Earth, 2020 — Boldly Going Where No Planet Has Gone Before

Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!

Insanity, they say, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result. If that definition is accurate, then the world as we know it is totally insane. Bonkers. Hopelessly messed up. It is customary at the beginning of a new year, a new decade, a new century, or a new millennium to look back at what hasn’t worked in the past and vow to do things differently in the future. Typically, those vows don’t last long.

Earth from space
Credit: NASA

According to legend, in December of the year 999, people in Europe came to believe the world would end at midnight on the last day of the first millennium. Wealthy people spent the month giving away their assets in an attempt to get right with God before the end times. On New Year’s Eve, everyone gathered in churches across the land to await their fate. When the sun rose the next morning, all those previously wealthy people immediately set about recovering their assets and returning to their avaricious ways. In other words, they learned nothing from the experience.

Some say mistakes are the best teachers. Elon Musk says burning fossil fuels is the biggest mistake humans have ever made. If so, few seem to be learning from it. Fossil fuels are still the foundation of modern society, even though there are perfectly good alternatives that do not threaten humanity with extinction and are even cheaper now.

The Earth is blessed with abundant energy from the sun. Every 24 hours, enough sunlight strikes the Earth to meet the energy needs of every man, woman, and child alive for an entire year. A 4th grader would tell us that transitioning away from the sources of energy that threaten our existence to renewable sources that will meet the needs of all humans for millions if not billions of years is the smart thing to do. So why don’t we do it?

The answer can be found in human nature, the genetic codes imprinted on our brain cells since before recorded history. Back in the dim and distant past, humans learned to fear others. When the neighbors said they would have you for dinner, they meant exactly that.

Over the ages, much of humanity learned to hate “the other” and fear anyone who was different. People with dark skin were demonized, as if their brains, hearts, lungs, feet, and other bodily organs were somehow different, more sinister, and a threat to existence. People from foreign countries whose noses or eyes or lips or ears looked different were similarly assumed to be dangerous. People who ate certain foods or used certain spices were deemed suspect.

Through it all, the world continued to turn and wars were fought. Fear and hatred led to massive deportations of those considered too dangerous to live in polite society. Squabbles over religion have accounted for more deaths than any other factor. Ethnic and religious strife are so commonplace that they have inspired innumerable satirical songs, poems, and plays.

Back in the ’60s, when America was truly great, the Kingston Trio had a hit song with these lyrics: “The whole world is festering with unhappy souls. The French hate the Germans, the Germans hate the Poles. Italians hate Yugoslavs, South Africans hate the Dutch … and I don’t like anybody very much!” Not much has changed since then.

Harvard professor and serial satirist Tom Lehrer made a similar lament in his brilliant “National Brotherhood Week.” To wit: “Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics and the Catholics hate the Protestants. And the Hindus hate the Moslems and everybody hates the Jews.” Disturbing and offensive? Sure. But is it accurate? Oh, yeah. Speaking of Moslems, who we now call Muslims, they have been slaughtering each other for centuries because of a disagreement about a few words in the Koran, the holy book they say teaches peace.

Is Hate Our Fate?

It should be pretty clear by now that hatred of others is holding civilization back from fulfilling its God-given promise. In America today, howling mobs hurl invective at people with brown skin, migrants, refugees, Jews, those who dare to offer food and water to refugees, gays, lesbians, or women who presume to control their own bodily functions without getting approval from the state.

And America calls itself a Christian nation. Anyone with the most cursory understanding of the New Testament knows it is anything but. The culture of hatred pervades American culture, egged on by those who have learned how to goad others into ever higher levels of hatred using Twitter or other social media.

We all know that hating others is wrong and ultimately self defeating. As Marvin Gaye taught us, “War is not the answer, for only love can conquer hate.” We also know that Jesus gave His life to teach us how to love one another, but somehow the message hasn’t gotten through. Perhaps the issue is one of perspective?

The Overview Effect

Earthrise
Credit: William Anders/NASA

Earthrise is the name given to the first photo of the Earth floating in space, all alone in a black void. It was taken by Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders on Christmas Eve, 1968. Almost every person who has ever traveled in space has been awestruck at seeing the Earth from that perspective. The powerful emotions unleashed by the experience have come to be known as “the Overview Effect.”

According to The Guardian, Edgar Mitchell, a member of the Apollo 14 mission and 6th person to walk on the surface of the moon, was so overwhelmed by his experience that he wanted to grab politicians by the scruff of the necks and drag them into space to see the same thing he had seen. He reported that looking back at the Earth from space caused him to develop “an instant global consciousness.”

Now Steven Pratscher, a psychologist at the University of Missouri, wants to recreate that experience here on Earth. “There’s a lot of division and polarization and disconnection between people. We’d like to see if we can recreate the Overview effect on Earth to have an impact on those issues,” he says.

Pratscher intends to recruit 100 volunteers who will be outfitted with a waterproof virtual reality headset and allow themselves to be immersed in a big vat of warm, salty water. The buoyancy will simulate the weightlessness of space and the VR device will show them images of the Earth taken from space. The high-definition, 360-degree video was produced by Silicon Valley startup SpaceVR.

