The Overview Effect*

We’ve lost three astronauts in recent months.

Paul Weitz died on October 22, 2017. He piloted Skylab II, which was the first manned mission to America’s first space station, in 1973. He was also the pilot for the first flight of the space shuttle Challenger in 1983.

Richard Gordon died on November 6, 2017. He walked in space twice while orbiting Earth on Gemini 11. As Apollo 12’s command module pilot, he circled the moon while the other two astronauts landed on and traversed its surface.

John Young died on January 5, 2018. He was the first astronaut to go into space six times, twice each on Gemini, Apollo, and space shuttle missions. He walked on the moon in 1972 as commander of Apollo 16.

I admire astronauts. I also envy them. They’ve experienced something that few people have: they’ve left Earth and gone into space. They’ve also been granted a rare perspective: they’ve looked at Earth from space rather than looking at space from Earth. I think the thing I envy most is their experience of seeing Earth whole rather than in parts. I wish we all could develop that perspective. I especially wish we could learn to see beyond our little part and realize that it’s connected to all the other parts.

The term “overview effect” names this unique experience of astronauts. Seeing Earth from space, they are struck by the beauty, the wholeness, and the fragility of this blue marble as it hangs in the blackness. We may never go into space (I still harbor some hopes of doing so), but our world would benefit if more of us could develop something like an overview effect. It would be helpful if we could see our planet more as one world rather than as separate entities. Maybe that way we’d understand that we’re all in this together.

Frank Borman is still with us. He was the commander of Apollo 8, which was the first spacecraft to orbit the moon (I remember the crew reading Genesis 1 on Christmas Eve). Two quotes from him get at what I’m trying to say. Borman said,

When you're finally up at the moon looking back on earth, all those differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend, and you're going to get a concept that maybe this really is one world and why … can't we learn to live together like decent people. (Newsweek magazine, 23 December 1968)

“Why can’t we learn to live together like decent people” is a good question. I suppose one answer is that we’re not decent people. But I refuse to accept that. Borman also said,

The view of the Earth from the Moon fascinated me — a small disk, 240,000 miles away. It was hard to think that that little thing held so many problems, so many frustrations. Raging nationalistic interests, famines, wars, pestilence don't show from that distance. (Life magazine, 17 January 1969)

We sure can see them from down here, can’t we?

I believe that one solution to all of our problems is for more of us to come to experience the overview effect. Let’s try to see the world and its people as one. To paraphrase another astronaut, that might be the most important giant leap humankind could ever make. And once we make it, we can start taking the small steps toward making things better.

*The term was coined by Frank White. See his book The Overview Effect: Space Exploration and Human Evolution.

Like a Rose

Early in the morning of June 17, 1972, police arrested a group of men who had broken into the offices of the Democratic National Committee in Washington, D.C. Thus began the scandal that became known by the name of the building that housed those offices: the Watergate.

I was just shy of fourteen years old when the break-in occurred. In 1973, I got to participate in a week-long government studies program in Washington. A leader of the program suggested that we subscribe to some national news magazines. I did.  Before long, I was obsessed with Watergate. I read everything I could about it. I even bought a record called The Watergate Comedy Hour (featuring Jack Burns, Avery Schreiber, and Fannie Flagg, among others), some of which was funny.

Every time the subject of Watergate came up around our house (always because I brought it up) my father would say, “The president is going to come out of this smelling like a rose.” Being a teenager, I wasn’t terribly interested in what he had to say, so I didn’t ask him what he meant. I wish I had. By the time it occurred to me that I’d like to know the answer to that and many other questions, my father had been smelling heaven’s flowers for a long time.

I can think of several things he might have meant. One possibility is that he thought Nixon was innocent of any wrongdoing. Another is that he figured Nixon was smart and slick enough to find a way to wriggle out of any jam he might find himself in. Neither of those possibilities proved to be the case. And Nixon came out smelling not very rose-like.

There is a third possibility: maybe my father believed that the institution of the presidency would survive so, insofar as Nixon embodied the institution, he’d come out smelling like a rose.

Watergate was a great test of our institutions. The presidency was deeply wounded by the crimes of Watergate and the deeper corruption that the investigation exposed. One reason we made it through as well as we did is that the legislative and judicial branches of government stood up and did the right and necessary things. Impeachment proceedings were underway in the House of Representatives when Nixon resigned, which he did after the urging of senators from his party. The Supreme Court made it clear that the President was not above the law. And the press, while not one of the three branches of government, did its part in investigating and reporting what the citizens of our country needed to know.

It seems to me that these days we are undergoing an even deeper institutional crisis than we experienced during the Watergate era. I say that because so many Americans hold our institutions in such low regard. I say it also because of the ways that our current Chief Executive publicly lambasts our institutions.

Now let me be clear: we should not naïvely trust in those institutions. The people who work in them are fallible, so we should keep a close eye on them and hold them accountable. If we are realistic, we won’t expect them to smell like roses. But we can demand they not smell like stinkweed either.

We must carefully walk the line between trusting and critiquing our institutions. But one of the great dangers in our current situation is the ongoing attempt by some in power and their spokespeople to delegitimize those institutions.

We’re still going to have a nation after the current administration ends. Then as now, we need those who serve our nation through its institutions to do so with courage born of integrity. Let’s encourage them to do so.