How to feel awe every day | The Gray Area
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0:00 But that's what happens with Oz.
0:01 You start looking at the light on a tree
0:03 and the leaves and the clouds [music] drifting
0:06 by and you pause and you see all these patterns
0:08 and your your sense of self starts to be connected
0:11 to that those patterns in nature and you feel
0:13 awe and that is right here in front of us
0:16 as you said and it's one of the most important
0:18 discoveries in our research is what I call everyday awe.
0:21 It's [music] people are finding it pretty
0:22 regularly and it's just right around them.
0:31 [music] [music] [music]
0:44 Docker Kelner, welcome to the show, my friend.
0:46 Yeah, it's good to be with you, Sean.
0:49 Let's just get right into it.
0:50 Um, I love this book.
0:51 I love this topic.
0:52 And I wasn't even aware that there was a science
0:56 of awe But now I am and I'm glad I am.
1:00 Um, awe is such a squishy word.
1:03 I think we all use it.
1:05 I think we all vaguely know what it's supposed to mean,
1:09 but we use it interchangeably with other words like wonder or reverence.
1:15 Is that a mistake?
1:18 Yeah, you know, and thanks for starting there actually, Sean.
1:21 Um, you know, one of the hardest things
1:22 about emotion science and the study of off falls within that is we use words
1:28 to try to describe these complicated subjective experiences,
1:32 right, that are in our bodies and in the unconscious and part of our history.
1:36 And that's true of awe, right?
1:38 So, um, that's why we do the science of awe.
1:40 So uh conceptually um we differentiate awe which is an emotion
1:46 that you feel when you encounter vast mysterious things for the most part.
1:51 Um and we differentiate that from wonder which philosophers
1:56 have been interested in for some time Decart Plato
1:59 and others which is really what we might call
2:02 an epistemological state that follows an experience of awe
2:06 and then we would differentiate awe from two other
2:10 feeling states uh beauty and that was a old
2:14 question of Edmund Burke and Emanuel Kant how
2:18 is the sublime or awe different from the Beautiful.
2:21 And then you got to differentiate awe from horror, right?
2:24 You, you know, I did research with the veteran with veterans and they
2:30 will feel horror on the battlefield very obviously, but also some awe.
2:34 So, we got to pull all these states apart scientifically to get precise.
2:39 How would you distinguish awe from another
2:43 ordinary emotion like fear or amazement?
2:47 Are they just like intense?
2:48 is all like an intense version of that or is
2:51 it a difference of of kind not just degree?
2:56 Thank you Sean.
2:56 You just asked a question that took us about 15 years to answer with science.
3:00 So yeah, this is what I do sir.
3:02 Yeah.
3:02 When we study emotions and this really you
3:05 know traces back in the western tradition to Darwin
3:08 who wrote about the emotions in 1872 and then
3:12 a more contemporary science beginning about 30 years ago.
3:15 When we study an emotion, we look at the feeling state or experience.
3:19 We look at physiology.
3:20 We look at the brain.
3:22 We look at your face, your voice, your body.
3:24 We have all these different ways to measure what an emotion is when it happens.
3:31 And so that science tells us very importantly,
3:34 awe is really different from fear, right?
3:37 It's different in its physiology.
3:39 Fear elevates heart rate.
3:41 Awe elevates veagal tone, the activation of the vagus nerve,
3:45 which slows your body down and makes you open and connected.
3:49 Uh fear activates the amydala.
3:52 Awe activates different regions of the brain related to reward.
3:56 Um fear sound sounds like, you know, awe has an entirely different vocalization.
4:04 Sean, what's a sound you might emit if you were feeling awe?
4:08 That's so interesting that you would say that and ask
4:10 that because to me the sound of awe is silence.
4:14 When I'm in awe, when I'm in awe, I'm sort of rendered speechless.
4:17 I I don't I'm sort of overcome with a feeling and I'm just sort of
4:22 captured by it and and and silent, I guess.
4:25 I don't I don't associate sound with it.
4:27 But but what you tell me what a sounds like.
4:30 I don't know.
4:30 Yeah.
4:30 My hunch is if you're around a bunch of giant trees,
4:33 the low oldest living organisms on Earth,
4:36 you might be silent by yourself, but if you're with friends, you might Whoa.
4:40 Right.
4:41 Uh we've studied that sound very universal around the world.
4:45 Really different acoustically than fear.
4:48 So we take all these ways to measure an emotion and we
4:51 do the very important work of differentiating it from closely related states.
4:56 And what it tells us I think is something really important which is
5:00 you know Einstein felt awe was a basic state of mind a basic state
5:07 of consciousness of being in the world and seeing the world and this science
5:12 says that's true that it's just part of our the organization of our minds.
5:17 An important difference between a feeling and a state.
5:21 [laughter] This is getting hard.
5:25 Yeah.
5:26 I I think we would use the term state [snorts]
5:29 as a broader term to say this is a mental state, right?
