Glitter of the Pale Blue Dot

Camp sits at my feet and stares into my eyes. Does he know the difference between a human and a dog? Does he understand the electronic device in my hands is connected to a global technology bridging billions of others just like me? Or is he looking for a sign that I will give him some food or let him outside to run? Is any actual thinking occurring in his brain, or is he guided simply by instinct and impulse?

His reality is microscopic compared to mine. He has no self-awareness. He has no orientation to time. He makes no moral judgments because he cannot discern intrinsically right from wrong. He is not goal-driven; he has no higher mission in life beyond eating and pooping. He has no power of reflection to ponder abstract concepts. He has no sense of the natural cycle of life or that his own will be short.

I would tell him the entire story of human advancement if he understood English. I would explain germ theory, electricity, microwave ovens, airplanes, landing on the Moon, and the atomic bomb. I would explore language, philosophy, social networking, and artificial intelligence. What difference would it make in his life if I told him about every facet of human existence? Our realities coexist, but their intersection is extremely limited.

Still, imagine the ecstasy that would overwhelm him if his mind were opened to a world that a moment before was imperceptible and inconceivable. He would be shocked to discover the depth of life beyond his own. With enough encouragement, he might even break out into that great song from Disney’s Aladdin: A whole new world…a new fantastic point of view…a dazzling place I never knew…a hundred thousand things to see…with new horizons to pursue. 

The same kind of isolation in which Camp exists is similar to the alternative reality chosen by billions of human beings who are dazzled – i.e., a brightness that confuses someone’s vision temporarily – by all the glitter offered by the world’s empty pursuits. Camp can’t help that his life is confined to sniffing, sleeping, and barking. We have at least some choice about how we live our lives. Often, the choices astound me.

The Netflix documentary Bitconned showcases the revolting story of Bitcoin scam artist extraordinaire Ray Trapani and his business associates and their quest to defraud millions of dollars from unsuspecting investors through their sham company Centra Tech. In the film, Ray admitted that from when he was a little boy, he wanted to be a criminal more than anything else.

That reminded me of Bryan Matthew Sevilla, aka James Deen, a porn actor once labeled as the all-American boy next door, who said in an interview that when his First-grade teacher asked him what he wanted to be when he grew up, he replied porn star. Over the last nineteen years, the thirty-seven-year-old actor has appeared in 5279 scenes with 1507 females and 241 males.

Felix Fox is a relative newcomer to the world of gay porn. He’s only been in the business since 2021, amassing a trifling 124 credits with 95 male partners. Yet he’s determined to make his mark with reflections about his line of work. He hopes everyone can reach sexual and personal freedom. I like to think I’m helping people achieve that hedonistic lust. I love that! That’s hot to think about. He believes that as the stigma surrounding sexual freedom lessens, sex will become more normalized, and the world will become a more progressive and friendly place.

The 2008 diving gold medalist, Matthew Mitcham, battled meth addiction and depression for years following his Olympic triumph, in part because of shame over his sexual orientation. Today, he’s sober, married to his partner Luke, and showcasing nearly all of his naked body on the OnlyFans website – for the money. He said I don’t do anything too raunchy. I just like to show off my beautiful body, which is very quickly becoming more of a civilian body than an athlete body. To prepare for that day when his aging physique becomes a visual impairment for subscribers looking for virility, he’s taken eight thousand pictures of his nude self and put them in reserve for the future.

Columbian-born Griselda Blanco was the godmother of the cocaine empire in South Florida in the 1980s. Her operation earned $2.7 million a day from the sale of nearly 700 pounds of cocaine every month. She was married three times. She killed her first two ex-husbands and hired a hit man for the third. She was implicated in another 200 murders. Three of her four sons were murdered. Today, her fourth and youngest son manages an online t-shirt business in Miami. In 2008, he said on a radio talk show that My little old lady is someone who loves people. She has dedicated herself to God. She is a Christian. She lived through hell. Four years later, Griselda was slain in Medellin, Columbia, coming out of a butcher shop. The assassin placed a Bible on her chest before fleeing the scene.

As a devoted fan of the NBC series Dateline and Keith Morrison, the best murder-mystery storyteller in America, I never fail to be stunned when it’s revealed the perp had long harbored a desire to kill someone only for the sake of discovering what it would feel like. It begs the question Is sadism nature or nurture?  Seventeenth-century French philosopher Blaise Pascal wrote humans are the glory and scum of the universe. 

For what are we living? Do we live for money, fame, pleasure, cruelty, chaos, or something else? What is the object of our deepest desire? What drives our soul? How can someone be motivated supremely by money, sexual pleasure, or utter brutality and find enjoyment and satisfaction in life? Where is the gratification of driving a knife through the heart of another human being only for the sake of watching the person suffer? What is fulfilling about sexual intimacy with thousands of partners? Where is the delight in caressing millions of dollars hour after hour?

