{"id":4043,"date":"2014-08-12T08:14:17","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T16:14:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/?p=4043"},"modified":"2014-08-12T08:17:40","modified_gmt":"2014-08-12T16:17:40","slug":"what-you-learn-looking-down-on-it-all","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/what-you-learn-looking-down-on-it-all\/","title":{"rendered":"What you learn looking down on it all"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\" Chris Hadfield, Canada’s greatest guitar slinging astronaut, has this to say:<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201c\u2026 I was up (on the space station) for five months and it really gave time to think and time to look at the world, actually to steal 90 minutes at one point and just float\u00a0 by the window and watch the world, go round the world once with nothing to do but ponder it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And I think probably the biggest personal change was a loss of the sense of the line between \u2018us\u2019 and \u2018them\u2019.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It\u2019s really we sort of teach it to our children, you know. Don\u2019t talk to strangers, this is us. This is our whatever \u2013 our family, our house, our neighours, our relatives, your school.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

It slowly grows where the line between us and them is. Um but to \u2013 I\u2019ve been around the world thousands of times, 2, 593 times – and that line we impose on ourselves of where us ends and them starts, just keeps diminishing and it wasn\u2019t conscious. I noticed maybe a third of the way into my half year stint up there that I just started referring to everybody as \u2018us’. Unconsciously there was some sort of transition in my mind that \u2018Hey, we\u2019re all in this together.\u2019<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And I think you come across any city in Australia and you see the pattern of the downtown and the suburbs and the surrounding farms and the water and the rail and the communications, just the standard human pattern. And then if you just wait until you cross the Pacific \u2013 takes about 25 minutes and then you come across the Americas and there\u2019s that exact same pattern again. And then you wait another 20 minutes and you come across northern Africa \u2013 and there\u2019s that exact same pattern again.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

And we solve the same problems the same way, all over the world. It\u2019s just \u2018us\u2019 and everybody just wants some grace and better chances for their children and a chance to laugh, understand it all. And that inclusionary feeling was all pervasive and unavoidable, having seen the world the way I\u2019ve seen it and it was part of my motivations in doing my best to share it when I came back.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thanks to Alan Stewart<\/a> for transcribing this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Hadfield, Canada’s greatest guitar slinging astronaut, has this to say: \u201c\u2026 I was up (on the space station) for five months and it really gave time to think and time to look at the world, actually to steal 90 minutes at one point and just float\u00a0 by the window and watch the world, go round the world once with nothing to do but ponder it.   And I think probably the biggest personal change was a loss of the sense of the line between \u2018us\u2019 and \u2018them\u2019.   It\u2019s really we sort of teach it to our children, you …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_wpas_customize_per_network":false},"categories":[10,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4043","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2-2-2-2-2-2-2-2","category-community"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/piBp1-13d","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4043"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4048,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4043\/revisions\/4048"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chriscorrigan.com\/parkinglot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}