Overview effect to the rescue?

The optimist’s view of the billionaire space race and space tourism.

I feel compassion for Bezos. He finally sees the fragility of our planet and wants to protect it by… polluting space instead. I can see the twisted logic in this. But it really brings out the sickness of the billionaire: unchecked greed and detachment from consensus reality.

Someone recently proposed a wealth watchers akin to weight watchers. I love this: to treat obscene wealth the same way we regard obesity by creating a programme to help curb the greed that leads to excessive craving and hoarding of wealth, just as there is one for curbing excessive craving for, and hoarding of food.

There is a name for this cognitive shift experienced by Bezos. It’s called the overview effect. Unlike the disturbed billionaire version of it, one astronaut described it like this:

“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. From out there on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.”

Reading between the lines of what seems like a disturbing assertion, perhaps there is hope that Jeff will finally have developed that global consciousness.

Maybe a man with everything, needed to feel like a speck of dust in the infinite cosmos to understand the preciousness of this incredible world. Perhaps it will be enough to move him toward acting for the greater good.

And maybe if we send enough overly privileged people into orbit through space tourism, they can all experience the transcendence of their own insignificance and rekindle their love for this cosmic blue sanctuary we call home. Only time (and space) will tell.