We are not the center of the universe

With all of us glued to our television/radio/computers, may I suggest that we all take a step back and consider things on a larger scale.  We are a species capable of comprehending the vastness of the universe and our place in it.   I truly believe that is something rare and beautiful and worth preserving and fighting for.  Eva Hoffman wrote:

Multivalence is no more than a condition of contemporary awareness, and no more than the contemporary world demands. The weight of the world used to be vertical: it used to come from the past, or from the hierarchy of heaven and earth and hell; now it's horizontal, made up of the endless multiplicity of events going on at once and pressing at each moment on our minds and our living rooms. Dislocation is the norm rather than the aberration in our time, but even in the unlikely event that we spend an entire lifetime in one place, the fabulous diverseness with which we live reminds us constantly that we are no longer the norm or the center, that there is no one geographic center pulling the world together and glowing with the allure of the real thing...

It is my dream that my children or grand children will "slip the surly bonds of Earth" and "dance the skies on laughter-silvered wings."  And that will require another culture altogether different from anything we have ever known.