5:34 And the mental state can be a feeling.
5:36 Oh, I feel awe.
5:37 It can be a sensation.
5:39 My body itches, right?
5:41 It can be uh more of an epistemological state.
5:46 I I can't remember how to do that mathematical function.
5:50 So states are are episodes of mental activity or consciousness
5:56 if you will and then feeling is one one kind.
6:01 And I was reading your book and thinking about how I've used the term awe and I
6:06 basically realized that I usually use that word when
6:10 I don't really know what I'm trying to describe.
6:13 Almost like it's a
6:15 poetic umbrella for a feeling for which there isn't an adequate word.
6:19 So I just say I'm in awe.
6:22 Um would you quibble with that or is that sort of kind of what awe is?
6:26 That it that it it it sort of speech almost feels superolous before it
6:31 because you're you're overwhelmed in that way
6:32 and it seems I don't know beyond language.
6:37 I I just got goosebumps at your observation.
6:40 That's a wonderful thought.
6:41 You know in moments of awe great thinkers come up blank when it comes to words.
6:47 You know, William James, one of my heroes,
6:49 had this almost psychedelic experience on nitrous oxide of all things.
6:54 And he called words tattered fragments, you know, of, you know,
6:58 and Michael Pollen addresses this in his new book
7:00 on consciousness that words can't capture the full experience.
7:06 And subjectively, what we know with awe, as you say,
7:11 is it is it is it's a state of deep humility where you don't know.
7:17 uh your knowledge can't make sense of how big the trees are or how
7:24 beautifully children play or what how music can make us cry in an instant.
7:29 We just don't know uh the rational mind in that moment.
7:33 Uh and I I love the idea that one of the purposes
7:37 of awe is it points out the limits of our knowledge.
7:42 Right.
7:43 Yeah.
7:43 And then in this state of humility and then we
7:45 go in search of meaning and understanding which is wonder.
7:50 I got to hold for a second.
7:51 Did you just call me a great thinker?
7:53 I don't want to pass over that.
7:54 [laughter] Is that Did I hear that right?
7:56 Or or
7:57 I thought I was Did you compare me directly to William James?
7:59 Me and William James basically same quality of thinker.
8:03 That's very kind of you.
8:05 Well, you know, I love the idea that here's
8:08 an emotion that makes us excited about what we don't know.
8:11 And and what a wonderful emotion to have.
8:14 You know, I was thinking about the the last time I consciously felt awe.
8:20 And I think it was when um did you see you know you know who Alex Hunnel is?
8:25 The the climber?
8:26 Yeah.
8:27 Yeah.
8:27 They had a show on Netflix where he
8:29 uh Alex climbed a a massive skyscraper in Taiwan.
8:33 I think it was by far the largest or the the the tallest urban climb in history.
8:39 Did you see that?
8:40 I didn't see it, but I I was aruck by Free Solo and what he did
8:44 when I was watching that when he got to the top of that building.
8:47 I I I had some feels like I felt some real feels and I was surprised by it.
8:52 Um I mean obviously it's it's an incredible physical feat, right?
8:55 But I mean I, you know, watch the Olympics or other other sporting events
8:59 and see people do incredibly like physically excellent
9:02 things all the time and it didn't make me quite feel in awe in that way.
9:06 It was like weirdly moving in a way
9:08 that went beyond just the physical excellence.
9:12 What do you think's going on in that example?
9:14 What is going on there?
9:15 Why am I connecting to that in that way?
9:18 Yeah, it's, you know, one of the kinds of awe that we study in our lab,
9:24 uh, is moral beauty or just how we're moved by observing human excellence.
9:30 And there are a couple of kinds that sort of separate in this literature.
9:35 And one is when we are around physical excellence, you know,
9:39 and so you might see a chef
9:40 dice vegetables or ballerina or hip-hop artist dance.
9:44 Um, I got to stand next to Steph Curry as he
9:48 shot three-pointers after practice and he made 88 out of 100.
9:52 And it was one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen.
9:55 And and that's one form of of uh this response to human excellence.
10:00 And then the other is when there's virtue mixed into it,
10:03 kindness and courage and fighting for justice or humility.
10:07 And and Hunnled has tons of courage.
10:09 He's his life's on the line all the time.
10:12 And [snorts] so you mix in courage with the physical excellence and it gets
10:16 you to this feeling of moral beauty or this feeling of elevation or awe.
10:20 Why is really interesting and the Scottish philosopher David Hume
10:24 a couple hundred years ago got close to it where he's he
10:27 said and this is interesting Sean like when we see
10:30 the extremes of human potential that we aspire towards or feel like
10:36 we could be part of we ourselves begin imagining having those qualities
10:40 and doing that and we are moved in this this realm
10:45 of the imagination and I think there's a small part
10:47 of that that's what happens when I be a great physical achievement.
10:51 I'm thinking, you know,
10:53 I should pick up the basketball again and start shooting around or whatever.
