{"id":17654,"date":"2023-02-07T17:37:20","date_gmt":"2023-02-08T01:37:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/?p=17654"},"modified":"2023-02-07T18:08:41","modified_gmt":"2023-02-08T02:08:41","slug":"dacher-keltner-awe-the-new-science-of-everyday-wonder-and-how-it-can-transform-your-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.markrkelly.com\/Blog\/2023\/02\/07\/dacher-keltner-awe-the-new-science-of-everyday-wonder-and-how-it-can-transform-your-life\/","title":{"rendered":"Dacher Keltner, AWE: The New Science of Everyday Wonder and How It Can Transform Your Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

This is a book about the subjective experience of awe, and how being aware of everyday examples of awe can make your life more meaningful and fulfilling; yet how (in my take) it’s about the emotion, triggered by both the subjective and the objective, and not about science fiction’s “sense of wonder,” something of which the author seems unaware.<\/p>\n

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(Penguin Press, January 2023, xxvi+309pp, including 59pp of acknowledgements, notes, and index.)<\/em><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s my take on a recent book that has some striking ideas, yet which prolongs those points with endless anecdotes and case studies. I skimmed the second half. And which doesn’t distinguish the emotion of awe from subjectivity or objectivity; awe is not a clue to what is real, like most emotions.<\/p>\n

I hadn\u2019t heard of this book until the author, presumably on a publicity tour for the book, got interviewed by a couple of my daily reads \u2014 Slate, Salon,<\/em> perhaps somewhere else. (Yes, I could look it up.) I checked the book out on Amazon. Too much like a self help book? But there\u2019s an endorsement blurb from Steven Pinker on the back! And from Frans de Waal! And from Pete Docter, the director of several Pixar films, including Inside Out<\/em> \u2013 for which the author here, Keltner, consulted. Still, the book presents itself as a self-help book, posing the question — how can we live a good life? — on its first page and presenting the answer on its 2nd page, and as the theme and title of the book.<\/p>\n

Keltner is a professor of psychology at UC Berkeley and the theme of his career is about helping people find a meaningful, good life.<\/p>\n

So again Keltner gives his thesis right away. The way to a good life is: find awe. The emotion \u201cwe experience when we encounter vast mysteries that we don\u2019t understand.\u201d We can find it anywhere, and it doesn\u2019t take much time.<\/p>\n

Keltner describes his background in the study of emotions, and how he came to focus on awe, a neglected and difficult to define feeling. The results in this book develop along four lines, or stories, that relate to awe: scientific; personal; cultural; and recovery from loss and trauma. He began by gathering some 2100 personal stories from people around the world (not just “WEIRD” countries) about when and how they felt awe. The stories grouped into eight themes:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Moral beauty, the actions of people who go out of their way to help others;<\/li>\n
  2. Collective effervescence, the feeling that comes within large groups of people;<\/li>\n
  3. Nature, including cataclysmic events, the night sky, the ocean, forests;<\/li>\n
  4. Music;<\/li>\n
  5. Visual design (buildings, jewelry);<\/li>\n
  6. Stories of spiritual and religious awe, e.g. conversion stories, even sexual desire;<\/li>\n
  7. Stories of life and death;<\/li>\n
  8. Epiphanies: sudden insights into the meaning of life.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    And then the book has a chapter on each of these, giving examples, especially personal stories, especially the *author\u2019s* personal experiences. Author realized the most of the stories they collected were about once-in-a-lifetime experiences, but those aren\u2019t necessary; people who kept daily diaries reported \u201ceveryday awe\u201d just by being in museums, or suddenly understanding chemistry, or being aware of their daily surroundings.<\/p>\n

    One running theme is about the author\u2019s brother, Rolf, who died of cancer, and how memories of Rolf kept recurring.<\/p>\n

    The gist, again, is that awe is the awareness that we are part of systems larger than the self. (He quotes the famous last lines of Darwin.) How do we do this? Perceive that everything is a system, and systems are entities of interrelated elements working together. Awe arises when we perceive change in those system (p245b), and the phenomena that bring them together. What is the purpose of awe? It integrates us into the systems of life: the ability to wonder about the great questions of living.<\/p>\n

    \\\\<\/p>\n

    My problems with the book (aside from the endless personal anecdotes) are captured in those last summary lines. Sure, awe can be the perception of systems larger than ourselves, and such insights can give life a kind of meaning beyond the protocols of everyday living. But it\u2019s wrong to ask what is the *purpose* of awe, because there is no purpose to evolution, or to our emotions; they just are. The more precise question should have been to ask \u2013 which the author doesn\u2019t ask \u2013 what *function* does the feeling of awe serve? Why should humans have evolved that among many other emotions? We actually understand, broadly, why many human emotions exist: they motivate people to unconsciously behave in certain ways that are to the benefit of individual and group survival. (Otherwise humans would not have been able to cooperate in large groups and gradually take over the world.) But how do people who experience awe have an advantage over people who don\u2019t? I wish the author had gone there. (I could speculate, but I won\u2019t just now.)<\/p>\n

    Another issue I have with the book is that the author explores the many things that provoke the feeling of awe, without distinguishing which of them are subjective, or experiences of an objectively real universe. For example, when most people sense something awesome, they identify it with the only story they know to \u2018explain\u2019 it, usually the local religion (that they\u2019ve grown up with). That doesn\u2019t make their religion true.<\/p>\n

    Another key issue is that my first thought about this discussion of awe is that it should align closely with science fiction\u2019s idea of the \u201csense of wonder,\u201d in particular the discovery in many science fiction stories that the universe is far vaster than believed, or that the universe works to some completely different \u201cpurpose\u201d than humans imagined.<\/p>\n

    (My two favorite examples of this are those two by Arthur C. Clarke: “The Star” and “The Nine Billion Names of God.” Each reveals a universe in which human understanding of its place in it is abruptly overwhelmed and dismissed.)<\/p>\n

    But the author apparently has no clue about science fiction or its \u201csense of wonder\u201d; he even distinguishes between \u2018awe\u2019 and \u2018wonder\u2019 p39:<\/p>\n

    Wonder, the mental state of openness, questioning, curiosity, and embracing mystery, arises out of experiences of awe. In our studies, people who find more everyday awe show evidence of living with wonder. They are more open to new ideas. To what is unknown. To what language can\u2019t describe. To the absurd. To seeking new knowledge. \u2026 They feel more comfortable with mysteries, with that which cannot be explained.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

    I think that\u2019s a decent take on the philosophical stance of science fiction. (But consider the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction\u2019s take on Sense of Wonder<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

    Thus my conclusion from this book is that awe is an emotion about \u201cperceiving systems larger than yourself\u201d but which are not necessarily real, except subjectively. Yet even subjectively, are valuable for mental health.<\/p>\n

    \\\\<\/p>\n

    Particular items I noted:<\/p>\n