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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

#221

Post by bkirkby »

phantom_of_cato wrote: post #208
bkirkby wrote: post #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)…

> 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. I genuinely don't understand what would be sad about that. The possibility of the next generation being able to explore at least one of those planets is very real.

i'm not sure i would call it _completely_ sad. i would say the sad was mixed in with awe. in an instant i felt both incredibly small and incredibly important. it was very surreal.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#223

Post by Kiboneu »

flobosg wrote: post #19
shrthnd wrote: 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…

> You develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the moon, international politics looks so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, “Look at that, you son of a bitch.” ―Edgar D. Mitchell

I experienced this playing freeorion while listening to Carbon Based Lifeforms as a kid.

A few ambient tracks from CBL made me tear up: they used field recordings of the world (birds, children, trees, cities), woven through low frequency drones and rifts. It would sort of create a distance between the recording samples, and then, through sound, you zoom out, glide, become ephemeral in the face of the planet, like a cloud.

Freeorion primed my mind to think in some detail about a reduced form of state-level strategy (as 4x games tend to do). I realized that the first 10 rounds were highly predictive of success for the next 100 rounds, and so forth, so I understood that my actions could have the same non-linearity and influence (and the predictive power of that influence was based on my model of the world, which is easy in a 4x game but difficult in meatspace).

Combined, I saw in detail the cybernetic flows around the world… i was a world systems thinker. it’s taken some work not to pop my head out of frustration.

Now that part of me is applied to more localized systems and small things: seeds around me that grow via the world into things i may never witness directly, and putting out small fires around me that I hope to never witness as big fires. Memes, basically (or anti-memetic memes? Not so sure).

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#224

Post by anigbrowl »

wizofaus wrote: post #218
towaway15463 wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We’re still very far off from that and trending away from using more land in developed countries.

Really? "According to the a 2011 biomass census compiled by Vaclav Smil, human activity over the last 5,000 years has reduced total global biomass by about 50 percent". http://vaclavsmil.com/wp-content/uploads/PDR37-4.Smil_.pgs61...

'it's nothing compared to an asteroid impact' is just the elaboration of 'humans can't impact climate lol' or 'obviously you don't even care about the heat death of the universe'. While we shouldn't paralyse ourselves with existential guilt, evoking apocalyptic scenarios in a policy discussion is usually intended to derail discussion and prevent the emergence of consensus, ime.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#225

Post by anigbrowl »

osigurdson wrote: post #58
INTPenis wrote: post #38

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…

>> my mind always reaches for requires autocracy to fix the problems Maybe try reaching for something else (such as technological solutions). We are currently on the brink of armageddon due to an autocratic regime. Centralization IRL necessarily leads to corruption over time. It's efficient but not robust.

It's a mistake to think technology just solves those problems. After all, it's only because of technology that a single autocratic regime can threaten everyone else with armageddon.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#226

Post by 93po »

sandworm101 wrote: post #103

With all respect to Shatner (first canadian space tourist iirc) I dont take much from these narratives. A rich/famous/connected person does a thing that we all want to do but cannot afford, something that requires insane amounts of energy/pollution. Then they turn around and talk of the profound experience and how it has made them a better person. Big deal. The pubic good is limited to a few interviews and an article…

Shatner (fattest person to have ever gone to space)

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#227

Post by hipjiveguy »

logifail wrote: post #97
j3s wrote: post #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,…

> [..] talk about death always gets to me At some point during the Covid years, I turned a mental page and decided that 'carpe diem' is my new motto. Not in the traditional "bucket list" sense, until Covid I had a mental list of places I [thought I] wanted to go ... and experiences I [thought I] wanted to have. Daft stuff usually involving long-haul travel and/or hard to get to places. I've ditched all of that. Now i…

Great thoughts, I can relate... for you, what does "seeing people" mean?

For myself, I think it's not just being there, but actually engaging them.

Expressing myself openly, with an open heart, and mind.

I've not been good at that in the past but as I get older, it is what I hope and wish for, and am trying to be better at.

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#228

Post by hattori31 »

hairofadog wrote: post #172
jerome-jh wrote: post #163

Unfortunately sending every millionaire into space for them to realize this is an hostile environment is taking us closer to earth destruction. Sorry to be sour about this, but people could just teach themself astronomy and realize there is no place out there to welcome us when the earth will be on the verge to become unlivable. Even assuming a colony of a dozen women/men is ever established on the moon or Mars, they…

While I don’t disagree with your overall point, it’s worth noting that this essay is from the point of view of William Shatner, the actor who played the original Captain Kirk on the Star Trek TV series. I’m pretty sure he didn’t pay, and it sounds like he may have even been paid to go. My impression is that Shatner’s participation was the classiest part of the trip, which is really saying something. The moment after…

Video of the champagne for others looking for it https://youtu.be/9GQoHIBDogU

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#229

Post by AlwaysRock »

sandworm101 wrote: post #182
AlwaysRock wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Shatner is an actor famously known for staring in star trek which famously uses many of Shakespeare, the most well known bard, themes or outright plots. Further, he's stared in Shakespeare live productions. Even more, so he's made several spoken word lyrical albums. Some of his words immediately after landing are poetic, “I hope I never recover, that I can maintain what I feel now.” They did send a poet.

All in the past. Find and send the next young shatner so that the experience can inform all his work, not just his last few years.

lmao oh so send a poet but not that poet a different poet who is younger because...

Dont you think that once space flight has been more normalized there will be a whole slew of young poets who do exactly what you describe?

Re: My Trip to Space Filled Me with Overwhelming Sadness

#230

Post by RestlessMind »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #153
RestlessMind wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> a bad thing only when putin does it. Here is a key difference between Russia and the US/Europe. When Iraq war is bad, thousands of people can march across American/European cities without a fear of getting jailed. People can run for elections hammering their opponents on voting for a monstrous war (Obama trounced Hillary and others) and win. And that makes a difference (Syria - US/Europe didn't go there; in fact, t…

Yes, protestng when it's irrelevant for the government... closing peoples bank accounts when it's not (canadian truckers).

Closing bank accounts is bad. Jailing an old woman in her 80's? That's whole another level. No government is perfect but there are shades of bad and you can see for yourself where a government falls on that spectrum.
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