The Overview Effect

“Once a photograph of the earth, taken from the outside, is available … a new idea as powerful as any in history will be let loose.” 

Fred Hoyle - 1948

When astronauts went to space for the first time they experienced a profound shift in perspective upon seeing the earth from a distance for the first time. 

Astronauts on the Apollo missions of the mid-twentieth century struggled to express the profound cognitive change they experienced while earthgazing as no humans had ever done before. 

Today, even with photos and videos of earth from afar the experience for astronauts who experience the earth from above is life-changing. 

The experience became known as the overview effect. 

Those who have experienced it describe an overwhelming sense of oneness as they gaze on a planet where every human has ever lived. The realization that we are not on a vast planet but instead a tiny one compared to the vastness of space around it. Some astronauts have called it spaceship earth as a means to describe the planet with what appears to be a paper-thin layer of atmosphere protecting everything on board from the inhospitable conditions of the outer universe. 

Never has the concept of one biosphere, one spaceship, that we share been more important than it is now. 

The effects of humans are visible to those in space, from large swathes of deforestation, desertification, to melting Antarctic ice and billowing plumes of wildfires across the globe. 

Sharing the Overview Effect with people on earth is a way to gain a better understanding or our environment. It was not until we went to space that western society attained this perspective. 

The paradigm-shifting realization of the Overview Effect has been compared to enlightenment attained through meditative practice and eastern spiritual thought. The sense of oneness and universality garnered from the view of earth from space is one that has been practiced for thousands of years here on earth. 

In western culture, the Overview Effect has given us a road map for finding our place on our planet and in our universe.