The Extra Added Sugar Generation

Posted by Matthew Crouch at 00:24

Carl Sagans work has inspired and affected the course of my life but not in a specific measurable way at least with regards to any scientific undertaking beyond reading on my part. In many ways my life's outcome has been what Dr. Carl Sagans work with popularizing science for US citizens was trying to fight. Having been educated not by certified public school teachers but by a religious (as in conservative right) school my education and personal mythology were shaped by other peoples more arbitrary and political ideals at the expense of good rigorous training in math and science. In the background of my childhood and over my head was the Cosmos series on TV. All I remember of that was the phrase 'billions and billions'. Sagan was for evolution and against god. Therefore bad and probably the antichrist. Meanwhile I was flunking out of every math and science course but doing fine in religion courses.

Possibly my life contains a seed of what Dr. Sagan saw in the general population that was worth his time and effort away from his scientific work to make his special understanding of the universe available to anyone regardless of their intellectual capacities. Although educated within a school as I was I had walked away from it by my junior year in high school (to attend a public school - they had actual computers and I had never seen one) that followed by a few years withdrawal from the cult like grip of the church my schooling was affiliated with. Then I flirted with various 'new age' ideas that seemed to be the same old song and dance from my school days just a different cast of characters. I decided that Dr. Sagan knew more than I did and not just about science but maybe about the meaning of life.

In short I decided to practice atheism learn evolution, try to forget creationism and continue fighting my personal burden of religion I was brought up under - my success with that I attribute to the Cosmos series on TV. Because my schooling had demonized Sagans good name he became a hero that showed up later in my life.

I then read Candle in the Dark looking to Dr Sagan and his science to fill a divine void with scientific understanding. For that the Bologna Detection Kit still comes in handy. I now try to fill my 'soul' with online images of how vast and ongoing and beautiful the universe is. I would like to have learned math and science as my father did but that was for me another language and incomprehensible and what with hell and the devil being just around the corner did it matter what a Pythagorean theorem was anyway?

Would you believe my high school math teacher used to set me aside weekly after class to warn me that he could tell I was going to hell living as I was. When that time of putting the fear of judgment might have been put to better use with some basic tutoring (he could tell when I was day dreaming in his math class because I wasn't looking in the direction of members of the opposite sex).

Hearing of my intellectual hero who led me out from under the weight of the church passing on I was affected more than you might think. Here was a public figure that sorta hovered in the back ground of my mind. I attribute what Dr. Sagan offered the mind as what enabled me to step out from under the narcotic like influence of control from the church.

Oddly I named a dog I adopted (American brown dog (mutt)) from a pet rescue program after Dr. Saigon. Odd name for a dog. Much more interesting than naming a full breed dog Carl after the childrens books about a dog named Carl by Alexandra Day. Maybe not so respectful to Dr. Sagan. The dog daily reminds me of what Dr. Sagan enabled me to do with my life. By reading Dr. Sagan I was able to find a key to undo my brain washing like church education. I can't honestly say here I'm now as a result accomplished in the sciences nor am I even a backyard astronomer but my life never-the-less is more illuminated by Dr. Sagans candle in the dark work.

I've only seen the Milky Way at night once and that was in West Virginia near the Ohio River on a clear summers night. Me and my dog named Sagan left central Ohio to be with my Flemish Belgian man who was denied U.S. residency even though he had a good job there - thank you Defense of Marriage Act (DoMA). We now live under the light pollution orange layer that is night over Belgium an orange that is sometimes brighter at night than a rainy day. I would like to see the stars as I did once before. To be in the real dark not the electric orange or the darkness of a life without god but the actual dark side of earths rotation and see the eternity of the universe that real darkness reveals.
Sometimes it hurts to know the universe is so immense and so full of knowledge and actual places and that life is so short and our understanding so limited. But like I said with books like what Sagan wrote in his lifetime for people like me and on line images from Hubble or whatever enables me to glimpse things I wont understand like Dr Sagan did and those like him do.

If these words have held someone's attention this far I'll spare you how the book and movie Contact would give me a killer lump in my throat over things I hadn't thought of.

Thank you Carl Sagan dot com for keeping the bridge Dr. Sagan opened between the educated intellectual elite in contact with those of us in the primordial ooze of the masses.
in the states there is the rust belt and the bible belt but where is the science belt?
I'm reading a biography now of Sagan that I came across at an English bookstore for me reading Sagan and wanting to know about him is a shortcut to the wisdom my education failed equip me with to achieve.

Written June 11th 2002
Fan Mail email to the web site www.carlsagan.com
inspired by the TV broadcast of the motion picture CONTACT
and the book Demon Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark by Carl Sagan and Ann Druyan.
I did hear back from the kind folks at Carl Sagan dot com with word that this email was sent on to Ann Druyan.