The famous Blue Marble photo of the Earth taken by
the crew of Apollo 17 on their way to the Moon (1972)
I.
When it comes to seeing the big picture, astronauts obviously have an edge over the rest of us. Indeed, there is even a term for their cosmic perspective and the cognitive shift that it sometimes triggers: the overview effect ...
Apparently, when viewing the Earth from space, some astronauts experience a kind of epiphany; they suddenly realise the fragile beauty of the small blue planet they have left behind and how rare and precious the life that it supports. All borders and boundaries become meaningless and all divisions between people seem arbitrary if not irrelevant and absurd; the need to create a planetary system that acknowledges the brotherhood of man becomes imperative if we are to safeguard the Earth and survive as a species.
II.
I have to say, I'm highly suspicious of this cosmic euphoria ...
More precisely, whilst I'm prepared to accept that some astronauts genuinely experience a subjective feeling of awe and wonder - and that this has nothing to do with a faulty oxygen supply or even a God gene - I don't much like the way this is then articulated in the language of moral and political idealism by self-proclaimed space philosopher Frank White [1] and fellow members of the so-called Overview Institute.
In their Declaration of Vision and Principles, they churn out a familiar line of what I would describe as sinister utopian bullshit: this is a critical moment in human history ... we face many challenges ... our greatest need is for a global vision of unity based on the revolutionary experience of the blessed few so that we might transform human culture, etc., etc.
The Overview Effect (note their use of capitals) is a fundamental perspective-altering experience which must be brought to the masses via space simulation (i.e. virtual reality and other forms of technology) and space tourism, in order to raise human consciousness to a cosmic level, so that mankind might finally fulfil the Socratic injunction to rise above the Earth.
Hallelujah and amen!
III.
We have, of course, heard all this - or something very similar - many times before; for the will to Oneness and a desire for transcendence is depressingly common throughout human history.
When will we realise that it is our monomania that is so fatally mistaken? When will we accept that the beauty of man is that his unfolding is towards infinite variety, not universal sameness?
As D. H. Lawrence notes, when men finally learn how to live in touch then "the great movement of centralising into oneness will cease / and there will be a vivid recoil into separateness" [2] with all the differences given free expression.
Staying true to the earth means climbing down Pisgah into the nearness of the nearest - not zooming into space and thinking this gives you a god's eye view from which to judge how everyone should live.
IV.
Perhaps it's just me, but when I look at the above photo of the earth taken by the Apollo 17 astronauts, I don't come over all Louis Amstrong and think to myself what a wonderful world.
Like Nietzsche, rather, I realise there were eternities during which the earth and the
clever animal man did not exist, just as there are eternities to come after the earth and mankind are no more. And that when it's all over, when the last trace of human intelligence has long vanished from the universe, nothing will have changed, nothing will have mattered [3].
How's that for an (admittedly nihilistic) overview!
Notes
[1] Frank White was the writer who coined the term and first explored the concept of the overview effect. See The Overview Effect - Space Exploration and Human
Evolution, (Houghton-Mifflin, 1987).
[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Future States', in Poems, Vol. I, ed. Christopher Pollnitz, (Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 526. See also the related verse 'Future War', p. 527.
[3] See Nietzsche, 'On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense', in Philosophy and Truth:
Selections from Nietzsche’s Notebooks of the Early 1870s, ed. and trans. Daniel Breazeale, (Humanities Press, 1979), p. 79.
