Horton Hears A Who - Philosophy

In the concluding scene of Horton Hears A Who, we see the Earth zooming out into a tiny speck
floating around with other small specks, presumably other words or even parallel universe. Horton
occasionally pondered over this, whether his word was a tiny speck just like Mayor Whos, so the
final scene really challenges the audience to consider how small we really are: there are millions of
galaxies, stars and planets out there that are spread out at incredible distances, and we may never
reach them. After all, weve barely set foot on a planet within our solar system (and the moon
landing could have probably been a hoax anyway, considering the Cold War at the time). This leads
to the idea that were probably not the only living creatures in the universe. Arthur C Clarke, a
renowned British science writer and futurist (among several other professions) famously said, Two
possibilities exist: either we are alone in the Universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying.
Nobody, except God, can say for certain which is true at this stage of time. But does it really matter?
Who cares if were a speck of dust; why are millions of dollars being invested into space exploration
when there are still one billion people living in slums struggling to put food on the table, when
climate change is destroying the planets delicate biosphere, when was is still being waged in several
countries? Why are we not sustaining the world we live in for the sake of our own children and their
children and so on, rather than wandering off and looking for another world? There are no
consequences for this being true or not, because it is factual. We are just a speck, not necessarily a
dust speck, but still in the sense of how large we really are.

A speck of dust can hold a whole world. It could be very well possible that like with Horton, we could
discover that something so small could be flourishing with life. This is already true however: there
are millions of bacteria and miniature creatures are thriving everywhere around us but are invisible
to the naked eye. Who knows what else could be there; could there be tiny creatures living inside an
atom? Is the atom really the smallest thing in existence? Mayor Whos little world seemed exactly
like a normal world, but its hard to imagine every single bit of it collectively fitting into something as
small as a speck of dust and still able to communicate with Horton. As established earlier, we are just
a speck in terms of relative size compared to the rest of the universe, and we are technically a whole
world. We all benefit from this viewpoint. It can be said that each human is a world too of
thoughts, memories and experiences and each human has the capability, despite how small they
are, to really revolutionise the world. If each human world collaborated and co-operated with other
human words, then humanity could be a form of universe itself, a metaphor for all the complex
relationships that exist. This statement could be viewed through many different lenses and its depth
can significantly challenge the thought processes that we undertake. In conclusion, many of these
ideas relate back to one of Socrates best quotes:
The unexamined life is not worth living
and humans should seriously challenge the world around them to get the best out of life, even if
we are just a speck of dust.