Finding Awe in the Anthropocene
Finding Awe in the Anthropocene
Can certain emotions help us feel more interconnected and engaged in planetary care?
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This latest post is about the role of awe in our lives. How can it transform our thinking, help us feel more connected, and possibly motivate us to better planetary care?
It’s obvious we need to do something different. This summer of 2023, by June 30, twenty-million acres burned in Canada, with 112 million Americans suffering from poor air quality. In addition, heat in the Southern states topped new records. Climate change is rapidly becoming a public health crisis.
How can we find ways to connect this reality with people’s emotions in a way that positively engages more Americans? Some new research provides clues.
ON A RECENT WALK in a local Sonoma County park, I came across a herd of sheep fenced in to munch on the tall grasses. As I stopped to watch the different colorations of animals and the frolicking lambs, my eyes were drawn to one sheep about 50 feet away writhing on the ground with a bulge under her tail.
I realized I was witnessing a mother sheep (a ewe) in the final stages of giving birth. After a few minutes, a white head popped out, and she jumped to her feet to drop the bundle onto the ground. Interestingly, as soon as the newly born lamb made a sound, three other young lambs rushed over to be next to the mother and baby and stayed there the whole time I watched. The ewe spent about ten minutes licking her new lamb, consuming the umbilical cord, and prodding the lamb to its feet to suckle. It took about six tries before it could stand up on slender, wobbly legs. I murmured, "Welcome to the world, little one!"
I left with a sense of awe. Beginnings, endings, natural wonders, expansive views— all can evoke awe. So can human-made things like music, expressive art, or movies that inspire us with higher emotions like compassion and love.
I came home thinking about what role awe holds for an often-jaded Western culture that thinks it controls everything. The Oxford Dictionary says awe is "a feeling of reverential respect mixed with fear or wonder."
A more fulsome definition could be that awe is a self-transcendent emotion that inspires us to see our connectedness to a bigger world. It takes us outside of ourselves and expands our views. If you stand on the continent's edge and gaze out over miles of Pacific Ocean, you'll feel small, but you might also be inspired to see you’re part of a diverse, amazing Earth.
Psychologists have been studying the emotion of awe more recently and here’s a quote published in Science Direct.
Awe, a complex emotion arising from things larger than the self in physical or social size (perceived vastness), is accompanied by the need to break out of one's existing cognitive structures and adapt to new situations.
Awe of nature and well-being: Roles of nature connectedness and powerlessness
Social scientists now say awe has a role to play in whether our society can adapt and survive through coming hard times. Moments of wonder, or "self-transcendence," help us to think beyond ourselves and consider the welfare of others, including other species. Awe helps us be more altruistic and relate better to our living Earth.
In the coming years, as we face far-reaching, inevitable environmental and humanitarian challenges, self-transcendence will be more significant and necessary than ever before. Emotions, long seen by some as irrational or inconsequential, actually lead to tangible outcomes in the sense that they propel our decisions and subsequent actions.
Harnessing the transformational potential of awe and other self-transcending emotions can radically change how we interact with each other and the world around us.
Psychology Today "Transcending the Self—5 Ways Awe Makes You a Better Person”, by Emma Stone Ph.D.
Self-transcendent experiences also shift our experience of time, slowing it down, focusing our attention, and making us more generous.
This altered understanding of the nature of time carries diverse pro-social outcomes, leading to a preference for experiences over material or consumer goods, increased life satisfaction, and an increased willingness to volunteer time.
Psychology Today "Transcending the Self" by Emma Stone Ph.D.
This decade and these times call for a wider, more holistic worldview that includes more compassion and care for all people and life's various forms— all our "relations," as the indigenous people have called other species.
Life forms all share the same air, water, and land.
We ride together in the life ship called Earth. 🌎
Another moment of awe happened this week when I walked in my forested neighborhood and heard two new songbirds. (I’m easy to awe. 😏) A peek at my phone's Merlin app told me the bright song line belonged to a purple finch. The other new-to-me bird sound was a Swainson's thrush, which has an ethereal, almost-ventriloquist call. You can see it eating berries and singing here. Song starts at 0:29 seconds.
