Featured Image Credit: ALEXANDER NEMENOV/AFP/Erika Goldring/Getty Images
Topics: Space, Science, Technology, NASA
Emily Brown
Topics: Space, Science, Technology, NASA
A former NASA astronaut who had a chilling realization that we're living a 'lie' has also revealed why humanity is 'paying a very high price’.
Ron Garan began sharing his thoughts on life on Earth after spending time away from it during a total of 178 days in space.
The astronaut, fighter pilot and social entrepreneur has spent time on the US space shuttle, the Russian Soyuz spacecraft and the International Space Station, and while looking down on Earth he was hit by what he described as a 'sobering realization'.
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Sharing his thoughts in an interview with Big Think, Garan said: "I saw an iridescent biosphere teaming with life.
"I didn't see an economy, but since our human-made systems treat everything including the very life-support systems of our planet as the [...] subsidiary of the global economy, it's obvious from the vanish point of space that we're living a lie."
Upon his return to Earth, Garan explained how his perspective shifted while he was in space due to what is known as the 'Overview Effect'.
"The Overview Effect describes the shift that astronauts have when they see the planet hanging in the blackness of space," Garan said. "There's this lightbulb that pops up when we realize how interconnected and interdependent we all are."
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Having realized this, Garan went on to share his discovery of how all of humanity is 'floating in darkness' to some extent.
"We think we know the whole picture, when in reality we see a very very small representation," Garan said.
Because we don't see the 'actual picture', we're unable to 'solve a lot of the problems that we face', he claimed.
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As a result, Garan continued: "We're paying a really high price right now, as a civilization.
"Part of the reasons we're not solving the problems is because we don't have the right perspective, we're not addressing things in the reality of the situation.
"That's one of the reasons why we... need to get out of the darkness," Garan added.
Upon his return to Earth, Garan took what he'd experienced with the Overview Effect to come up with the concept of the 'Orbital Perspective'.
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He described the Orbital Perspective as 'the call to action', adding: "[It's] the sense of injustice that we see, when we see the sobering contradiction between the indescribable beauty of our planet and the unfortunate realities of life on our planet for a significant number of the inhabitants."
Instead of thinking about the economy and society first, then, Garan has urged people to start approaching life in a way that benefits humanity as a whole in the first instance.