Moral beauty inspires awe needed in our lives
What experiences have inspired chills, raised goosebumps, brought you to tears or caused an immediate reaction with an exclamation of “whoa” or “wow”?
One memorable “wow” experience I had was the first time I saw the Northern Lights. My wife and I had moved to an island in Lake Superior, and one evening we received a call from neighbors with the message, “Go outside.” And there they were. It wasn’t just the sheets of lighted colors that were shimmering in the cold winter air, but their closeness. It was as if they were trying to touch the ground, dropping so near it seemed like you could reach up and touch them. Even thinking about it now: Wow.
Sunsets, snow falls, night skies, full moons, shooting stars, deserts, tall tree forests, mountains, volcanoes, seascapes, storms, fire: nature provides us with multitudes of powerful — and sometimes terrifying —“wow” possibilities. We often have them in our encounters with nature, yet many kinds of everyday experiences can touch off the neurological reactions of tears and goosebumps — they can come from music, art, poetry, movies and from stories of all kinds that catch us up and touch the heart. Moments prompting a physical reaction can be as different as sharing a boisterous raise-the-roof church service, sitting in the silence of a Zen rock garden, getting caught in the frenzy of a rock concert or settling into the quiet of a piano recital. And witnessing the birth of a child is a “top that” experience nothing can ever top.
A “chills” response to some depthcharged stimulus means that we are experiencing a complex and important yet understudied emotion — awe. I say “understudied” because psychologists and philosophers have studied in great depth anger, love, sadness, happiness and fear, but only recently has awe drawn their attention. Awe is today a topic of scientific investigation, and those studying it have already reached the conclusion that we have a need for awe in our lives — in our daily lives, and not just in a one time “wow” experience like being overwhelmed by the Northern Lights.
A recent book on the topic by Berkeley psychology professor Dacher Keltner has repositioned awe as central to our emotional register. Awe, he says, is necessary for understanding “the deep structures and wonders of life,” and it is so important and our need for it so vital that to ignore or deny it leads to psychological dysfunction, something that is known from locking prisoners in solitary confinement and depriving them of any opportunity for such experiences.
Awe re-sizes us, makes us smaller in the face of something beyond our ability to understand, and it humbles us as we lose ourselves in something larger than even than our egos. Awe is big. Keltner defines awe as “the feeling of being in the presence of something vast that transcends your current understanding of the world.” Awe requires a shift in vocabulary as room must be made for such words as “mystery” and “vastness,” “wonder,” “transcendence” and a sense that “life is sacred.” It turns out that money doesn’t figure into awe, nor do the accessories of consumerism — our computers and cell phones and heated car seats. While feelings of beauty or even horror connect to the familiar and meet expectations, awe moves into big-and-beyond feelings even if what prompts such feelings happens to be small. We access mystery through wonder, not expectation.
A surprising discovery from the scientific research is that across cultures the most common source of awe in everyday life is what Keltner identifies as “moral beauty.” Moral beauty is what we encounter when we see kindness and courage, generosity and gratitude, forgiveness and reconciliation. Moral beauty is the gift that keeps on giving, for those who see it in others are often—usually—inspired to act with greater kindness and generosity themselves. The research shows this to be true. Encountering moral beauty can raise goosebumps, but it does more than that: it calls us to be better persons. Just seeing these behaviors inspires people to greater hope and optimism.
I’m told when “To Kill a Mockingbird” was published, the character of lawyer Atticus Finch inspired a flood of law school applications, and this sometimes-banned novel is today still required reading in some law schools. It is not just advice but moral beauty that is revealed when Atticus tells his son that he wanted him to know that real courage is when “you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do.”
Moral beauty is around us but within us as well. People of faith are not and should not be strangers to its presence. We see it in the lives and teachings of many spiritual masters, including the Jesus who renounced retribution and said to love God and the neighbor and forgive one’s enemies. If there is moral beauty in those teachings it must show itself. It cannot be beauty if it is not seen; it cannot be moral if not enacted. The experience of moral beauty calls us to connect to ourselves and others in more peaceful ways and to find in the world and in the people around us the many everyday occasions for experiencing awe.