How often do we reflect on the fact that we live on a planet? That our entire lives play out on a hunk of rock that’s hurtling through space in orbit around a star at 107,000 km/h? And that that star, which we call the Sun, is one of the billions in our galaxy, and that our galaxy is one among two trillion in our universe? It can feel pretty abstract when we think about it.

Just over 550 people have ventured into Outer Space, and among them is the crew of Apollo 8, Frank Borman, William A. Anders and James A. Lovell Jr. On December 21, 1968, their spacecraft shot up through Earth’s atmosphere, headed for lunar orbit and on course for the furthest we humans had ever travelled from home. Astronauts before and since have shared their accounts of a rarefied and deeply affecting experience that occurs from leaving our earthly confines, but what the men aboard Apollo 8 gifted us earthbound folk were more than words. It was an image.

As they emerged from the far side of the moon on their fourth lunar orbit, they gasped. Out of the spacecraft’s window, they spotted Earth. There she was, our blue marble hanging in the black vastness of space, so beautiful yet so fragile-looking surrounded by all that darkness. They saw our world from a perspective that no human had ever seen before. Recognising this, they scrambled to take a colour photograph of the scene and subsequently bestowed upon the world Earthrise, which nature photographer Galen Rowell declared "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken”.

The “overview effect”, a term coined by space philosopher Frank White, is described as a profound shift in awareness that arises from gaining a planetary perspective of Earth – from seeing ourselves from the outside. Astronauts report experiencing an altered worldview, the melting away of what suddenly feels like trivialities, a feeling of unity and oneness with all Earthlings and a profound sense of responsibility to take care of our fragile home. Earthrise gave people a perspective on who and where they are in the universe and is thanked for propelling the environmental movement of the 1970s.

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Let’s zoom out further. As far as we know, as far as our scientists can see, out of the astronomical number of planets out there, ours is the only one to harbour complex life. On the scale of the universe, Earth is infinitesimal, yet our home planet is profoundly significant for the very fact that it is alive.

Cosmic conditions make Earth ripe to foster life. And, as such, billions of years ago, life sprung into being. Slowly, over aeons, single-cell organisms evolved into an abundantly colourful and beautifully diverse array of beings, each adapted for life on Earth. From a cosmic perspective, this abundance of life is what defines us.  

The mode and mechanism for life “springing into being” has long fascinated us humans. We seek to understand our own existence and that of other species, be it through spirituality or science. Many stories describe how we came to be, and in the mid-19th century, naturalist Charles Darwin contributed to these with his theory of evolution through natural selection. He proposed that life evolves through an iterative process of competition and an inherent struggle for survival – “survival of the fittest”. 

It’s important to note that Darwin didn’t land upon this theory in a vacuum. There were scientists that came before him who’s work informed his, as did the work of his peers who were grappling with the same questions – notably, Alfred Russel Wallace. Also, Darwin brought to his scientific ideas his culture. He saw science through the lens of a worldview that already favoured competition – in the burgeoning capitalist economy and unjust, patriarchal and hierarchal society of 1800s England. As Darwin’s scientific ideas were cemented into “fact”, they were co-opted and gave rise and license to politics and economics built on individualism and imperialism, which still underpin the hyper-capitalism that ravages our world today. 

However, the problem is that the underlying tenets of Darwin’s theory – competition and struggle for survival – miss what many cultures the world over recognise but often those in the West fail to: that organisms also depend on – rather than only compete with – one another to survive and, importantly, thrive. Yes, competitiveness is an attribute exhibited in nature, but it is far from what defines how organisms and species interact with one another; yet it positioned as such has influenced how we see ourselves and how we behave, both with one another and the rest of nature.

So how do “we” see ourselves? Of course, there are nuances to this, but broadly, over epochs of social and cultural evolution, a pervasive worldview developed that lies at the bedrock of Western society. This worldview centres humans and positions them as superior to all else. Anthropocentrism, as it is known, took hold long before Darwin: “Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.’”(Bible NKJV 1900; Genesis 1:26). 

This “dominion” isn’t difficult to see. And ideologically, the idea of superiority has shaped cultures’ relationships with other species, separating humans from them, and has resulted in nature being seen only for its value to humans, which, when paired with capitalism, has reduced our world to “assets”, “property” and “resources” and has led to the desecration of the natural world at a mass scale.

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Let’s take a look at an alternate worldview. Many of those who have avoided, resisted or rebelled against the indoctrination and imposition of colonialism, global capitalism and the Western worldview – those who today often take the title “Indigenous” – still hold belief systems and an understanding of the living world with which contemporary scientific thinking now aligns: that we humans inhabit a mutualism with all living beings that thrives on the collaboration between species and knits the entire planet together in an interdependent web of life. 

Innately, we feel this interdependence, both physically and spiritually. This is why we feel good when we are outdoors, why many of us enjoy gardening and tending to houseplants and why we have pets. Intellectually, we recognise that we rely on externalities: oxygen, food and water; shelter and warmth; companionship and community. As individuals, we cannot create these, so we are dependent on others and the organic processes that do. In other words, together species survive and species thrive. Our fates are bound.

