[fludlight]

You jest, but the percentage of humans have never seen the Milky Way with their naked eyes, since they live in or around some sort of city. Light pollution is so widespread that most people alive today have never experienced a truly clear sky.

Anecdotally, the first time I saw the Milky Way with my bare eyes was almost a religious experience.

[psychoslave]

Isn’t that exaggerated? I mean, light pollution is a thing, but you can easily escape it if you go at reasonable distance from most towns. It doesn’t require to go into the middle of a desert nor demand an excessive cost.

I think the expression you might be looking for is "a contemplative state".

[ericbarrett]

I don’t think it’s exaggerated at all. Many urban dwellers in the US have never overnighted outside city limits. Camping trips and boy/girl scouts and such aren’t even on the radar. I would say that a significant number of people don’t even understand what the night sky looks like—to them, it’s always been a gray/orange fog with a few dozen faint stars. So there’s not even a concept of what they’re missing.

[kstrauser]

You're so right. I grew up a couple of miles outside a small Midwest city, and then that was enough to hide a lot of the dim stars. Being in the middle of the Pacific ocean at night, and caught been the phosphorescent bacteria churned up behind us and the Milky Way above us was the most spiritual experience of my life. It was so beautiful that I cried.

I took my kid camping in Joshua Tree last year and we spent a lot of time just taking in all the stars and waving at the occasional satellite zipping overhead. If someone's never done this, I cannot possibly over-recommend it.