Earth Rising *

The differences between one cosmos and another -- those elements, say, that distinguish the world of the middle Ages from the world of the Babylonians -- are from this viewpoint less striking than the similarities. People believe in many gods, or in one, or in none; in science or in religion or in politics; but consciously or unconsciously, all seek some way to understand the world and to feel at home in it. In spite of widely divergent ways of seeing the world, we are united with our most distant kin by our common demand for a comprehensive world-harmony. ~ Page 2

....... The panorama of peoples and ideas inevitably brings a sophistication which questions the primal world-stories, and thereby threatens the very order of the world itself. This is the challenge of all urban civilizations.

We are apt to speak of this as the "modern predicament," as if it were a recent invention. But surely the Preacher's world-weary skepticism in 'Ecclestiastes' is just this 'modern' experience -- the failure of simple faith under the weight of knowledge and experience. Omar Khayyam (and not only in his nineteenth century mistranslation) and sophisticates in many ages have shared this experience. All have sensed the primal oneness breaking into fragments, leaving the solitary knower, standing in the ugly hubbub of the marketplace perhaps, or out alone under the night sky, pondering the emptiness and vanity of life. In the words of another Old Testament writer, "Where there is no vision the people perish." ~ Page 3

Frank Borman, commander of the Mission (Apollo 8), explained the experience this way

"When you are privileged to view the earth from afar, when you can hold out your thumb and cover it with your thumbnail, you realize that we are really, all of us around the world, crew members on the space station Earth. Of all the accomplishments of technology, perhaps the most significant one was the picture of the Earth over the lunar horizon. If nothing else, it should impress our fellow man with the absolute fact that our environment is bounded, that our resources are limited, and that our life supports system is a closed cycle. And, of course, when this apace station Earth is viewed from 240,000 miles away, only its beauty, its minuteness, and its isolation in the blackness of space are apparent. A traveler from some far planet would not know that the size of the crew is already too large and threatening to expand, that the breathing system is rapidly becoming polluted, and that the water supply is in danger of contamination with everything from DDT to raw sewage. The only real recourse is for each of us to realize that the elements we have are not inexhaustible. We're all in the same space ship"

Commander Borman's eyes were in a sense eyes if the world when he looked out the space craft window -- the world's new eyes, as if it were seeing itself or the first theme. His thoughts were not those of a partisan American, winning a space race trophy for his nation's pride. ......... Rather unexpectedly, his thoughts wre those of a world-citizen and ecologist. His firsthand interpretation of this sight identified exactly those themes that were becoming the heart of the ecological worldview, down on planet earth below. ~ Page 12