One of Carl Sagan’s great abilities was explaining the universe to those without a background in astrophysics. I had no science in college, graduate, or post-graduate school except for a ten-hour geology class as a freshman in college six decades ago.

The Cosmic Calendar provides a visual learning tool for the novice.

The evolution of the universe in a calendar year

Sagan headed NASA’s task of compiling our world’s various images, the music we created, the sounds of the Earth, and the greetings in various languages throughout the world. NASA launched Voyager 1 and 2 in 1977. Each spacecraft contains a time capsule from the Earth in an attempt to tell some extraterrestrial readers about our pale blue dot.

Sagan’s Golden Records

The Voyager with a time capsule

Both the Voyager spacecrafts are speeding to the nearest sun. Voyager 1 is traveling at 38,000 mph, and Voyager 2 is traveling at a mere 34,000 mph, but both are in interstellar space. Both Voyagers have gone beyond the heliosphere. It will take 40,000 years for either Voyager to reach another sun and planetary system. If humans are still roaming the Earth, the Republicans will be still debating who should be the Speaker of the House.

That is the backstory. What haunts me about Sagan’s Golden Records isn’t the drive to communicate with some alien forms out there in the darkness of space. Humans have done a great deal as we grasp science in general and astrophysics in particular. That is the bright side of humanity.

When I read and listened to all the audio clips of greetings in 55 languages, I was confronted with the polarity between what we wish to convey to some extraterrestrial and our behavior here on this pale blue dot. While some comments are friendly, like the Armenian, “To all those who exist in the universe, greetings.”

Nevertheless, the Latin greeting is an example of the problem. “Greetings to you, whoever you are; we have good will towards you and bring peace across space.” The same disconnect was voiced in Urdu, Peace on you. We the inhabitants of this earth send our greetings to you.”

Those comments create a tragic example of the horns of a dilemma. I took this photo a decade ago on my second trip to Scotland. This Highland cow is a visual example of the dilemma that plagues our human race.

At one end of the horn is the positive greeting for extraterrestrials, but none of the greetings deal with the other horn. The horns of a dilemma demonstrate our problem. There is a disconnect in our mindsets. We talk the talk, but rarely do we walk the walk. We wish some alien that reads a greeting in Nepali in our time capsule 40,000 years from now, “Wishing you a peaceful future from the earthlings.” However, we don’t live in peace. Ask any Republican in the House whether they live in peace as Republicans.

More to the point, ask women if men treat them as equals and live together in peace? The same is true for any LGBTQ+ member. Check with them whether they can live in a peaceful world or even America due to discrimination. Blacks, Hispanics, and Asian Americans don’t live in a peaceful world due to groups like white supremacists. People of various religious beliefs are also objects of hatred.

We have two sets of problems. The first is the nonsense about racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. The other set of problems is something Steve Biko warned us about a half-century ago during the Apartheid in South Africa. “The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.” Convince a group of their inequality means that the oppressor doesn’t need leg-irons to oppress them. Some in the group believe they aren’t equal.

One final caveat. I don’t like where we are in our world. I would have preferred that people lived in peace at all levels in this world, but that isn’t the world in which we live. Randy Pausch said, “We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand.” Wishing for a better world won’t produce one. Addressing the cards dealt to us will begin our journey to a better world.

This is a link to NASA’s Golden Record.