10:57 It won't look like that.
10:59 And that's one of the great pathways to aspiration and what
11:04 we do in life is to be inspired by others.
11:06 What was different about the the Alex climb is I almost felt like a vague pride
11:11 like, wow, look at what a member of my species is capable of doing.
11:17 And you know, I have a similar feeling if I'm watching film of, you know,
11:22 big wave surfers riding a 100 foot waves
11:25 in in Portugal or ultra marathoners or something like that, right?
11:29 But when I see that, I'm more like, "Holy that's crazy."
11:33 When I watch Alex get to the top of that building,
11:35 it's like I don't know if maybe just climbing
11:37 is a more direct metaphor for life or something.
11:39 I don't know.
11:40 But it felt triumphant in a way, like we did it.
11:43 We did it.
11:43 But when I watch a big way surfer,
11:44 I'm like, I can't believe what that person just did.
11:47 But with with Alex, I'm like, look at look at us, you know?
11:50 I don't know.
11:50 Is that weird?
11:51 Yeah.
11:51 No, that's wonderful.
11:52 It's this, you know,
11:53 we and one of the things that awe surfaces is that we have this collective self.
11:59 That's a very interesting part of our evolution that we think of ourselves as
12:03 part of tribes and groups and species and and living forms.
12:07 Um, and when we see reminders of the strength of our kind,
12:12 we take it in personally.
12:13 We feel like it's part of who we are.
12:15 And and uh, one of the reasons we need
12:18 this kind of these kinds of stories is to to uh, remind us of what we can do.
12:24 One of the things you argue in the book
12:25 that is that the experience of awe quiets the self.
12:31 What do you mean by that?
12:32 What what is the self that's being quieted?
12:36 You know, you can think about our identities
12:39 or our minds consciousness um as one part of it is
12:44 the self is the ego is making sure I have
12:47 food and I'm safe and I have I'm rising in status
12:51 and I'm getting paid and I'm achieving my goals
12:54 and I'm beating out the other people and uh that's
12:57 the self and there are a lot of good reasons
12:59 evolutionarily why we have a very active self in our consciousness.
13:04 But we're also very unusual in that we relate for evolutionary
13:09 reasons to things that are larger than the self, right?
13:12 Collectives, groups, cultural forms like music or art.
13:16 Uh in indigenous traditions and in our own experience, uh ecosystems,
13:22 it's very advantageous to have fuel related to your ecosystem.
13:26 So we're constantly moving from self to self in relation to larger things.
13:32 Um and you know social scientists for the past 40 to 50 years you know
13:38 Christopher Lash the culture of narcissism we h
13:43 we are in the most individualistic self-focus some
13:47 data suggests narcissistic period in human history you
13:52 know just think about you know not only
13:55 individualism rising in our culture hey I got
13:58 to express myself instead of following duties etc.
14:02 But now we've added technology to the mix where you know
14:05 here's just a finding that won't surprise your our listeners and viewers
14:09 like uh 25% of the photos we take and post on Instagram
14:14 are of the self and another 24% are me with another person.
14:18 We're so self-focused and that's harmful for us.
14:22 And awe gets us out of it.
14:24 You know, just like you said, it quiets things down.
14:27 It makes us aware of what's around us.
14:30 it it it the the neural activation
14:33 of the self the default mode network is quieted
14:36 down and we start to see the beauty and and the wonder of things around us.
14:40 Um and that is good news.
14:42 I agree wholeheartedly.
14:43 But let me ask just to hear your answer
14:46 when you said just now that focusing on the self is harmful.
14:52 Yeah.
14:53 Why?
14:53 Yeah.
14:53 And I don't mean to get on a soap box about this but you know go for it.
14:57 Yeah.
14:57 I mean I teach young people uh Jonathan height the anxious generation you know
15:03 the new data even more definitive being online
15:07 is making us anxious and detached and lonely
15:10 it's a struggle and one of the pathways to that those struggles of anxiety
15:15 and self-criticism and perfectionism and self condemnation is
15:20 too much of a focus on the self.
15:21 we ruminate what did she think of me and did I say
15:25 the right thing and you know what what are other people saying
15:28 about my talk or whatever that's all good in balance in moderation
15:33 but it's way out of balance and you know I think that's
15:36 why awe struck such a chord is it tells us if you
15:41 go dance with some friends you'll lose yourself and feel wonderful if
15:44 you go hear some music you will lose yourself for a moment
15:47 and feel wonderful if you get out in nature and backpack by yourself,
15:53 you suddenly feel like you're part of the the natural world.
15:55 If you take psychedelics or spirit medicines, same thing.
15:59 The self dissolves and we feel uplifted and strong.
16:04 I think most people think of awe as a almost personal spiritual experience,
16:12 but you seem to be suggesting that it's also deeply social,
16:17 maybe even primarily a social experience.
16:19 I mean, is that a fair way to put it or am I overstating it?
