Name: The Profound Experience of Seeing Earth From Space
Uploaded: 2020-12-14T18:11:19.000Z
Description: Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Profound Experience of Seeing Earth From Space' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-14. Transcript available.

Watch the stand-up comedy video 'The Profound Experience of Seeing Earth From Space' from PowerfulJRE on Comedy Buff. Published 2020-12-14. Transcript available.

- The Joe Rogan Experience.
- How much difference is it perspective wise
when you're in space and you're looking down on the earth?
Like that has gotta be the ultimate mind fight.
- It's amazing.
So this is what I'm trying to do in life.
Like a couple of books I've written,
some films I've done.
Seeing the earth, I remember early in my first flight,
it was like, okay, I'm in outer space
and there's my planet over there.
You know, it was this profound thought
that wow, I'm not on the planet anymore.
And over seven months in space, it never got old.
Like it was always like, man, earth is beautiful.
It is this incredible planet.
And so there's so, we could talk for hours about this,
but I think for me, the biggest perspective change was,
I'm less of a black and white person now.
Like before I went into space, I knew right and wrong.
And a lot of, when you're young, you kinda,
you're black and white as you get older, you get wiser.
And seeing the planet, seeing the planet,
it's like, yeah, this thing's been around for a long time
and it's gonna be around for a long time.
So you probably don't need to get as uptight about, you know,
the day-to-day stress of life.
And it's, it just kinda put things in perspective.
Like don't get too excited about the Kardashians
or whatever the latest political tweet was or whatever.
Like, you know, things are gonna go on for a long time.
And so that, it helps put that in perspective in a big way.
It's interesting that an actual physical perspective change.
Just being, just being in a different place where you're looking down on it
from a different vantage point.
Yeah.
All the astronauts seem to say that.
Yeah.
It has this profound shift in how you think of Earth
and how you think of humanity in general.
Yeah.
You know, one of the interesting things, I've been traveling since I was a kid.
I did some exchange programs in Finland and France and in the Air Force.
I lived all around the world and whenever I would go to France or Korea or
wherever,
it was like, all right, I'm in Korea.
And then I get back to the States.
I'm like, all right, I'm back home in America or whatever.
And now when I travel and I've been traveling a lot the last couple of years,
I don't ever, I always feel like I'm home.
Like it was weird.
One time I landed in the Middle East and I remember thinking I'm, I didn't
think anything.
And that really struck me because it used to always be such a big deal wherever
I landed.
I kind of feel like I'm home no matter where I'm at,
which is interesting.
And that's from the space travel.
I, it is, yeah.
Wow.
Yeah.
It, I, it wasn't conscious.
I didn't like expect it or whatever.
I just realized that, hey, I don't ever, I don't ever feel like I'm not at home.
And my, my crewmate, Samantha said something really profound.
She said, um, like you see earth and you could tell it's going around the sun.
Like you can actually see the motion sometimes if you're watching stars and
stuff.
And it's like, we're on the spaceship together.
So we ought to be crewmates and not just passengers.
Yeah.
Like we all ought to kind of take care of the planet and our cell, each other
and stuff.
Do you find that most of the, or many of the astronauts share this similar
perspective shift?
That once you go up, you do realize how weird it is that there are these tribal
differences between us.
So yeah, you're like, what the hell are we doing?
I got a story about that, but to be honest, we're probably not the best, um,
communicators of emotion.
You know, like, you know, we're not necessarily all touchy feely people, but
some of my close friends that we talk about this, there's a very, there's a
very similar perspective of, you know, we're all here on the, on the planet
together.
So I was on my first flight on the shuttle and it was the fifth, I remember it
was the fifth night there.
And when I looked out, we were going over the Mediterranean at night and you
could see there's this like U shape where there's Egypt and the Nile, there's
Israel and Syria and Lebanon are right there.
And there's Turkey and Greece.
And it's just little area.
And Israel is this little thing that's surrounded by Jordan and Lebanon, you
know, they're all like right there.
And I remember thinking like, guys, what's the problem, man?
You're, you're, you're literally living together on a postage stamp on this big
planet.
Yeah.
And it wasn't anything about Israel or the Middle East specifically.
It was more like, why, why can we not get along?
Cause we're all down here.
Yeah.
And the crazy thing is, if you ask most people, their, their position is they'll,
they'll never be peace in the Middle East.
So.
Which is crazy.
One of the things after my flight, so I, we would, they'd sent us to Congress
and we talked to congressmen and senators.
And I got to talk at the white house a couple of years ago at the national
space council.
And my message to them is always the same.
It's always, you know, to, for a space program, it's not about the rocket
science.
It's about the political science, like we got to figure out politics to get
things working well.
And whenever I go to the American Congress, they're always like, you're right.
It's exactly right.
If it wasn't for those other fuckers on the other side, we could get this right.
Republicans and Democrats all said that they all totally agreed with me.
And it was always the other guy's fault.
There's a, there's a, there's definitely a problem that is going to be tough to
overcome.
How much benefit would there be in getting those people in space?
Yeah.
You know, people talk about that.
If only that leaders could go into space.
And I think for some of them, it would make an impact and some of them, they
wouldn't care.
I mean, there's there, well, the goal of politics and power is just to keep
yourself in power and get more stuff for yourself.
And, you know, throughout human history, it's not normally, you know, altruistic
democracies, the way we run ourselves.
Um, so, which that we need to move in that direction because that's the way
life gets better.
But, um, I think some, it would benefit and some, it wouldn't.
The thing is like, no one really wants the job that is balanced and healthy and
intelligent and has a good perspective for perspective for humanity.
Yeah.
The people that want the job, they want to be the King Poobah.
They mean, want to be the big dog.
Yeah.
It's just a weird kind of person that wants that job in the first place.
It's, uh, people are like, why don't you run for office?
And, and I always say, well, do you have a, give me a fork.
Do you have a fork?
Cause I want to stick that in my, cause that would be more fun than, you know,
you try and do something nice and you're just getting nonstop hate mail.
And anyway, yeah, it's a rough girlfriends from high school testifying before
Congress, this thing that happened 30 years ago.
Yeah, exactly.
It's, um, it's fascinating to me how many of the astronauts do have this
incredibly profound experience.
Again, just from the physical act of being above earth and looking down on it,
where this perspective shift just kind of changes your, your overall thoughts
about being in space.
Being, being a part of humanity on this organic spaceship in the universe,
rather than being like locked down in Chicago.
Right.
There's clouds above you.
So don't even think about space.
You know, dude, stuck in traffic on your way to work every day, same grind
every, you get stuck in this narrow minded perspective.
Almost every astronaut who discusses this says that it was a profound life
changing moment to look at earth from above.
Yeah, it was.
And, you know, I can just like close my, if I'm in one of those shitty
situations, you just close your eyes and it's like, right now the sun is rising
somewhere.
That's the most beautiful thing.
You can't imagine it.
You know, I try, I took a lot of pictures.
I did movies, but unless you see it with your eyes, you know, you can't imagine
how awesome it is.
So that takes the edge off the traffic you're having to wait on and it does
help.
But the, the thing is like taking that experience and sharing it with as many
people as possible.
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