This astronaut believes that if more people experienced the feeling he did, many of the world’s issues could be resolved.
Sixty-two years ago, Yuri Gagarin became the first person to travel into space and likely the first to experience what scientists today refer to as “the overview effect.” This phenomenon occurs when someone sees the Earth from space and realizes that they are in a place where “borders are invisible, and conflicts over race, religion, and economy become meaningless.”
The overview effect allows a person to recognize that human conflicts seem trivial and to see our planet in its true essence, as a tightly interconnected organism.
The overview effect makes one realize that human conflicts seem insignificant.
In a captivating interview with Big Think, astronaut, author, and humanitarian Ron Garan stated that if many of us could experience this effect, we could solve most of what harms humanity and our planet.
Garan spent 178 days in space and traveled over 114 million kilometers during 2,842 orbits. From above, he realized that our planet is much more fragile than he had thought.
“When I looked out the window of the International Space Station, I saw lightning storms flash like camera flashes, I saw the auroras dancing so close that we could reach out and touch them. And I saw our planet’s astonishingly thin atmosphere. In that moment, I suddenly realized that it is that paper-thin layer that keeps every living being on our planet alive,” Garan said in the video.
The legendary “Pale Blue Dot” photo taken by Voyager 1 serves as a powerful reminder of Earth’s smallness and solitude in the vast universe.
“I saw a shimmering biosphere teeming with life,” he continued. “I did not see an economy. But because our artificial social structures regard everything, including the life support systems on our planet, as mere units owned by the global economy, it is clear from the broader perspective of space that we are living in a deception.”
This deception arises from a misjudgment of our priorities, according to Garan.
“We need to shift our priorities from ‘economy and society, and then the planet’ to ‘the planet, society, and then the economy.’ That is when we will continue our process of evolution,” he added.
Garan stated that humanity is paying a high price for failing to prioritize the planet, and this is the main reason we are not solving many of our problems. Although our economic activities may improve quality of life in some aspects, they are also disastrous for the very planet that sustains us.
Actor William Shatner had a similar experience to Gagarin when he traveled into space.
Shatner wrote: “It was one of the most profound feelings of sadness I have ever encountered. The contrast between the harsh cold of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below made me incredibly sad. Every day, we face the awareness of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, plants, and organisms… things that took 5 billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of human intervention.”
Ultimately, the astronaut hopes that we can collectively change the future and protect this precious planet. “When we can evolve beyond the two-dimensional thinking of us versus them and grasp the true multidimensional reality of the universe we live in, that is when we will no longer drift in the darkness… and that is the future we all want to be a part of. That is our true call to action.”