Let’s put things in a different light. J0529-4351 is a quasar seven light-years across and twelve billion light-years from Earth. [By comparison, the diameter of our solar system is 18.6 trillion miles, or just over three light-years across.] It is now considered the brightest object ever observed in the universe, estimated to be 500 trillion times brighter than our Sun. The supermassive black hole at its center is nineteen billion times the mass of our star. It is the fastest-growing black hole to date, daily consuming the gas and dust equivalent of the Sun.

Imagine a being from a far part of the universe coming into my living room and trying to explain what it was like passing that quasar on the way to Earth. What if the being tried to explain traversing the entire dimension of the universe – 7 trillion light-years across, or 250 times larger than the observable universe – to a person who’s never traveled more than four thousand miles on a plane across the Atlantic?

Our conversation would be like the conversation between me and Camp, and I would be Camp! I wouldn’t comprehend one word of the ins and outs of interstellar travel. Or the advantages of using wormholes to travel faster than the speed of light. Or the countless other civilizations populating a seemingly limitless cosmos. Such a conversation would be so far beyond me that the being would likely give up any attempt to clarify things.

An untraversable chasm would exist between our realities unless my eyes were opened to see what I could not imagine. If I saw what the being described, I would be instantaneously transformed. I could never look at the Earth, human history, or human destiny the same. I would be spellbound by thoughts and dreams of the life out there. My daily living would be consumed by an imagination grasping for any means to experience even a smidgen of what the being illuminated.

Imagine now, while this being is doing its best to answer all my questions, another Being from another realm arrives at my door. This Being tells us that an invisible empire exists that dwarfs the universe in which we both live. The Being describes an infinite, eternal dominion that contains a quadrillion universes, all larger than our own by multiples of millions. In this conversation, the first being would be star-struck by the second Being in its description of life that can’t be perceived. The first being would be like Camp all over again. It would grope at trying to comprehend the incomprehensible, at trying to envision what cannot be seen. An untraversable chasm would exist between the two beings. Their realities are so different they can’t be compared.

If Ray Trapani met either of these beings, would he still think he’s thriving when stealing millions from others? Would James Deen believe sexual orgasm is the highest purpose in life? Would Ms. Blanco think twice about greenlighting hundreds of murders to preserve her lifestyle? How would these three choose to live if their eyes were opened to other realities far beyond the evanescence of the here and now? Would they finally be honest enough to ask What’s next?

On February 14, 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft, traveling at 38,210 miles per hour (11 miles per second), was beyond Neptune’s orbit when it turned its camera around to take pictures of its old home from which it had departed thirteen years before. In the vast expanse, 3.7 billion miles away, was a pale blue dot the size of a pixel against the backdrop of an ocean of galactic black. Afterward, Voyager 1 turned its camera off forever. Seventy-six days later, those photographic images arrived at Earth.

That pale blue dot is our Earth. All the mined gold it contains is estimated to be worth $12 trillion. Jesus asked What does a man gain if he acquires the whole world but loses his soul? What does Ray gain if he pockets a trillion but loses out on unpacking a universe that contains entire planets of precious metals and gemstones? What does James gain if he can boast of an unmatched number of intimate relationships when he could have experienced profound friendships with a billion people forever? Will Felix still think hedonistic lust is hot when he’s old and frail, and the dark uncertainty of the future haunts him like a nightmare?

All that glitters is not gold. Tell that to Camp, whose life is consumed with smelling animal scents. His glitter is in those scents. If his eyes were opened, he’d smell everything differently. Ray, James, Felix, and Griselda are transfixed with the glitter of money, sex, and fame, but if they could see that pale blue dot from the outer reaches of our solar system, they might realize their lives are empty and meaningless grasping at things so small. The dot they imagined so important eventually becomes utterly undetectable from greater distances.

Camp can’t imagine the world in which I live. I can’t imagine the worlds that exist far beyond my own. This physical universe, enormous as it is, can’t relate to the transcendent kingdom that diminishes it to insignificance. With so much vastness beyond me, how can I be captivated by things so diminished by comparison?

The Apostle Paul painted a haunting picture of the destiny of this world inhabited by too many men and women like those mentioned above. You should know this, Timothy, that in the last days there will be very difficult times. For people will love only themselves and their money. They will be boastful and proud, scoffing at God, disobedient to their parents, and ungrateful. They will consider nothing sacred. They will be unloving and unforgiving; they will slander others and have no self-control. They will be cruel and hate what is good. They will betray their friends, be reckless, be puffed up with pride, and love pleasure rather than God. They will act religious, but they will reject the power that could make them godly.

This is the kind of world created by people devoured by glitter greed. Jude described them well. These people scoff at things they do not understand. Like unthinking animals, they do whatever their instincts tell them, and so they bring about their own destruction…. living only to satisfy their desires.

If only we could see the promise of tomorrow before we squander our lives on today. If only we weren’t inclined to surrender our souls to gain a world in the throes of decadence and decay. Jim Elliot, a Christian missionary martyred in Ecuador said it well. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.  All the glitter on this Pale Blue Dot can’t begin to match the gold that awaits in a whole new world way out there.