If you don't hear songbirds in your area, it's probably because their numbers have declined steeply since 1970. Human actions have directly or indirectly caused the loss of millions of fluted and feathered voices. The worsening biodiversity and climate crises need much more attention if we want to preserve ecosystems that function and support all of life.
For many people, a focus on day-to-day experiences or needs leaves us less able to see the bigger picture or longer time frames. Human culture hasn’t always been this hurried or harried, though.
Past cultures that were “good ancestors” on Earth acted with awareness of a longer timeline, integrating lessons from the past with the future’s needs too. Most of us require help to envision possible futures and see how actions taken today can have far-reaching impacts.
What if seeking more moments of awe helps to widen our vision, promote pro-social behavior, and increase our ethical decision-making and generosity—all attributes we need to solve today's pressing problems? Psychologist Emma Stone says studies have shown awe can inspire all of that and more. She has a prescription for us:
We need to nourish our emotional landscapes with a broader spectrum of emotions that shift us beyond the self into a state of interconnectedness. Notably, awe has been identified as one of the rare emotional states (along with gratitude, compassion, elevation, and inspiration) which transcends the self.
How can we nurture those feelings of self-transcendence and awe? Look for people or things that inspire you and get you to think in a more expansive way, find positive wonders, establish meaningful connections with others, create art— and my favorite because it's always accessible— get outside.
Star-gaze or observe cloud formations, bird-watch/listen, engage with a body of water, notice bumblebees as they wallow in pollen, greet the sunrise or sunset, befriend an animal, climb a mountain, or find ways to engage all your senses.
If we slow down and observe, the world is full of miracles and mysteries. I’m fortunate to live near some beautiful forests that inspire me. Recently, I drove over Mountain View Road which crosses the coastal mountain range between Point Arena and Ukiah, CA. The slow, two-lane road meandered through thick forests, climbed green ridges, dropped into steep canyons, and crossed a rushing creek. Dappled sunlight mixed with deep shadows under the tall canopy of trees. Bird song floated in the air, and leaves shimmered in the breeze. The forest seemed so alive that I had a strong sense there were fairies or wood sprites hiding just beyond my view.
Can we find the re-enchantment with life needed to step up our planetary care? The next year’s challenge is to motivate more of us to protect what remains and regenerate what has been damaged. Seeking more experiences of awe—those stained glass moments—could be our portal.
Robin Applegarth
Some awe-some reads or views:
Communicating with whales?— Project CETI, (The Cetacean Translation Initiative) is working on that. What’s more inspiring and awesome than seeing whales out at sea? How about knowing what they are saying? Project CETI has a big goal— interspecies communication to inspire us to make species preservation our highest goal. Project CETI is using advanced robotics to listen to and translate the communication of sperm whales in Dominica. This is fascinating and potentially ground-breaking research. 🐋 🐋
Thanks to Tree Mercer for sharing this article. She and her husband Scott are the resident whale experts on California’s Mendocino Coast.
The Anthropocene epoch of man-made climate change brings its own scenes of awe. Here, pianist Ludovico Einaudi plays in front of melting glaciers in the Arctic. Best viewed full screen.
All That Breathes documentary— This is an award-winning true story of two Muslim brothers living in the crowded tenements of New Delhi, India who have devoted their lives to caring for the city’s population of injured black Kite birds, healing over 20,000 of them so far.
It has gritty moments of religious tension, bird deaths, and extreme pollution but the brothers keep a steadfast focus on caring for the birds. This is an awe-inspiring tale due to the extraordinary compassion and care in the midst of hardship. In Hindi with subtitles. Documentary trailer here.
“You don’t care for things because they share the same country, religion or politics. Life itself is kinship. We’re all a community of air. “
All That Breathes documentary
I like to hear from readers!
What sparks moments of transcendence or awe for you? How can we expand those feelings to promote needed social and ecological change?
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Robin: this is one of the best pieces ever! Leads me into a quiet meditation and reconnectedness…excellent reflective article. Thank you, Judy
I believe that Ansel Adams felt profound awe and instead of verbalizing the awe, expressed that awe in each of his images. And we sense that awe as we look carefully at his photograph. The current Ansel exhibit is so popular that it's been extended for an extra week. We are so hungry for awe but fail to clear our mind's chatter to see what is right here/now..