Examples of mutualism are everywhere when we look for them. Flowering plants and pollinators. Fruit trees and birds. Fungi and algae that collaborate to form lichen. And of course, there are countless that are out of sight. Fungal networks that thread forests together, sharing nutrients and information. Microbes that inhabit the human body, without which we couldn’t digest food. Bacteria in the soil that fix nitrogen to feed plants. 

Mutualism works at a planetary level too. When tiny pores on leaves on trees in rainforests collectively exhale, they push water vapour into the atmosphere which falls as rain continents away. Planetary systems rely on the emergence of beings to keep them functioning healthily. 

These examples of symbioses are easily comprehensible, but the reality of the near-endless reciprocal relationships between beings is that they are nuanced and complex, with many facets and many participants, fine-tuned over huge expanses of time.

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The disparity between the anthropocentric worldview and the way the living world actually works has landed us in crisis. Or rather crises. 

We are in a time when many of us recognise that the underpinnings of our societies are flawed – simply, we see that things aren’t going well. Runaway global capitalism continues to deepen these crises as our economic systems fail to honour the equitable reciprocity of our interdependent world. Instead, too often, they reward the business of extraction, exploitation, depletion and exhaustion.

Things can feel pretty grim. But they should also feel remarkably hopeful. Because in our awakening to these flawed underpinnings, there’s the invitation and opportunity to reimagine something new: a way of being that honours the reciprocity and interdependence of nature, creates a shift away from anthropocentric thinking and remakes our economy in a more just and equitable way for all members of our community, both human and non-human. 

This remaking is already underway. For starters, a cohort of fresh thinkers, including economists, statespeople, policymakers and business leaders, are rewriting our economic models. They are steering the economy away from its obsession with growth and the problematic theories that have governed economics in recent centuries. They are reshaping business so it doesn’t serve only the single bottom line and shareholders, but instead, it serves all stakeholders and the triple bottom line – people, planet and profit. And they are looking to correct the environmental injustices of the past and accommodate those that will come in the future. These models (should) respect the nature of reciprocity: if you take, you must give back. Companies adopting this approach are leading the way on business of the future, demonstrating that it’s possible to shift how we build healthy businesses while also positively influencing the ideological foundations of commerce.  

And the world is ready for this. People want a new story, and they are listening to those who are telling it. They are emboldened by the power they wield as consumers and prepared to actively upend the status quo and tackle systemic issues through their individual choices. To see this, you only need to look as far as the rise in ethical eating and how it has influenced supermarket shelves, restaurant menus and supply chains within the food and drinks industry. People are demanding that the businesses they buy from and work for have values, vision and purpose. This is particularly true for the younger generations, who will soon make up the majority of the workforce and, therefore, will wield economic power, so leaders and businesses better wise up.   

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So in this changing world, we can be hopeful. 

But we should be wary of the human condition of optimism bias, and we must be mindful of the process of remaking. There’s a fine balancing act to be had: we must ensure that we move positively because if we are guided by fear and panic, we will create a world that reflects this. Equally, though, we must ensure that we mobilise with urgency and do not become complacent in our hopefulness. 

We must be active in this remaking, in how we build our lives, our businesses, our societies – everything. But we should be conscious of how we view the world and our place in it. We can opt to let go of anthropocentric thinking and shift our worldview, and in doing so, we’ll undoubtedly arrive at a set of values that can guide us forward. These may sit outside the margins of “normal”, which can feel scary and uncomfortable. But it can also feel deeply joyful and empowering. Grab hold of that.  

Lastly, let’s let go of competition and embrace collaboration. It can be revelatory to see the world as full of unity, reciprocity and connectedness, particularly for those who are culturally conditioned to see otherwise. It can also feel comforting – no longer do we have to feel so competitive or so alone. We can positively participate in our interconnected world, and we can join the collective of changemakers forging a new path and working on behalf of our entire multi-species community. 

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Our ancestors likely had a more zoomed-out perspective than we in the West do today. Scientifically, they wouldn’t have understood that they existed on a planet in a tiny corner of the universe. But celestial bodies held high importance in many cultures, and our ancestors likely reflected on themselves in the context of what sprawled out above them in the almost boundless night sky. 

Could it be that with the onset of anthropocentric thinking, our self-obsession led us to lose a sense of ourselves in a broader context? Did it narrow our gaze? It’s sad to think that it took sending humans to space – arguably, the most self-aggrandising pursuit out there – and the photograph they brought back to begin to wake up modern society and recapture some planetary perspective. 

As much as we are self-obsessed, we are self-aware – a blessing and a curse. In this, we can alter how we see things. We can consciously learn. And there are teachers to listen to. 

The living world teaches us that: with diversity, we are strongest; in collaboration, we thrive; in reciprocity, we can build an equitable future for all.

If we ever lose sight of this, we can look up at the skies above, at the stars and the moon and all that’s out there, and reflect on where we are in the universe. We can be reminded of how incredible our world is with its abundance of life, with its vibrant community of Earthlings, and how precious it is. 

Hopefully, this can offer some perspective.

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This article was written for a British magazine focussed on impact entrepreneurship and purpose-driven business. Unfortunately, it wasn’t published.