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June 2nd

PLATO’S VIEW

“How beautifully Plato put it. Whenever you want to talk about

people, it’s best to take a bird’s-eye view and see everything all at

once—of gatherings, armies, farms, weddings and divorces, births

and deaths, noisy courtrooms or silent spaces, every foreign

people, holidays, memorials, markets—all blended together and

arranged in a pairing of opposites.”

—MARCUS AURELIUS, MEDITATIONS, 7.48

here is a beautiful dialogue called “Icaromenippus, an Aerial
Expedition” by the poet Lucian in which the narrator is given the
ability to fly and sees the world from above. Turning his eyes earthward, he
sees how comically small even the richest people, the biggest estates, and
entire empires look from above. All their battles and concerns were made
petty in perspective.
In ancient times, this exercise was only theoretical—the highest anyone
could get was the top of a mountain or a building a few stories tall. But as
technology has progressed, humans have been able to actually take that
bird’s-eye view—and greater.
Edgar Mitchell, an astronaut, was one of the first people to see the earth
from outer space. As he later recounted:

“In outer space you develop an instant global consciousness, a

people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the

world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there

on the moon, international politics look so petty. You want to grab

a politician by the scruff of the neck and drag him a quarter of a

million miles out and say, ‘Look at that, you son of a bitch.’”