16:22 Yeah, you just gave me goosebumps with that question.
16:24 Thank you.
16:25 You know, so twice in one, look at this, man.
16:27 I'm on a roll.
16:28 Yeah.
16:28 Yeah.
16:29 And isn't that interesting that a great idea that you know,
16:32 a great distillation of a complicated science you just offered moves me.
16:36 Yeah.
16:37 You know, we uh we gathered stories of awe from 26 countries all over the world.
16:46 India, Mexico, China, Russia, Japan, New Zealand,
16:51 US, Germany, all these different countries.
16:54 Just write about what made you feel
16:56 awe when you encountered what's vast and mysterious.
16:58 And off they wrote and uh you know,
17:02 I thought it would be nature is kind of the primary source of awe.
17:05 It was close, but but it was the social
17:08 stuff that was our most reliable source of awe.
17:12 other people's courage and virtue and strength and intelligence
17:16 and then also shared movement with other people, sports, politics, dance.
17:21 So, it was it was it really caught me off guard and got me
17:26 to think much more deeply about awe in in ways I hadn't thought about
17:29 before that this emotion really makes us feel wonder about other people
17:36 and and and our connections to them and how vital that is to our our thriving.
17:42 26 countries is a lot.
17:43 I mean, do you recall any um major differences that emerge there
17:49 in the picture in terms of like are there big cultural differences
17:53 in what people respond to or or how they answer these sorts
17:56 of questions or did it really end up being pretty universal across the board?
18:01 Oh, there you know it was probably 50 to 60% pretty
18:06 similar across cultures and then 30% varying in really profound ways.
18:11 If you look at the broader history of awe, you know,
18:15 going back to the spiritual writings of 5 600
18:19 years ago and you think about different spiritual traditions,
18:22 there's kind of a an oceanic kind of awe, right?
18:25 Where you're merging with others, you feel oneness, right?
18:30 And then there's a more hierarchical threat-based all of you
18:34 think about being judged by God in the Old
18:38 Testament and you know and and just this whoa
18:40 this wow I am so submissive visav this all-inspiring
18:44 entity and that one varies across cultures cultures
18:48 with a lot of economic inequality uh have more threatbased
18:54 fearful awe that's profound right so it tells us
18:58 you know over you in the United States where we're,
19:02 you know, in certain contexts where it may feel more
19:05 egalitarian or uh if you talk to somebody from Japan,
19:09 their awe is really quite different.
19:11 It has more fear in it, dread, feeling judged.
19:14 Uh so we found that as one of our key differences.
19:18 So in those very hierarchical religious cultures,
19:22 is awe in that context almost indistinguishable from fear?
19:29 Yeah.
19:29 And and that's, you know,
19:31 in this other line of science that I've done with Alan Cowan,
19:33 we've really gathered a ton of data with statistical techniques to map,
19:39 you know, experiences uh in these spaces of meaning or semantic spaces.
19:45 And we get tricked by words because words
19:48 imply that awe is really different from fear.
19:52 But in actuality, as Allen and I have found,
19:55 our emotions are always blending with other states.
19:58 becoming intermingle mingled with them in their meanings and yeah
20:02 in those instances all will start to feel like fear or terror
20:09 or horror right and and that's the complexity of emotion
20:13 that we try to study is is that inevitable mixing of states
20:18 this really does push on our intuitions I
20:20 think about awe because awe sort of again
20:23 it feels like an experience that almost
20:27 takes takes you out of the regular world.
20:30 Yeah.
20:30 Right.
20:30 It transports you momentarily, right?
20:32 And you're just sort of, you know, [snorts] floating as it were.
20:36 But in a lot of ways,
20:36 it seems like what you're saying is that it really does the opposite.
20:40 It actually recconnects us to it or reggrounds us to the human world,
20:46 which is [snorts] a very different thing.
20:49 um which makes it all the more interesting that I think we we we miss
20:53 that and almost think of it um in a way
20:57 that's directly at odds with not only what
21:00 it is but like what the great beauty of a thing is that it is a reconnection
21:04 or a thing that you know takes us
21:06 out of oursel and reconnects us to other selves.
21:11 I mean it's so important just for us to dwell on that.
21:14 You know Jane Goodall, one of my heroes wrote about awe.
21:18 She observed it in chimpanzees and I agree as did Charles
21:21 Darwin felt that reverence and devotion were seen in other species.
21:26 So it is a mamalian thing and Jane Goodall said
21:29 that awe is really being amazed at things outside of the self.
21:34 And I love that phrase for our times.
21:37 And and you know, I think we've thought of awe very much
21:41 influenced by the 500 years that we've lived through of, you know,
21:48 spiritual writings about awe.
21:50 But the wonders of of life and the natural world and human collectives
21:56 and and sports and culture and music are also outside of the self.
22:01 And that's what happens with Oz.