Some volunteers will get the full immersion experience, some will float but not see the video, and some will watch the video while lying in bed. Before and after their one-hour session, the participants will complete a series of questionnaires to assess whether they had any mystical experiences, felt more connected to others, or had what psychologists call an “emotional breakthrough” moment. The persistence of any effects will be assessed after one week and again a month later.

“It may be able to elicit, to some degree, these mystical experiences, and I’m curious to see if they have persisting effects, for example on people’s values and behaviors, especially with respect to how people view the Earth and the environment, and the things they do that may impact the environment,” Pratscher says. “We’re causing potentially irreversible impact on the Earth, so hopefully it will wake people up to see that there are more things we can do to help save the planet, protect the environment, and live in more harmony.”

Not every astronaut has reported experiencing the Overview Effect, but according to The Guardian, those who have say that seeing the whole planet in the blackness of space, with no national borders, makes them feel like citizens of Earth rather than a particular country. Many have been struck by the thinness of the atmosphere — the stunning beauty of the planet — and feel compelled to protect it when they return.

“For me it was an epiphany in slow motion,” says Ron Garan, a former NASA astronaut who will not be involved in the trial. “It’s a profound sense of empathy, a profound sense of community, and a willingness to forgo immediate gratification and take a more multi-generational outlook on progress.”

“From space, the planet is a constantly changing masterpiece and the sheer beauty is absolutely breathtaking. It looks like a shining jewel and you realize that it’s home to everyone who ever lived and everyone who ever will be. But another thing that hit me was a sobering contradiction between the beauty of our planet and the unfortunate realities of life on our planet. It filled me with a sense of injustice. It infuriated me.”

“You can be sat up there in orbit thinking about this contradiction and then realize you’re sitting on the answer. The answer is that humans, when they set aside their differences and work together, can do anything. You want people to have that shift in perspective, to think planetary. You want them to come out and solve problems in context of the real world in its entirety, to solve multi-generational problems, not slap band aids on things,” he says.

If you live near the University of Missouri, you could volunteer for the experiment. Or you could purchase a copy of Earthrise in poster form, hang it on your wall, and ask yourself, “Are we really going to fuck this up in the name of hatred and avarice?”

Solving the threat of an overheated planet will take the concerted effort of every person on Earth. Perhaps Professor Pratscher’s experiment could help us learn how to work together for the common good rather than ripping each other to shreds and destroying the only home we will ever have. Hey, it’s worth a shot. Nothing else seems to be working.

The teachings of Jesus have fallen on deaf ears. The wisdom of Mohammed has been transmuted into a pervasive rage that has spanned centuries. The Hindu gods Brahma, Saraswati, Lakshmi, Vishnu, Shiva, Durga, Harihara, and Ardhanarishvara have not stopped India from declaring a holy war on Muslims. The thoughts of Confucius and Buddha have not kept the leaders of China from imprisoning millions of Uighurs. If the world does eventually become a cold, dark cinder floating through space, there is an excellent chance religious intolerance will be the primary reason humans were unable to work together to address the causes of an overheated planet.

Imagine

Is there any hope? Can people ever learn to work together in peace and harmony for the benefit of us all? If the past is any guide, there is little reason for optimism. If we continue to do what we have always done, we are doomed. Satirist YIP Harburg, author of the song Over the Rainbow and creative genius behind the movie The Wizard of Oz, pondered this question and came up with these thoughts.

God made the world in six days flat.

On the seventh, He said, “I’ll rest.”

So He let the thing into orbit swing

To give it a dry run test.

A billion years went by,

Then he took a look at the whirling blob.

His spirits fell as He said,

“Oh, well. It was only a six day job.”

The opposite of Harburg’s darkly humorous vision is the song Imagine penned by John Lennon and released in 1971. The beginning lyrics describe the Overview Effect perfectly.

Imagine there’s no countries.

It isn’t hard to do.

Nothing to kill or die for

And no religion, too.

Perhaps on this first day of a new decade, listening to Imagine one more time might offer us a clue how to save the world from the ravages of human activity. Click the link below, lean back, and let the ideas Lennon sang about percolate through your brain. In their own way, they may be just as powerful as the Overview Effect and you don’t have to travel all the way to Missouri to experience them.

Peace.

 

 


Have a tip for CleanTechnica? Want to advertise? Want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.

Latest CleanTechnica TV Video


Advertisement
 
CleanTechnica uses affiliate links. See our policy here.

Steve Hanley

Steve writes about the interface between technology and sustainability from his home in Florida or anywhere else The Force may lead him. He is proud to be "woke" and doesn't really give a damn why the glass broke. He believes passionately in what Socrates said 3000 years ago: "The secret to change is to focus all of your energy not on fighting the old but on building the new." You can follow him on Substack and LinkedIn but not on Fakebook or any social media platforms controlled by narcissistic yahoos.

Steve Hanley has 5456 posts and counting. See all posts by Steve Hanley