The Overview Effect and One Beautiful World

 

Here's the reflection I shared at today's music event in Spring of Hope Church for the One Beautiful World Arts Festival:

The main publicity image for the One Beautiful World Arts Festival is a painting of the world as seen from space by Jackie Burns, whose inspirational exhibition of space art is currently at St Andrew’s Wickford.

The first time that astronauts were able to photograph the whole Earth from space came with the first manned mission to the moon on Apollo 8. On December 24, 1968, astronauts Commander Frank Borman, Command Module Pilot Jim Lovell, and Lunar Module Pilot William Anders entered lunar orbit. William Anders captured an iconic picture of the Earth that day which came to be known as Earthrise. Anders said, “We came all this way to explore the Moon, and the most important thing is that we discovered the Earth.”

What Anders experienced is called The Overview Effect; a shift in awareness by astronauts seeing Earth from outer space as a “tiny, fragile ball of life.” The term was coined by author Frank White in 1987 in his book, The Overview Effect — Space Exploration and Human Evolution.

Apollo 8 astronaut Jim Lovell said: “The vast loneliness up here of the Moon is awe inspiring, and it makes you realize just what you have back there on Earth. The Earth from here is a grand oasis to the big vastness of space.”

Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins said: “The thing that really surprised me was that it [Earth] projected an air of fragility. And why, I don’t know. I don’t know to this day. I had a feeling it’s tiny, it’s shiny, it’s beautiful, it’s home, and it’s fragile.”

Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong said: “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.”

Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin said: “From the distance of the moon, Earth was four times the size of a full moon seen from Earth. It was a brilliant jewel in the black velvet sky.”

Songwriter Julie Gold wrote a song called ‘From a distance’:

“From a distance, the world looks blue and green
And the snow-capped mountains white
From a distance, the ocean meets the stream
And the eagle takes to flight
From a distance, there is harmony
And it echoes through the land
It's the voice of hope
It's the voice of peace
It's the voice of every man”

The Overview Effect has inspired hope as it ‘has been turning astronauts into environmental advocates ever since the first person in space, Yuri Gagarin, marvelled at the planet from orbit in 1961. “People of the world, let us safeguard and enhance this beauty — not destroy it,” the Soviet cosmonaut said upon his return. A half-century later, ex-NASA astronaut José Hernández said that the view aboard the Space Shuttle Discovery in 2009 turned him into “an instant treehugger.” As a result, in recent years, astronauts, including the former NASA astronaut Mae Jemison and French astronaut Thomas Pesquet, have spoken at international climate negotiations, bringing their big-picture perspective with them.

Paintings like those of Jacqui Burns or photos like Earthrise can give us a sense of the Overview Effect and grow in us a greater concern for the one beautiful world we inhabit. For those of us who are religious, our concern for the planet should be heightened by our understanding that it was wonderfully created by God and that human beings have been given the task of caring for it by our Creator. As Julie Gold puts it in her song God is watching us from a distance and, therefore, watching how we care for the world he has made. 

But regardless of whether God’s creation of the world features on our radar or not, the Overview Effect – that sense of the beauty and fragility of our wonderful world – should compel us, as has been the case for so many astronauts, to want to address the climate emergency and save our one beautiful world from the jeopardy into which our human exploitation of resources has placed it.

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Ayo-Ayo: Kabiyesi.