22:02 You are walking along and suddenly, you know, as in some of our research,
22:07 you start looking at the light on a tree
22:08 and the leaves and the clouds drifting by and you
22:12 pause and you see all these patterns
22:14 and your your sense of self starts to be connected
22:16 to that those patterns in nature and you feel
22:19 awe and that is right here in front of us
22:21 as you said and it's one of the most important
22:24 discoveries in our research is what I called everyday awe.
22:27 It's people are finding it pretty regularly and it's just right around them.
22:31 That's definitely one way to read the book as saying that that um
22:36 how should I put this
22:37 that modern life overdevelops the ego um you know the the the striving
22:42 self the comparing self the isolated self and awe is very valuable because it
22:49 it just explodes that I mean is that do do
22:52 you think of that as like the the the the chief
22:55 psychological maybe even spiritual benefit of awe as an emotion I
23:01 I do you know and we've got that empirically that you
23:06 know in terms of this what we call the diminishing
23:10 of the self or the small self you know when you're
23:14 near yuseite and you're asked to draw yourself you draw
23:16 a really small being in a bigger context compared to other studies
23:21 that's so fascinating
23:23 yeah you know when you are feeling on you're in conversation
23:27 with someone else you're not as inclined to talk about yourself,
23:30 you're more curious about the other person or humble.
23:33 Uh when you take psychedelics and when you feel awe in music,
23:36 that self-related region of the brain is is smaller, deactivated.
23:41 So there a lot of ways in which the self self gets small.
23:45 The thing we haven't done as good a job at capturing I feel and is also part
23:50 of the power of awe is the relationality
23:54 to large what I wrote about as systems of things.
23:57 You know, when you're a if you're a backpacker or you're Alex Hnold,
24:02 whom we started with climbing a big mountain,
24:04 there going to be moments where you're you're just feeling
24:07 like you are part of the all of the surroundings.
24:11 And and that's also part of the power of all.
24:13 It's like God, I'm part of this.
24:15 when Yumi Kendall, whom I interviewed for the book,
24:18 who's one of the country's great chists uh at in Philadelphia,
24:23 when she wrote about playing, you know, she says she gets up on stage and starts
24:26 playing and tears up and cries and gets goosebumps and she said,
24:31 "I feel like I'm part of the audience and I'm part of the history of music." Uh,
24:37 and that's what a does it makes you feel part of a very big thing.
24:41 I mean, I would say I'm kind of a crier anyway.
24:44 Yeah, I just
24:45 that's a good sign.
24:46 I cry a lot during during movies certain and especially at concerts, you know,
24:52 there have been there's there's been a handful of concerts that just
24:56 absolutely like reduced me to like a graveling ball of tears.
25:01 Um, one [snorts] of you got to tell me one of the experiences.
25:05 Jose Gonzalez is a musician um I've seen live.
25:09 He um he reduced me to tears.
25:11 U Sufan Stevens I think also did it.
25:14 Um, there's an Icelandic band called Sigor Rose that I saw
25:19 with my wife in New Orleans and she was basically propping me up.
25:23 I don't even know what they're they're speaking
25:24 a language I don't even speak but it doesn't matter because like you know like
25:30 music is sort of a proto language, right?
25:32 So like whatever it's just it's
25:33 tapping into something that's beyond before words.
25:36 Um, and so you just feel it.
25:38 You you just feel it.
25:39 Um then the only way I knew how to express that was just was just crying.
25:46 But I mean is that I just thought
25:47 of it as like a response to unbelievable beauty.
25:51 But is it really all is that really what that what that is?
25:55 I think so.
25:56 I think you know and there's a little bit
25:58 of work that it that helps us answer the question.
26:01 And what a beautiful um kind of journey to the question.
26:06 I'll just call out Suf John Stevens who when my brother
26:09 passed away and I write about it in the book.
26:11 Uh there was something about his music that brought me
26:15 into an understanding of grief uh and the universality and meaning of grief.
26:21 So thank you to Suf John Stevens.
26:23 Um yeah so um the uh tears are um a physiological process.
26:33 There are these little lacrimal glands that release tears.
26:36 There are a few different kinds of tears.
26:38 You can look at the protein structure of tears
26:41 and kind of make inferences based on that.
26:43 But importantly is one tears are part of a branch of your nervous
26:49 system called the parasympathetic autonomic
26:52 nervous system which is really calming,
26:56 orienting to others, being open to connection.
26:59 And the vagus nerve is part of it which I study in my lab also activated by awe.
27:04 So it already tells us tears in the semantic space
27:08 of emotions are different from fear and anger and disgust.
27:12 They're really about connection and love.
27:14 Right?
27:15 So that's interesting in its own right.
27:17 And then Alan Fisk at UCLA has been doing really nice work showing
27:21 that tears are kind of arise when you feel like you're merging with others.
27:25 You share identity.
27:27 Uh, and that feels right to me and it's part
27:30 of awe which is your body's in this open physiological state.
27:35 You're seeing Suf John Stevens or Jose Gonzalez and you're
27:38 with people and your tears are saying this is who we are.
