconceived idea, then your mind is made up and closed to alternatives.

Take some time to consider this.

Immanuel Kant in his definition of the moral law - that because the reason in me is the same as the reason in you (we share a common capacity to reason), from this common ground, we can then reason out a moral law that is universal.

That meaning that circumstances cannot extenuate one from the moral law. There are no circumstances that can make us come to a compromise that the moral law can be broken. Every single time you break the moral law, it is out of choice and by the act of choosing, you decide your moral value.

And indeed, the universe is vast, and we are so small. In the end, there is only one thing we can truly control - whether we are good, or evil.

Atonement

One day others may try to convice you they have forgiven you. That is more about them than you. For them, imparting forgiveness is a blessing. How do I go on? It is simple. You will never forgive yourself. Accept it. You hurt others, many others. That cannot be undone. You will never find personal retribution. But your life does not have to end. That which is right, just, and true can still prevail. If you do not fight for what you believe in, all may be lost for everyone else. But do not fight for yourself. Fight for others — others that may be saved through your effort. That is the least you can do

Quoted from Stargate

Biggest Mistake

It took just a dinner to realise my greatest folly.

Atonement.

It took me an entire weekend to come up with the word. The previous considerations were "karma", "retribution" and "punishment", but they all did not fit the description of the situation- there was no spite involved.

I guess it is a small step forward nonetheless. It's like finding yourself after being lost for ages.

crashed and burned

A random epiphany just hit me and I'm wondering if it's a sign or a coincidence... Nonetheless, I'm already drifting, like always, but somehow this time it seems different.

cosmic insignificance

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here, that's home, that's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. 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. Think of the endless cruelties visited by the inhabitants of one corner of this pixel on the scarcely distinguishable inhabitants of some other corner, how frequent their misunderstandings, how eager they are to kill one another, how fervent their hatreds.

Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.

The Earth is the only world known so far to harbor life. There is nowhere else, at least in the near future, to which our species could migrate. Visit, yes. Settle, not yet. Like it or not, for the moment the Earth is where we make our stand.

It has been said that astronomy is a humbling and character-building experience. There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world. To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known.

carl sagan - pale blue dot