👨‍🚀 Astronaut's 'Overview effect on Earth' (interconnected euphoria or 'happy earth')

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psyreporter
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👨‍🚀 Astronaut's 'Overview effect on Earth' (interconnected euphoria or 'happy earth')

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Overview effect on Earth
Overview effect on Earth

Astronauts describe a transcendental experience called 'Overview effect on Earth' which is an intense emotional experience most astronauts report on seeing Earth from space.

In 1987, the writer Frank White interviewed and studied testimony from 29 astronauts and came up with the “overview effect” theory, arguing that the sight of earth from space transforms astronauts’ perspectives on themselves and the world.

Something happens to you out there,” Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell said. “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.

The feeling of seeing Earth from space can best be described as "interconnected euphoria". It is as if Earth can be happy and humans have a responsibility.

Astronaut Gene Cernan: “It was too beautiful to happen by accident.

We’re causing potentially irreversible impact on the Earth, so hopefully it will wake people up to see that there are more things we can do to help save the planet, protect the environment, and live in more harmony,”.

Sources: The Guardian | Quartz

More info:
https://overviewinstitute.org/

Questions:

- do you believe that 'Overview effect on Earth' has an objective origin (e.g. actual happiness of Earth as being) or is it more likely a psychological and subjective experience?
- if Earth can be 'happy', what does it imply with regard consciousness theories?
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Tegularius
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Re: 👨‍🚀 Astronaut's 'Overview effect on Earth' (interconnected euphoria or 'happy earth')

Post by Tegularius »

The earth being happy, which also implies it can be unhappy - there wouldn't be better reasons for it than now - is ludicrous. Is Mars unhappy because it doesn't have life crawling on its surface? But what is perfectly understandable is the revised vision of the planet as yielded from afar as that which is most complete, creative and self-maintaining while remaining sequestered in its apparent insignificance cradled within an infinite blackness where only stars may assert their existence. If that doesn't cause a rethink beyond any philosophy or religion then whatever else is believed in amounts to a virtual nothing. Even mountains appear much less imposing when standing at the base of it than when viewed from a distance.
The earth has a skin and that skin has diseases; one of its diseases is called man ... Nietzsche
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Re: 👨‍🚀 Astronaut's 'Overview effect on Earth' (interconnected euphoria or 'happy earth')

Post by LuckyR »

psyreporter wrote: November 29th, 2021, 11:05 pm overview-effect.jpeg


Astronauts describe a transcendental experience called 'Overview effect on Earth' which is an intense emotional experience most astronauts report on seeing Earth from space.

In 1987, the writer Frank White interviewed and studied testimony from 29 astronauts and came up with the “overview effect” theory, arguing that the sight of earth from space transforms astronauts’ perspectives on themselves and the world.

Something happens to you out there,” Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell said. “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.

The feeling of seeing Earth from space can best be described as "interconnected euphoria". It is as if Earth can be happy and humans have a responsibility.

Astronaut Gene Cernan: “It was too beautiful to happen by accident.

We’re causing potentially irreversible impact on the Earth, so hopefully it will wake people up to see that there are more things we can do to help save the planet, protect the environment, and live in more harmony,”.

Sources: The Guardian | Quartz

More info:
https://overviewinstitute.org/

Questions:

- do you believe that 'Overview effect on Earth' has an objective origin (e.g. actual happiness of Earth as being) or is it more likely a psychological and subjective experience?
- if Earth can be 'happy', what does it imply with regard consciousness theories?
I believe that it is an example of the impact of a new perspective, not dissimilar to that of psychedelic drugs causing an appreciation of various metaphysical entities.
"As usual... it depends."
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Re: 👨‍🚀 Astronaut's 'Overview effect on Earth' (interconnected euphoria or 'happy earth')

Post by psyreporter »

What about the 'intense emotional experience' that is described? Astronauts can be compared to athletes. Their mind is likely to perform with the greatest stability possible from a human perspective. If they report about such experience merely by looking at Earth from a certain position and environment, it may be different than an experience induced by psychedelic drugs.