27:44 This is my my people.
27:45 Um, and we need that information as we navigate life.
27:49 I do think there's something to the idea that western philosophy,
27:54 enlightenment thinking for all of its fruits
27:56 and there are many has tended to forget
27:58 the it has tended to forget the body to elevate lang language and thought.
28:03 I mean even though the body is master in so many ways and so many of the most
28:07 important human experiences like awe often arrive in the body
28:12 first and only later get translated imperfectly into language.
28:17 I mean, I don't know.
28:17 I'm ranting, but there's something there, I hope.
28:20 No, it's profound.
28:20 And you know, the the two heroes of the science
28:23 of all early in earlier in western thought are David Hume,
28:28 the great Scottish philosopher who wrote about moral beauty as we've discussed
28:32 and and he was called a sentimentalist in the 1740s and 30s.
28:39 And then he influenced Charles Darwin who, you know,
28:42 I'm just publishing this paper on everything that Darwin
28:45 said about the body as it relates to consciousness.
28:47 Yeah.
28:48 And now we know neuroscientifically that all this information
28:50 from the body goes up through the vagus nerve to your brain,
28:54 goes up into the insula in your brain and tells you
28:57 what's going on in the gut or your heart or etc.
29:00 And the body drives a lot of our basic perceptions of the world, you know,
29:06 of morality and kin and, you know,
29:10 who we love and and what our political uh concerns are.
29:15 So, western thought was not only ignored but was openly hostile to the body.
29:21 Um uh in part because of original sin and Christianity uh
29:26 and and that's changing because of western science in some sense.
29:29 Let me go back to what you just said about moral beauty.
29:31 You we've it's come up a couple of times.
29:33 Um um why is that so powerful?
29:36 Like why is why is other people's kindness and strength so moving for us?
29:41 Maybe even more moving than mountains or cathedrals.
29:44 Like what is it about moral excellence that really moves us?
29:50 You know, and we in the social biological sciences have been
29:57 in the midst of a rethinking of our evolutionary history and how we've evolved
30:02 as a species into what Darwin called um he called sympathy
30:07 our our strongest instinct and those communities
30:11 with the most sympathetic members will flourish.
30:14 Uh and you know there's all the this convergent scholarship
30:19 and thinking that says we need to cooperate with groups.
30:22 We need to share resources so that we
30:25 in the common famines of our evolutionary history we didn't die.
30:28 We need to warm each other.
30:30 Most importantly Sarah Blaferie we have these hypervulnerable offspring
30:35 that take you know decades to reach the age of independence.
30:40 you know they our offspring are more vulnerable than any mammal
30:45 on the face of the earth and we cared for them in communities.
30:49 So we we we need we need a lot
30:52 of mechanisms within this framework to build groups to sacrifice
30:57 to be selfless to share and care and that there's
31:00 a ton of scholarship on that and one of the ways
31:04 one of the powerful mechanisms for that is moral beauty
31:08 and if I see a stranger act in a kind
31:12 way I instinctively become kinder and so what that means
31:18 is we create these little networks of cooperation and kindness.
31:22 If I see a stranger act in a kind or courageous way,
31:27 I I aspire in my identity to be kinder and more cooperative.
31:33 Here's where it gets really interesting.
31:35 It's a very powerful tool for young people, right?
31:38 If young young people,
31:40 it can be really threatening to be courageous if you're 5 years old, right?
31:44 And it may not be the optimal thing for our group,
31:48 but if they see it in other people and they say, "Oh,
31:50 that's what it means to be an upstanding
31:53 person or somebody of character." And they
31:56 start to learn in their bodies and minds
31:59 that how to embody these these principles, these cooperative principles.
32:04 So, you know, the the consensus now is we need
32:07 a lot of different pathways to to collaborate with each other.
32:11 It's good for societies who cooperate better do better.
32:14 If you yourself cooperate more, are kinder, you will live longer.
32:18 Empirical science shows it's good for your nervous system.
32:21 It's good for your relationships around you.
32:23 And moral beauty is just this superpower of of promoting that.
32:28 Well, I mean on some level when when you're seeing moral beauty
32:32 um you are you are seeing the phenomenon that makes life together possible
32:40 on some level, right?
32:42 And instinctively, evolutionarily some somewhere in our brain we know that.
32:47 Yeah.
32:47 And you just gave me goosebumps again.
32:49 So that's three.
32:50 That's enough.
32:50 That's three.
32:52 Yeah.
32:52 So yeah, you know, check this out.
32:55 Um, think about folklore and the stories we tell.
32:59 So, yeah, uh, fires are 400,000 years old.
33:04 Uh, new archaeological evidence suggests.
33:06 And one of the things that happened with fires,
33:09 it changed our diet, you know, fair enough.
33:12 But we gathered together at night and we started to tell stories.
33:16 First with our bodies in these, you know,
33:18 proto languages like you said, and then with stories.
