Astronaut says the sight of a particular manmade structure from space had a profound impact on him

Astronauts often describe how profoundly different Earth looks from space. Ron Garan, who spent 178 days in orbit, came to a striking conclusion: humanity has been living a lie. "When we see our planet from the perspective of space, certain things become undeniably clear," Garan shared during a Big Think talk. He noted that problems like global warming, deforestation, and biodiversity loss are often treated as separate issues, when in fact, they're symptoms of a deeper, underlying problem.

"The problem is, that we don't see ourselves as planetary," the astronaut remarked. "I saw the paparazzi-like flashes of lightning storms, I saw dancing curtains of auroras that seemed so close as if we could reach out and touch them and I saw the unbelievable thinness of our planet’s atmosphere." He added, "In that moment I was hit with a sobering realization, that paper-thin layer keeps every living being on our planet alive." The astronaut could see a marvelously iridescent biosphere that was full of life. What he couldn't see was an economy. "But since our human-made systems treat everything, including the very life-support systems of our planet, as the wholly owned subsidiary of the global economy, it's obvious from the vantage point of space that we are living a lie," he shared.

"We need to move on from thinking of economy, society, planet to planet, society, economy. That's when we are going to continue our evolutionary process," Garan explained. The man revealed how many astronauts who come back from space witness a change in themselves. This change is known as "The overview effect," a term coined back in the '80s. "There's a light bulb that pops up where they realize how interconnected and interdependent we all are," he emphasized. "There's no such thing as them, there's only us." The astronaut suggested that we are not going to have peace on Earth until we understand the interconnected nature of all reality. "We are all inextricably linked in this fabric of life that we call Earth."

What an astronaut chooses to do with this newfound perspective, "the call to action" is called the "orbital perspective." This is also the title of Ron Garan's book on the subject. "It's a 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," Garan said. "One of the things that I realized during my time in space is that we are not from Earth, we are of Earth." In a 2016 TED Talk, Garan commented how we have all the resources we need to solve our problems, what we lack is collaboration on a global scale. He gave the example of the International Space Station built by 15 nations "that weren't the best of friends" but came together regardless to achieve the astounding feat.

From space, Garan saw a long illuminated line on a large land mass that looked like a moonlit river at first but was actually the border between India and Pakistan. This wasn't a natural structure but a manmade border. "I've always said that you can't see borders from space, apparently I was wrong." He continued, "Seeing this from space, seeing this scar on a beautiful landscape, seeing this barrier to collaboration clearly visible from space had a huge impact on me." He detailed that the point was not that one could look down and see the manmade border but also see the struggles people face in the same area. "We can look down from our orbital perspective and realize that each and every one of us is riding through the universe in a spaceship that we call Earth," he said.