S&W pp. 121-124 (Millhauser, Bryson, and Sagan)

Steven Millhauser's argument that "all forms of distortion shock us into attention" (121) is supported by Bryson and Sagan on both a teensy scale and an infinitely huge one, respectively.

Bill Bryson suggests that life is a highly improbable miracle. He claims that we should feel extremely lucky to even be alive. The whole essay is very uplifting and aims (and succeeds, in my case) to incite in readers that passion for life, which is oh-so-short, but sweet. I’ve never heard someone read into science with such poetry. I absolutely adored the introduction: “Welcome. And congratulations, I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize." The way in which Bryson describes the atoms and gives them a life of their own, explaining that, “For all their devoted attention, your atoms don’t actually care about you – indeed, don’t even know that you are there. They don’t even know that they are there,” (122) makes me suspect that even inconsequential me might be part of a bigger scheme about which I am unaware.

The more cynical Sagan proposes the same idea that the idea of life deserves its due respect and wonder, but in the very contrary sense. The world is, in fact, a little “mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam” (124) which generations upon generations of individuals have called home. We need not protect ourselves against the world so much as we must take "responsibility to deal more kindly and compassionately with one another and to preserve and cherish that pale blue dot, the only home we've ever known".

When we are all such a small part of such a small world in the grand scheme of things, how can “all those generals and emperors” justify their feeling of self-importance by feuding over this mere “fraction of a dot”? This idea reminds me of Owen Wilson’s character leading his little men against the Roman forces in the movie “Night at the Museum”, because they have a “delusion that we have some privileged position in the universe”. Comparing this against Sagan’s “Reflections”, I now wonder if Ben Stiller’s reaction to the little people as little misled children might somewhat resemble God’s response to mankind.