33:21 And all cultures have fables and legends and fairy tales.
33:26 Uh, and they're really important forms of culture and how
33:30 we learn how to be a good human being.
33:33 And a new science is finding that their chief ingredient is moral beauty.
33:38 You hear about Cinderella who worked hard
33:41 and had these mean stepsisters and wins the prince,
33:44 you know, through her virtue, etc.
33:46 So, so that power of moral beauty gets into our culture.
33:52 It gets into the stories we tell and the fiction we write.
33:56 And I believe uh the art that we we're working
34:00 on visual art as a form of moral beauty, right?
34:02 That inspires us to like you said kind of get along so that we can survive.
34:09 I mean for me it's it's often about political courage which
34:15 really is a that that that's a species of moral beauty really,
34:20 you know, and whether it's um Iranian
34:22 women publicly removing their hijabs uh in protest,
34:26 right, knowing it might mean death, whatever you think about the the hijab,
34:30 that's courage.
34:31 Um yeah, or Nelson Nelson Mandela or a sold uh a soldier
34:36 jumping on a grenade to save a friend or
34:39 uh a Buddhist monk setting himself on fire in protest.
34:43 I mean, part of me thinks,
34:45 yeah, part of me thinks, man, that seems really tragically misguided and sad,
34:51 but also I'm completely in awe
34:52 of the physical and especially the spiritual courage.
34:57 Yeah.
34:58 I mean, historians and political theorists are starting to suggest like
35:02 these moments of profound moral cur courage um changed the world, you know.
35:09 So the Vietnam monk setting himself on fire in protest of the Vietnam War.
35:14 I remember it as a kid like wow this situation
35:17 is that serious that a human would do that.
35:21 Um, and you know, you can go through history.
35:25 Um, you know, Thomas Clarkson, uh,
35:28 is one of my favorite stories where he he at the time
35:31 the the institution of slavery was threearters of the European economy.
35:36 And he wrote an essay about should we be allowed to enslave humans.
35:41 And he was he just fell over weeping
35:44 at the thought that that's what we do to fellow humans.
35:46 and he courageously bonded with the abolitionist, started spreading the word,
35:52 showed images of of a human atrocity
35:55 on the slave ships and it changed Europe, right?
35:57 These little moments of moral courage where you will sacrifice
36:01 yourself for others or for some idea are really really important.
36:07 It was interesting in our stories from around the world.
36:10 uh Malala kept coming up you know and people
36:13 are like man you know this young girl fighting
36:17 for the right to educate against the Taliban you
36:20 know being harmed physically move people in Japan and Norway
36:26 just to see it on TV and it's interesting
36:29 to think about our current political times that that's what
36:32 we need you know we are in a really
36:35 debased state right now politically for a lot of reasons.
36:41 Um, and that's what we should be thinking about is where
36:44 is the moral courage uh as a direction for future politics.
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37:53 [music] I really did want to ask you about your experiences at San Quinton,
38:01 the legendary California prison.
38:05 What did that experience um what did that experience teach you about all
38:11 and maybe she could just say briefly what you did there just for context.
38:15 I was moved by that part of the book.
38:18 Thank you.
38:18 Yeah, I uh I used to teach uh this essay uh
38:26 by Atulgo one day on um I think it was in New York,
38:31 the New Yorker about solitary confinement.
38:34 And when you put prisoners in solitary confinement, they go crazy.
38:38 Um and it is torture.
38:40 Uh and they become psychotic and they beat themselves.
38:44 And and then I had the privilege of being asked to write
38:47 an amicus brief against solitary confinement because and there was this protest
38:53 by prisoners that led to the hard largest largest hunger strike
38:58 in prison history against solitary confinement
39:01 for at Pelican Bay Maximum Security Prison.
39:05 And it was led by rivals of several different gangs who are
39:08 usually violent against one another and they bonded together over this issue.
39:13 uh protested.
39:14 I got called into the case and I wrote about how
39:17 in solitary confinement uh you're not allowed to in Pelican Bay,
39:22 you don't even uh touch fellow human beings.
39:26 You don't get to hug your kids when they visit.
39:28 They they work against that.
39:29 And uh and I wrote about the touch deprivation
39:34 and that case was cited in favor of the prisoners.
39:37 Couple thousand prisoners got out of solitary.
39:40 I felt very good about that.
39:41 And then I got invited because of that to go to
39:44 to to uh San Quentin as part of the restorative
39:48 justice program led by people like Lewis Scott
39:52 inside Darnell Washington who's now in LA teaching meditation
39:56 to the kids in the park he grew up in.
39:58 He was formerly of the Bloods.
40:00 So I go inside.
40:03 There are a few of us in there.
40:05 180 prisoners.
40:07 They're all bigger than me.
40:11 they lift weights a lot, you know, and I'm like,
40:14 "Wow, I'm here all day." And I did this many times.
40:18 Um, and then, uh, you start to feel the hunger for moral beauty inside.
