If we could all go to space

I just read an article about Roland Garan, an astronaut who spent six months in space between the US Space Shuttle, Russian Soyuz, and the International Space Station. The article shared the following quote from Garan that reminded me of something I wrote a few years back.

Garan's insight is apparently common among astronauts. It's something that's become known as the "overview effect." Once you've seen the pale blue dot from a distance, I guess it's hard to forget how small and fragile our existence is. Their experience highlights the need for a systems-based perspective when addressing the complex, interconnected challenges we face—something I focus on in my work and teaching. By viewing global issues through a holistic lens, we can recognize the interdependence of environmental, social, and economic systems—and work on root causes rather than symptoms.

I became aware of the overview effect via Sir Fred Hoyle, an astronomer who believed that a photograph of the Earth would change our global consciousness, and Apollo 14 astronaut, Edgar D. Mitchell. As one who has long worked on environmental challenges, the ideas they shared affectedly me deeply. I wrote about this in the Preface to the first Wicked Problems Collaborative book, "What do we do about inequality?" I've shared the full Preface below which focuses on the insights of Hoyle and Mitchell and my related thoughts, which helped solidify the importance of systems thinking for our needed course correction. Please give it a read and share your thoughts.

The Preface from What do we do about inequality?

We tend to get caught up in the minutiae, putting things under glass and poring over them looking for flaws, rarely taking the time to step back and view things through a wider lens.

Ah, yes. Here’s an errant brush stroke in the grand master’s work. It’s rubbish. Throw it out.

But when we do take a step back, the flaws melt away, and so do all the associated problems that cause us difficulty. Well, they’re there, but distance can help provide perspective.

Among humans, astronauts have enjoyed one of the most extraordinary perspectives. All of us can gaze up at the heavenly bodies and try to imagine them up close, but most of us are stuck here on Earth using simple tools and our imagination. Those who have visited space have had the opportunity to watch our planet Earth shrink and fade into a pale blue dot.

It’s lonely out in space.

Our problems seem insurmountable because we are mired in them. But if we could momentarily step outside (like the astronauts), what would those problems look like? Would we experience the cognitive shift many of them have felt while staring at our planet from afar?

Sir Fred Hoyle, a British Astronomer, famously prophesied, “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.” When reflecting two decades later, he felt justified in his prediction: “Something new has happened to create a worldwide awareness of our planet as a unique and precious place. It seems to me more than a coincidence that this awareness should have happened at exactly the moment man took his first step into space.”

The words of Apollo 14’s Lunar Module pilot, Edgar D. Mitchell, seem to support this idea:

Many of the ideas we hold dear are arbitrary or historically contingent in nature. We believed that the Earth was flat until we had solid evidence to the contrary. We believed the sun revolved around the Earth. We believed that we couldn’t affect the Earth’s climate. We believed.

Factually inaccurate ideas like the concept of race take hold of our collective conscious in the form of pernicious memes, and they stay there until something powerful shakes us free. The experience of seeing our planet from a distance has provoked such a paradigm shift in the way many astronauts view humanity. The distance helped them re-perceive our fragile existence. Seeing the small rock—dotted with water, enveloped in gases, and teeming with life—while surrounded by a lifeless void, engendered a profound change in many of them. They call this the “overview effect.” I can only imagine the impact of such an experience.

We have peered deep into the known universe and thus far have found ourselves to be all alone on an island, surrounded by a vast sea (as far as we can currently tell) of lifeless planets. Yet there are over seven billion of us striving against one another, against the other species on the planet, against our collective future. If we zoomed in on each human interaction, we would likely see people mostly behaving fairly rationally given the systems that govern our lives and the incentives they provide us. But what if we started backing out? What if we started looking at numerous interactions collectively? If the individual interactions were guided by sound reasoning, wouldn’t their collective effects also seem logical? Or can a mass of independently rational actions be collectively irrational?

Given what we know of our current state of affairs, how far would we have to step back to see our exploits as folly? Further, at what level would things start to obscure? If people on the ground look like ants when we stand atop tall buildings, and like mere electrons as we zoom out further (before they completely disappear), at what level should we focus in on to better understand individual, group, and collective needs, problems, and opportunities?

When we are reflecting on life’s big issues, picking a useful distance can be helpful, but it’s just a starting point. If we stop there, we are basing our thinking on a single “right” perspective when, instead, we could choose to attempt to circumscribe the idea, viewing it from a vast array of vantage points. We could climb over and under it and try to see and understand the circumstances from as many viewpoints as possible. We could give things a look from near and far (and many points in between). This is hard work, so we should take care in selecting concerns for which to afford such treatment. However, certain ones hold obvious importance for humanity. Wicked problems—the intractable ones which defy solution, or even definition—require such attention. Those are the ones that this group has been formed to confront.

Our first topic is inequality, a lever that pries civil society apart. Today’s conversations around rampant and growing disparities paradoxically tend to polarize and homogenize thought on the subject. This book was written in an effort to improve public discourse while promoting new, divergent lines of thinking. By offering a chorus of distinct voices, we hope to help the willing craft new mental models that can challenge and stretch existing views and practices. Our aim is to engender fresh interdisciplinary conversations around inequality in working to encourage outcomes that are more just and collectively desirable than those currently endured. The opportunity on offer is a tall challenge, which we hope you will accept. But a just, civil society is a cause we should all be willing to fight for.

If we want to create sustainable societies that benefit all life on Earth, we need to adopt a planetary mindset rooted in #SystemsThinking.

While the overview effect could help us rethink our place in the universe, not everyone can go to space. Unfortunately, Sir Fred Hoyle’s hope that a picture might suffice didn’t pan out. It’s time to figure out how to get 'there' from here. The planet is telling us we’re running out of time. Let’s heed the call.

#Sustainability #CircularEconomy #CarriedByPurpose #GlobalChallenges #ClimateAction #PlanetaryBoundaries #DoughnutEconomics #Complexity