The Overview Effect
The Overview Effect is a phenomena described by astronauts when viewing the Earth from Outer Space. If I’m to understand the effect correctly, it’s a cognitive shift, one that instills in the individual a sense that the Earth is a singular, living organism and not some cosmic Thunderdome where nations, species and ecological systems battle for supremacy. Lifted from the practical dirt of the everyday and granted the perspective of Gods, the astronauts see the planet as a vulnerable, blue marble hanging in black infinity– beautiful and impossible–and this insight forever alters their understanding of our place and function on the planet.
As everybody knows, December 21st, 2012 is the date the Mayans predicted as the end of time. Some are interpreting this to mean the apocalypse is upon us, while others see it as a time when the consciousness of the world is elevated and we move into some sort of different, perhaps even enlightened, phase.
Ridicule and nervous laughter abounds.
But could we actually be reaching a kind of tipping point?
The Information Age has accelerated our world in unprecedented ways. I think it’s fair to say that our civilization has changed more in the last 15 years than in all the millennia stacked before it. And as I sit at home in front of my computer with streams of information flowing through me from limitless channels, I find myself in a perpetual state of cognitive dissonance. It seems that almost all of the inherited cultural beliefs that shepherded me into the mainstream of North American society seem tragically flawed, even deceptive.
There are simply too many examples to cite, but after the murders in Connecticut, who in their right mind could possibly oppose stricter gun control laws? The only reason a rational (if selfish) person would do so was to protect a financial interest above a human one, or because they valued the reassurance and confidence they received from having their weapon of choice at the ready over the proven actuality that innocents are going to be slaughtered in order to achieve this (perceived) liberty. (Adam Gopnik put this much better in the New Yorker)
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/12/newtown-and-the-madness-of-guns.html )
As far as I’m concerned, anybody who trots out the 2nd Amendment as rationale for owning an AK-47 is mad and should be seeing a mental hair care professional. And really, shouldn’t people who feel a need to own guns (without any obvious necessity for them) have to see a psychiatrist every week? Isn’t there something delusional and potentially destructive in that desire to be armed, something that suggests an anti-social character waiting to emerge in the worst possible way?
We all know that guns are not just part of American culture, but bound and smothered by politics are a part of the economic machinery that governs the nation. Politically, such elephants in the rooms as Global Warming and Gun Control, matters that need to be addressed with utter urgency and sincerity, weren’t even spoken about in the US Presidential debates. Is that not crazy?
Still, the fact the President Obama went on TV and spoke about gun control is a good sign. Hopefully, this suggests a tipping point may be at hand, and what is truly important will no longer be held hostage by political and economic interests. Maybe something like the Overview Effect is happening to all of us, and we’re starting to realize that not getting shot is a civil right and that all living things are mysteriously bound, obliging us to serve the whole rather than the self.
