Light Pollution Induced Egocentrism
How losing touch with the night sky has made us less connected to our cosmic reality
I’m a city boy. I’ve always preferred to live in culture and seek out nature rather than the other way around. The thing I miss a lot is a starry sky. For most of human history, the night sky was a public spectacle. The Milky Way arched overhead in radiant clarity. Stars offered not just navigation but a canvas for myth, science, and spiritual reflection.
Today, more than 80% of the world’s population lives under light-polluted skies. In Europe and the U.S., that number is closer to 99%. Entire generations are growing up without ever seeing the galaxy they live in. The universe has become invisible and in its place, we’ve made ourselves the centre of everything.
This post is about what happens when we lose the stars, not just environmentally, but psychologically and spiritually. I’m going to argue that the fading night sky has fed a quiet egocentrism, subtly shifting our mental architecture away from cosmic humility toward a hyper-individualistic obsession with our own (Instagram) stories.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF LIGHT POLLUTION
Light pollution isn’t new, but its scale is. Ancient cities used torches and oil lamps, and even in imperial Rome, the night sky remained largely untouched. The first real shift began with gas lighting (actual lamps, not the emotional manipulation) in the 19th century. By the early 20th century, the widespread use of electric lights radically altered our nocturnal environment.
Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulb wasn’t just a symbol of progress, it marked the beginning of our collective disengagement from the night sky. Urban centres began to glow continuously . Then came highways, shopping malls, stadiums, and suburbs, all brightly lit in ways that served safety and commerce, but erased the stars.
By the mid-20th century, public policy and infrastructure were geared entirely toward illumination. Light was synonymous with modernity and prosperity. Bright cities became aspirational. Countries competing on global development indexes lit up their skylines as symbolic assertions of advancement. The darker a place was, the more likely it was deemed underdeveloped. And with this symbolic glow came a literal blindness to the stars. Even as humans launched satellites and walked on the moon, our everyday connection to the cosmos was vanishing behind sodium vapour haze.
As of today, truly dark skies are becoming rare. In urban areas, fewer than one in ten children have seen the Milky Way with their own eyes. The average child in London or Los Angeles may grow up believing that the stars are a poetic metaphor, not an actual part of their sky.
THE SHRINKING SKY AND THE INFLATED SELF
As the cosmos disappeared, something else quietly expanded: the self. Ancient and early modern cultures, whether Aboriginal Australians mapping the Dreamtime onto the stars or Islamic scholars charting celestial movements, saw the night sky as a constant reminder of something bigger. It imposed perspective. The grandeur of the stars framed humanity as a small part in a vast, complex system.
Fast forward to the 20th century, especially post WWII. Urbanisation accelerated. So did consumerism and a media landscape that increasingly focussed on personal success, identity performance, and individual ambition. The “Me Decade” of the 1970s symbolised this shift. It wasn’t just about politics or fashion but an ontological realignment. While it clearly wasn’t the only factor, I’m sure that no longer having the cosmos as the mirror in which we saw our smallness has had a significant impact. Instead of this nightly reflection we have curated digital selves and curated city lights.
We cannot stand a meaningless life and in the absence of the stars, we filled the void with ourselves. TikTok, Instagram, hustle culture, productivity cults, and billionaire worship, the modern forms of significance-making that might seem less compelling under the full majesty of the night sky.
COSMIC PERSPECTIVE AND SCIENTIFIC SPIRITUALITY
“There is perhaps no better demonstration of the folly of human conceits than this distant image of our tiny world,” wrote Carl Sagan in Pale Blue Dot. “To me, it underscores our responsibility to deal more kindly with one another, and to preserve and cherish the pale blue dot - the only home we've ever known.”
This is the essence of cosmic perspective, a cognitive shift that places us in context, reducing narcissism and increasing empathy. And it's not just poetic intuition: research backs it up. Studies show that experiencing awe (often triggered by nature or the night sky) is associated with decreased focus on the self and increased generosity.
The night sky once offered a kind of spiritual infrastructure. It didn’t require belief in a deity, but it invited reverence. Thinkers have written eloquently about a scientific spirituality, a sense of the sacred grounded not in mythology, but in scale and beauty. Against the dark canvas of the night sky, we are given the gift of perspective - not the kind that belittles our lives, but the kind that enlarges our understanding of what life is, and what it might be.
In this worldview, we don’t need to fill the gaps in knowledge with gods. We can stand in awe of what we do know: that every atom in our bodies was forged in the heart of a dying star. That we are not above nature, we are its ongoing (misbehaving) experiment. In other words, we are star stuff contemplating star stuff.
This perspective counters many of the anxieties of modern life. It trivialises status games, softens identity obsessions, and reorients meaning away from the self and toward participation in a grander whole.
RESTORING THE NIGHT
It’s not all lost. Around the world, people are working to bring back the stars. The International Dark-Sky Association has designated dozens of reserves and parks where lighting is strictly controlled. Cities like Flagstaff, Arizona have implemented smart lighting regulations that protect the night sky while maintaining public safety. Astro-tourism is on the rise - places like La Palma, the Atacama Desert, and the Scottish Isles now draw visitors not for their beaches but for their celestial spectacle.
Design solutions exist too: shielded light fixtures, motion-activated lights, and warm-spectrum LEDs. It’s a cultural question, not just a technical one: do we value the stars enough to design for darkness?
On an individual level, it’s worth seeking out darkness. Let’s go camping. Let’s visit a dark-sky reserve. Let’s turn off our outdoor lights. Let’s Look up. Let’s allow the cosmos remind us of our place - not to make us feel small, but to help us belong to something vast and real.
CONCLUSION
The loss of the night sky is not just an ecological or aesthetic issue, it’s a spiritual one. It’s about what we forget when we lose touch with the cosmos, and what kind of selves we become in the absence of that perspective.
We traded the infinite for the illuminated, and in doing so, we made ourselves the main character in a much smaller story. But the stars are still there, shining with indifference and beauty. They are waiting to be noticed. Let’s look up.