We needed to travel into space to realize just how fragile planet Earth is, an insight known as the "overview effect". Now we need to unravel how life works in all its facets —from cells to our body to ecosystems to the entire biosphere— to discover our interdependence with the rest of life on Earth, introducing the "innerview effect".
Very excited to announce that we are working on a brand new book, keynote and programme that is called the Innerview Effect. You see, many astronauts that travelled into space shifted their perspective after seeing Earth as a distant small blue dot in a sea of space. Realising that Earth is nothing more than a fragile ball of life in the vast lifelessness of outer space induced a cognitive change of consciousness in many of them. Witnessing Earth from the universe, generated a feeling of responsibility and duty to take care of that delicate little speck in the cosmos, the only planet that contains life as far as we know. This term has been coined by writer Frank White in 1982 as the Overview effect. Not only does it bring forth a sense of responsibility for taking care of our life support system, it also invokes a sense of connection and transcendence with humanity as a whole from which nations, borders and nationalities appear petty. We are all inhabitants of spaceship Earth and we all have a responsibility to be good stewards to maintain our life support system.
Yet, to take proper care of this precious planet, we need to understand (1) how it works, how it is able to support life despite continuous change and disruption; (2) how everything is interconnected, nested and inter-depended and (3) how we humans can play a benevolent role in maintaining the life-affirming and life-supporting quality of our ecosystem, and in fact, of the entire biosphere. That requires an important shift in perspective too and to achieve such a shift, it is essential that we understand the innerview effect of how life on Earth works in all its details so that we can make smarter decisions and recognise what we can do to turn the multiple crises we are facing today into opportunities. So that, just like the whales, wolves, fungi and forests we can leave the world better off than before. This matters because we are all 'Earthlings', beings that exist only on Earth in an intricate web of interdependence and mutuality.
This will be the outlook of our new book called "The Innerview Effect". We hope that by illustrating the sophisticated ways in which life on Earth works, we might inspire a cognitive change in consciousness in people too. Like Einstein said; you cannot resolve the problems of today by using the same thinking that created them. So, we are on a mission to change humanities outlook via science-based storytelling, keynotes and workshops. Because we can only care for what we know. Time to learn how life works so that we can learn to operate in sync with nature and heal the places we touch.
We are working on the book, keynotes and a programme, so watch this space for more info!