The Overview Effect

It's evening and I was burning through a little time before bed by watching a comedy show on the Amazon video feed through Roku. After the show was over, I was flipping through the other choices and found a 20-minute show called "The Overview Effect" which has no dialog and only place labels, otherwise it's timelapse video taken from the International Space Station. The description of the show on Amazon is something like, the name that some astronaut gave for the change that you feel when you look down on the earth from space.

The videos are exactly what you would expect from the description. Beautiful shots of the earth from the ISS, sped up so that you overfly the east coast of the United States in maybe 6 or 7 seconds, at night, with labels of the cities and some borders. The shots feature the same treatment of the entire earth a section at a time, mixed together.

Mostly at night so that you see the aurorae, lots of thunderstorms, and the lights of cities moving by, beneath you. Many times in the background of some piece of the station fixed in frame. The angle is almost always so that you also see the thin layer of earth's atmosphere as a semi-transparent line above the horizon.

The shots are all very beautiful but it also has the, impossible to ignore, effect of pointing out your, the viewer's, place in all this. Right now, my wife is in bed trying to get sleep for work tomorrow, my two kids went out to see our city's fireworks display marking the end of the weeklong festival celebrating the capital city where we live. There are two big dogs asleep on their couch next to me, snoring. I'm surrounded by this scene, which is my home and as I watch this show, I suddenly realize where I am in the universe and become, rightfully, afraid.

My fear is partly due to the realization that what I take for granted as my right, the safety of my little "castle" here, is really an illusion, and partly that all of this can end in a moment and that large sphere and the heavens beyond would not notice or care, if it did. It is a strange feeling, and one that I've felt before. That reminder that where and what I am, is against probabilities at any level you could consider.

It also reminds me why they make comedy shows, social media, fireworks displays, most literature, and all of the other "distractions" we rely on to stay sane. If we were constantly conscious of our true place in the universe, our sanity would suffer and sleep would no longer be an option without first, abandoning all hope of waking up.

Maybe this is also partly due to the times we seem to live in, where we are constantly reminded of the fragility of civilization that we assume surrounds and protects us from the wolves and the ever-present option of chaos as a world view.

I hope that our children can make a better world of this poor start we've given them.

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