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My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

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Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#61

Worth watching is the moment Shatner tries to explain his experience to Bezos, and Bezos barely listens. A portrait of two very different men. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AilPvC37c

> You want a little of this? From the top comment: > It becomes that much worse when you remember that Shatner is a recovering alcoholic, and lost his wife to an alcohol related drowning incident. Bezos is a real piece of shit.

Why was this flagged? Shatner clearly refuses the champagne.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#62

Worth watching is the moment Shatner tries to explain his experience to Bezos, and Bezos barely listens. A portrait of two very different men. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AilPvC37c

He does look a bit of a dim-witted moron, but in his defence he'd also been in space and had his own experience - he wanted to celebrate.

Not only that, Shatner talks so slow, I’m sure Bezos was getting impatient.

I don’t like Bezos, but I gotta call it like I see it

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're opposites: one's being far removed from humans, one's seeing too much of them at once. Try building a 50k-capacity orbital hotel for instagram tourists, and see what happens to this #OverviewEffect.

> They're opposites: one's being far removed from humans, one's seeing too much of them at once. I get your point. What i meant was, the internet empowering mankind to communicate in 'real-time', transparent to man made concepts like borders and countries. I was hoping that this 'wormhole' would strengthen the sense of a global community.

I feel that it has created a global community, but few seem to recognize it.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#64
> I love the mystery of the universe. I love all the questions that have come to us over thousands of years of exploration and hypotheses. Stars exploding years ago, their light traveling to us years later; black holes absorbing energy; satellites showing us entire galaxies in areas thought to be devoid of matter entirely… all of that has thrilled me for years… but when I looked in the opposite direction, into space, there was no mystery, no majestic awe to behold . . . all I saw was death.

this paragraph felt so profound, i sprang a few tears. hearing someone who has been through so much talk about death always gets to me.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#65
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This make me wonder if flat-earth and other limiting cosmological views are mental shields against the realization that nothing matters except our peculiar existence.

generally limited world views regardless of the facts are a mental shield of people afraid of something. the problem is, the fear is so deep beneath the crust of hatred and other negative emotions that getting to it and working with it is often practically impossible

What other world views are you referring to? (excluding the flat earth example)

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#66

This was very well written, very insightful and humble. Considering he's usually an asshole to people IRL. But I guess he just comes off that way when he wants to convey his truth to people. Not completely foreign to myself, having discovered that I'm actually autistic in my late 30s. That explained a lot. Anyways, this overview effect is something I always felt, even without going into space. I always felt we were w…

> ...this overview effect is something I always felt, even without going into space.

Very interesting. Have you met anyone else IRL who shares the overview effect?

> ...autocracy to fix the problems.

Tchaikovsky's novel Children of Time explores how two different cultures try to tackle this problem. I won't spoil it for you. It's a notion I keep chewing on.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Children_of_Time_(novel)

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You want a little of this? From the top comment: > It becomes that much worse when you remember that Shatner is a recovering alcoholic, and lost his wife to an alcohol related drowning incident. Bezos is a real piece of shit.

Why was this flagged? Shatner clearly refuses the champagne.

No post body was provided.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#68
post #47

Worth watching is the moment Shatner tries to explain his experience to Bezos, and Bezos barely listens. A portrait of two very different men. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1AilPvC37c

I watched it live. It was uncomfortable and heartbreaking. William had a very profound experience and he wanted to explain it and thank Jeff. Jeff could not even focus long enough to let William get a few sentences out. Jeff’ s “team” (I think led by his significant other) was essentially throwing a frat party behind him - screaming ”whooo” and drinking/spraying champagne. It was sad.

Screaming "whooo" is legitimate behaviour after doing something exhilarating/dangerous for the first time.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#69
post #2

> I learned later that I was not alone in this feeling. It is called the “Overview Effect” and is not uncommon among astronauts, including Yuri Gagarin, Michael Collins, Sally Ride, and many others. Essentially, when someone travels to space and views Earth from orbit, a sense of the planet’s fragility takes hold in an ineffable, instinctive manner. Author Frank White first coined the term in 1987: “There are no bord…

Back in the day, i was naively hoping, that the internet had a similar effect on man.

Sometimes I think people need to be reminded that humanity is, in fact, awesome.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#70
Fwiw I had something akin to the overview effect when I attended a full solar eclipse. I thought I was prepared. I had read up on what to expect because I wanted to make the most of the experience for the kids. I wanted to make sure we observed the "shadow bands" (snake like shadows traversing across single colored surfaces that aren't always visible).

Everything did proceed as I expected (including the shadow bands), but when the eclipse was full, the earth went quiet. All the animals stopped and wondered (including the younger children who were boisterously playing seconds before the full effect).

As I stared up into the heavens, I had this deeply profound realization that our planet is traveling through space like all the other planets. The observation and experience of an eclipse made the abstract concept of space a reality and brought it closer to me in a way that just thinking (a lot) about space has never done.

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