Here's to continually looking for beauty, hope, and wonder in the Valley
Image by Peter Thoeny
We chose to ring in the New Year by asking local artists what makes Silicon Valley distinctive. Spunky. Worth preserving. Today, Noema mag chimes in—below—on why cultivating “awe” (in today's fast-paced, self-centered culture) is actually really good for us.
Watching the interplay of sun and sea [looking out at Driftwood Beach], I’d felt enlivened, gently electrified. The ocean, in its immensity and unseen depths, seemed to harbor hidden meaning.
It was at this point that a traditional account of a brush with awe might end. There were feelings. They were deep, they were ungraspable. …
For the last two decades, Keltner, a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley, has been a leading light of a scientific movement to examine our least-understood emotional state in all its gauzy complexity. His latest book, “Awe,” describes two decades of research and arrives at a radical conclusion. Far from being an undefinable caprice, awe, to Keltner, is a panacea, an evolutionary tool that holds the key to humanity’s capacity to flourish in groups. …
Proponents of this new science believe that experiencing awe may be an essential pathway to physical and mental well-being. By taking us out of ourselves and expanding our sense of time, it counteracts the self-focus and narcissism that is the root of so much modern disenchantment. …
According to Keltner’s book, seeking “brief moments of awe is as good for your mind and body as anything you might do.” …
Over the course of Keltner’s research, one recurring motif — and the facet of awe that best unlocks the question of what the emotion is for, and why it might be good for us — is that it precipitates “ego death,” the dissolution of the self.
In one experiment, a Berkeley postdoctoral researcher, Yang Bai, spent several days with research assistants in Yosemite Valley, persuading more than 1,100 visitors to draw themselves while standing at a viewpoint overlooking the valley. Another group were asked to do the same from the more urban vantage of Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. In the resulting pencil sketches, the urban set filled the page with their self-image. The Yosemite subjects, by contrast, tended to draw themselves small, often dwarfed by the valley’s splendor. Being in a monumental natural environment apparently shaped the participants’ self-image. The individual diminished. The surroundings came to the fore. …
This phenomenon is best understood not as a fracturing of some brittle self-conception but as a form of sublimation. In awe, the self-image becomes diffuse, intermingling not just with other people, but common humanity, the biosphere and everything. Keltner uses the word “merging.” …
Keltner became convinced that awe could be a counteragent to [obsessive self-focus from high-stress environments and digital technology]. Notably, not a single respondent in Berkeley’s 26-culture study cited consumer purchases as the source of their awe-story. In “Awe,” Keltner writes: “Awe occurs in a realm separate from the mundane world of materialism, money, acquisition and status signaling — a realm beyond the profane that many call the sacred.” …
Stellar’s team concluded that several positive emotions, including joy and love, did indeed appear to predict lower levels of the cytokine interleukin-6 (IL-6), a reliable index of inflammation levels. But the biggest predictor by far — as much as three times more than joy — was awe. …
Other studies have suggested that awe — alongside another self-transcendent emotion, compassion — is the emotion most likely to activate the vagus nerve. The longest of our 12 cranial nerves, the vagus is believed to regulate the so-called gut-brain axis, the interface between the nervous system and the digestive tract. Though this science is still young, the prevailing hypothesis is that an active vagus nerve, or “healthy vagal tone,” helps to relieve depression and anxiety as well as inflammatory autoimmune conditions such as arthritis and Crohn’s disease. …
In reality, opportunities to feel awe are all around us — in our surroundings, our relationships, our daily lives. In Keltner’s surveys, subjects reported feeling awe an average of around twice a week. Moreover, awe is regenerative. “That was one of our most surprising discoveries — that the more you feel awe, the more it becomes omnipresent,” he said. “That runs counter to an assumption about human pleasure — that the more we eat ice cream, the less we like it. Awe is different. But you have to put the work in.”
Read the whole thing here.
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