![]() ![]() It seeks to place a higher value on self-development, creativity, and imagination in solving challenges at all scales. The Project Earthrise agenda creates a health narrative across all scales, emphasizing multidimensional interactions and bi-directional relationships for flourishing of people, places and planet. In short, it was a call to address fundamental value systems. This event had a far broader agenda than it has today, addressing manifold issues ranging from growing poverty, blight, racism, and war, to broad-ranging environmental decay-with exploitative economic systems as the common denominator, stemming from a culture of profit over people, and self-interest over the beauty and mystery of nature. The resulting frameshift in perspective led to large-scale environmental and social movements and inspired the first Earth Day in 1970. In other words, it was argued that the 19¢ film became the most important part of the multi-billion-dollar project, stirring collective imagination, awe, wonder, and a new sense of unity. This has an utterly profound effect on personal and planetary awareness, and “ …began to bend human consciousness”. “ We came all the way to the moon to discover Earth”, reflected astronaut Bill Anders who took the photograph, on the moment that shifted collective human consciousness. While focus of the journey was largely on the promise of the moon, it was the unscheduled photograph of the Earth that unexpectedly changed our world. Reinvigorating Past Inspirations-As We Step ForwardĪpollo 8 left behind a world in turmoil, war, riots, a pandemic (H3N2), famine, social upheaval, and environmental destruction-with many parallels to our current challenges 50 years later. Too often, these qualities are devalued or dismissed in scientific discussions, and doing so, we fail to recognize this is part of the problem, despite these being arguably our greatest assets in overcoming our most difficult challenges. Normalizing empathy, kindness, hope, creativity, and mutualistic values-the deeper values that unite, empower, and refocus priorities of individuals and groups-also mediates greater social responsibility and environmental concern. This includes greater emphasis on positive assets in health and resilience on all scales (awe, wonder, joy, love, compassion). Our agenda seeks to place a higher value on self-development, creativity, and imagination in solving challenges at all scales. Project Earthrise seeks to equally consider our social and spiritual ecology as it does natural ecology to address “broken spirit” as well as “broken systems” manifest in mounting social unrest, hopelessness, and unparalleled adversity. Building on academic rigor, we seek to place greater value on imagination, kindness and mutualism as we address our greatest challenges, for the health of people, places and planet. Revisiting the inspiration of “Earthrise”, we welcome diverse perspectives from across all dimensions of the arts and the sciences, to explore novel solutions and new normative values. At the same time, our agenda seeks to equally consider our social and spiritual ecology as it does natural ecology. This underscores the imperative for creative ecological solutions to challenges in all systems, on all scales with advancing global urbanization in the digital age-for personal, environmental, economic and societal health alike. Project Earthrise is our contribution to this important process. While ambitious integrative efforts have never been more important, it is imperative to apply these with mutualistic value systems as a compass, as we seek to make wiser choices. This is accelerating opportunities for greater collaborative action, as many groups now focus on the necessity of a “Great Transition”. The acute catastrophe of the COVID-19 pandemic has drawn greater attention to many other interconnected global health, environmental, social, spiritual, and economic problems that have been underappreciated or neglected for decades. This builds on the emergent concept of planetary health, which provides a shared narrative to integrate rich and diverse approaches from all aspects of society towards shared solutions to global challenges. Taking inspiration from these events 50 years later, we initiated Project Earthrise at our 2020 annual conference of inVIVO Planetary Health. It triggered a profound shift in environmental awareness and the potential for human unity-inspiring the first Earth Day in 1970. The “Earthrise” photograph, taken on the 1968 Apollo 8 mission, became one of the most significant images of the 20th Century. ![]()
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