I heard William Shatner on NPR recently. You know, Captain Kirk. From Star Trek.
The brief interview was apparently inspired by Shatner’s having penned a book about his trip into space aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard rocket ship. He is jauntily regarded as the fictional explorer of galaxies who momentarily became a real astronaut.
Shatner said he cried when he returned to earth. Not because he was desperately glad to be on the ground again, but because while he was in space, observing his home planet—infinitesimal, relative to the whole galaxy—he felt immensely sad for its ruination.
I am not a Trekky, but I think Shatner’s words got short shrift. He was getting emotional, pleading the earth’s case, when he was suddenly thanked for the interview and the Star Trek theme filled the airwaves. Maybe emotional is unmanly. Perhaps the earth’s demise doesn’t fit neatly into radio time slots.
I wanted more. And the Almighty Google provided me with words from Shatner’s book:
“I had thought that going into space would be the ultimate catharsis of that connection I had been looking for between all living things—that being up there would be the next beautiful step to understanding the harmony of the universe. …I discovered that the beauty isn’t out there, it’s down here, with all of us. Leaving that behind made my connection to our tiny planet even more profound.
“It was among the strongest feelings of grief I have ever encountered. The contrast between the vicious coldness of space and the warm nurturing of Earth below filled me with overwhelming sadness. Every day, we are confronted with the knowledge of further destruction of Earth at our hands: the extinction of animal species, of flora and fauna – things that took five billion years to evolve, and suddenly we will never see them again because of the interference of mankind. It filled me with dread. My trip to space was supposed to be a celebration; instead, it felt like a funeral.”
Apparently other astronauts have had this same reaction. Often enough that it has a name—the Overview Effect. Shatner explains, “It can change the way we look at the planet but also other things like countries, ethnicities, religions; it can prompt an instant reevaluation of our shared harmony and a shift in focus to all the wonderful things we have in common instead of what makes us different. It reinforced tenfold my own view on the power of our beautiful, mysterious collective human entanglement, and eventually, it returned a feeling of hope to my heart. In this insignificance we share, we have one gift that other species perhaps do not: we are aware—not only of our insignificance, but the grandeur around us that makes us insignificant. That allows us perhaps a chance to rededicate ourselves to our planet, to each other, to life and love all around us. If we seize that chance.”
Shatner witnessed this tiny pearl in the universe—this minuscule island that is our communal habitat—home to tyrants and the tyrannized, billionaires and people without bootstraps. To trash that won’t biodegrade, wildfires, and escalating storms. But most earthlings can’t see the forest for the trees, as they say.
Shatner saw the entire forest. And recognized that, as a species, we are shooting ourselves in the foot. And the leg. And the head will follow. We are so busy fighting and blaming and hollering “me me me, mine mine mine” that we’ve lost sight of the fact that we must make deep compromises if this pearl of a planet is to continue.