By Dario Toso
Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish.
On December 21st 1968, a US spaceship flew to the Moon carrying 3 astronauts: the commander Frank Borman, the command module pilot James Lovell and the lunar module pilot William Anders.
Apollo 8 was the second manned spaceflight mission of the US space program Apollo, the first with men aboard to leave Earth’s orbit.
One of the most significant missions of the Apollo program, which opened the doors of the incredible exploration beyond land boundaries. Less than a century after the invention of bicycle and car, men have exceeded the limits of the impossible.
During this fantastic journey into the unknown the three astronauts probably made one of the greatest gifts that humanity ever received. At a distance of about 30,000 km from the earth, William Anders snapped the first image of the Earth taken in its entirety. The South is on top and South America at the center.
In the picture, known as Earthrise, the Earth is wrapped in its dark emptiness and not only seems infinitely beautiful, but also infinitely fragile. This wonderful image crystallized and cemented the sense of vulnerability of the planet that Silent Spring had awakened six years earlier. Its effect has been enormous: men have for the first time seen the limits of their living space.
It is no coincidence that a few years later, a group of Boston MIT scholars published a study commissioned by Aurelio Peccei from Turin, entitled “The limits of development” which, for the first time in a scientific manner, showed how the linear development model based on the “take-make and dispose” logic was simply unsustainable on a planet with limited resources. A banal concept, which only today, after 50 years, animates world economic interests with the affirmation of the Circular Economy.
Among the many positive effects of this image, the Earthrise has given the go to the British scientist James Lovelock to formulate the well-known Gaia theory according to which the planet behaves like a single giant organism – which has a control system on a planetary scale able to maintain the conditions for the existence of life.
This fascinating theory lays its foundations on what is the science of complex systems capable of capturing the incredible magic of life, the connections between organisms and matter, in a constant flow of exchange and interaction.
Often referred to as “the web of life”, the interrelation between organisms and matter is the basis of biodiversity, where all the threads form a beautiful design. And that design is now being destroyed by men, able to impress the Earth seen from space on film, but also to produce over 2.5 billion tons of waste per year.
How can the most intelligent creature that has ever walked on planet Earth destroying his own home, so suddenly and so consciously?
In the last two centuries, with the start of the industrial revolution there has been an epochal change of perspective that has progressively distanced man from wisdom based on close contact with nature, projecting him into an artificial dimension fueled by myopic positivist optimism.
That’s why Earthrise is iconic: a small spaceship that is the emblem of modernity and the result of competition for the conquest of space that “frames”, looking back, the limits of our planet.
Yet, the problem we are experiencing today is a prospective problem, no one has imposed on men the current model of socio-economic development with all the problems that this entails, no one has imposed on us a system that exploits the resources to produce a well-being based on the possession of objects of consumption: the human being is the first species on Earth to have introduced the concept of waste, by-product, pollution.
In Nature every output is a resource and the ultimate goal is to sustain life.
However, this model is not static, but is the result of a human evolutionary stage, which is evolving towards new forms. And looking carefully at young people, we are amazed at how fast this generational change can be, just giving it a voice as soon as possible.
It is necessary to look at the beauty of nature to change perspective, stop and reconsider what we have around us, our daily gestures and priorities.
Immerse yourself in nature to reactivate your brain: the most complex matter in the universe that contains a number of cells equal to the stars of the Milky Way, about 100 billion, able to form hundreds of thousands of billions of connections, it is a14 zeroes number. In these numbers the magic of life is manifested, the extraordinary beauty of the environment we are part of.
To quote the amazing “The whole earth catalogue”, who has borrowed Earthrise for its cover, it is necessary to move and activate, in short:
“Stay Hungry Stay Foolish”