What about the described 'interconnected euphoria' for example? Can science possibly capture that in an empirical measurement, or can the perception of such at most be a meaningful experience?
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Re: 👨‍🚀 Astronaut's 'Overview effect on Earth' (interconnected euphoria or 'happy earth')

Post by JackDaydream »

One aspect of your area of discussion which I wonder about is whether the states of consciousness, such as euphoria, have a vibrators impact. In other words, can consciousness itself bring about manifest effects for humanity and transformation? Also, each of us has an individual mind, but are aspects of larger wholes. It is hard to know at what level each of us is experiencing or impacting on states of consciousness or, indeed, experiencing ones beyond one's own
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Re: 👨‍🚀 Astronaut's 'Overview effect on Earth' (interconnected euphoria or 'happy earth')

Post by psyreporter »

Tegularius wrote: November 29th, 2021, 11:59 pm The earth being happy, which also implies it can be unhappy - there wouldn't be better reasons for it than now - is ludicrous. Is Mars unhappy because it doesn't have life crawling on its surface? But what is perfectly understandable is the revised vision of the planet as yielded from afar as that which is most complete, creative and self-maintaining while remaining sequestered in its apparent insignificance cradled within an infinite blackness where only stars may assert their existence. If that doesn't cause a rethink beyond any philosophy or religion then whatever else is believed in amounts to a virtual nothing. Even mountains appear much less imposing when standing at the base of it than when viewed from a distance.
A recent study discovered that rocks and minerals on Earth developed the first photosynthesis to produce oxygen that helped life on Earth to become possible.

mineral.jpg

(2021) Non-classical photosynthesis by earth's inorganic semiconducting minerals
Our work in this new research field on the mechanisms of interaction between light, minerals, and life reveals that minerals and organisms are actually inseparable. ... producing hydrogen and oxygen from water
https://phys.org/news/2021-01-non-class ... cting.html

The described 'interconnected euphoria' also includes 🐘 elephants, 🐋 whales, 🌿 plants and humans.

At question is firstly: what is the origin of the described interconnected euphoria potential?

Euphoria is relative to a future and involves 'life'. There are indications that the origin of life is the 🌞 Sun which would imply that what it is that is perceived to have the quality 'interconnected euphoria' would be a product of life on earth.

It is what life does with the Earth as a whole, that would involve the quality 'interconnected euphoria' or happiness.
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Re: 👨‍🚀 Astronaut's 'Overview effect on Earth' (interconnected euphoria or 'happy earth')

Post by psyreporter »

JackDaydream wrote: November 30th, 2021, 7:42 am One aspect of your area of discussion which I wonder about is whether the states of consciousness, such as euphoria, have a vibrators impact. In other words, can consciousness itself bring about manifest effects for humanity and transformation? Also, each of us has an individual mind, but are aspects of larger wholes. It is hard to know at what level each of us is experiencing or impacting on states of consciousness or, indeed, experiencing ones beyond one's own
That's interesting! In that case, even advanced VR may not be able to simulate the experience on Earth since it would not be solely visual.

Do you have a lead or reference for the idea "experiencing ones [consciousness] beyond one's own"? Does it involve Gaia philosophy?
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Re: 👨‍🚀 Astronaut's 'Overview effect on Earth' (interconnected euphoria or 'happy earth')

Post by JackDaydream »

@psyreporter
I don't have a specific reference for the idea of 'experiencing consciousness beyond one's own' because it is my own outlook, but based on reading, especially Jung's view of the collective unconscious and the whole school of transpersonal psychology and philosophy.

I have read James Lovelock' s ideas on 'Gaia' and think that it may be extremely important and that the earth may be a living organism. It is hard to know how to see human consciousness fits into it. Is the human mind the reflective aspect of consciousness amidst it, or have we elevated our place within the design of nature?
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