Those people who have traveled into space have had the benefit of seeing the Earth from a unique perspective. To see the planet from an extraterrestrial perspective reveals a fragile spaceship protected by a thin atmosphere. Many who have had the privilege to experience this view have returned with a new sense of purpose and perceptive that is more global, more spiritual, and more humane. By working to achieve the goals set forth through the Overview Institute, we hope to expand the ability for the global community to see the Earth through a new lens and experience the evolution in consciousness that often takes place. In the not so distant future, we can achieve the prediction of the late Krafft Ehricke who observed, "Perhaps as we place the extraterrestrial domain into the service of all people, we may be permitted to hope for the greatest benefit of all: that the cheapness of opportunism and all else that is small, narrow, contemptible and repulsive becomes more apparent and far less tolerable from the vantage point of the stars than it ever was from the perspective of the mud hole." After all, should we not take a cue from the fact that since the beginning Man has placed his dreams and aspirations among the stars and his nightmares into caves from whence he came.

-- Alan Ladwig