40:24 Like these guys, yeah, they know they've harmed, they know they've killed,
40:29 they they feel horrible, they've hurt their families,
40:32 they're in constant meditation and and reflection on making amends like we do.
40:39 Um and and then they grow things you know
40:42 they they as Tupac Shakur said roses out of concrete.
40:46 They create newspapers and music and drama and humanity.
40:52 And I I Sean I stood up I was asked to give a talk and I and I report
40:56 on this in the book and I was like I got
40:58 asked these 180 guys like where do you find all right here right
41:03 and they're the best answers I've ever heard you know and it was like
41:06 my granddaughter learning how to read getting
41:09 my high school diploma learning about the law
41:12 the light in San Quent you know in off the bay uh my reading
41:18 the Quran reading the Bible meditate I was just like wow Here it is.
41:22 Einstein's right.
41:24 This is everywhere.
41:25 And uh to this day, I'm still involved with a lot
41:30 of prisoners and their efforts uh and friends with them.
41:35 When I'm around them,
41:36 they tell me we can overcome anything and we have so much moral beauty inside.
41:41 You know what I love about uh just
41:43 that whole scene is it really does illustrate your point
41:45 that awe is not um some kind of luxury
41:50 emotion for the privileged that it's this core human experience.
41:54 Um and it shows how even in prison
41:57 awe is still uh fundamentally a relational thing.
42:02 People are experiencing it through their relationship
42:04 with their children or fellow inmates or through
42:08 their relationship with music or or scripture
42:11 or through restorative justice as you were just saying,
42:14 which is fundamentally about moral repair,
42:17 which is fundamentally about our relationship to other people, right?
42:20 It's still the same thing in prison or outside.
42:24 And yeah, it's just I don't know.
42:26 I like I said, I was really moved by that that part of the book and it I just
42:31 think it concretizes your point in a really powerful way.
42:37 Yeah, I thank you for saying that and I was surprised.
42:40 I really was.
42:41 You know, when you go in, you're with 180 men in blue.
42:47 Uh, you know, I look, you know, I look a lot different.
42:51 I've come out of this life of privilege,
42:52 you know, Berkeley professor and the like.
42:55 And you see this humanity and this urge to connect and promote the good.
43:00 Tell stories of moral beauty, stories of protest,
43:03 how they're charged five times what they should
43:05 pay for a candy bar, you know, etc.
43:08 Um the labor the what they earn in their labor.
43:12 You're weeping, you know, you're it's just that's what people do because you're
43:15 open to this essential quality of who we are.
43:20 uh that you can't suppress.
43:21 You know, it's their uh when I work with veterans,
43:25 it's very common in combat when you're,
43:28 you know, and historians have written about this.
43:30 You see your adversaries in Iraq or now Iran very horrifically.
43:36 You see the humanity.
43:38 It's right there, you know,
43:39 and and you got to build upon it and it blew me away.
43:43 I wanted to ask you about your brother who passed away.
43:46 you mentioned him um a few minutes ago after your brother died.
43:52 It seems like your relationship to awe
43:55 and mystery changed or evolved a little bit.
43:58 I mean, how did how did the grief of that alter the way you
44:02 think not just maybe about awe
44:04 but about things that science can't fully explain?
44:11 Yeah.
44:12 you know, I was blessed to have, you know, a brother of awe, Ralph.
44:19 Um, he was, you know, I'm working on a new book on moral beauty
44:23 and it's like asked me to define moral beauty.
44:26 It was my brother, you know, he he fought off bullies.
44:29 He taught the poorest kids in the foothills of the Sierras.
44:32 He he didn't tolerate any racism.
44:35 He broke up fights.
44:36 He just had this quality to him.
44:38 Uh, very humble guy.
44:40 and he passed away from colon cancer which is you
44:44 know and you don't want to I don't want to smooth
44:47 over all the hardship like there's a lot of violence
44:49 in prisons there's a lot of ugliness uh there's a lot
44:53 of ugliness as you die and as you are a brother
44:56 of watching somebody pass away panic and grief and I didn't
45:00 feel rage but just like existential confusion and then Sean you
45:05 know on the and on the night of his passing Um,
45:10 I was sitting there by his side and I was
45:12 holding his shoulder and talking to him with with our family,
45:17 thinking about our past and throwing the baseball with him and the camping
45:21 we did and and uh I'm a you know a datadriven guy.
45:27 I believe in neurons and cells and hadn't thought too
45:30 hard about consciousness and like I had a transcendent experience
45:36 seeing his soul and seeing space in a different way
45:40 truly and I've had a lot of these you know psychedelics
45:43 and meditation and yoga and exertion this was in its
45:46 own category and I was like wow and I knew
45:49 from our research around the world it's common when you
45:52 watch people go you feel awe at the mystery of life
45:56 and then after not only did I hear his voice
46:00 all the time in winds and you know and I
46:04 see him in places and I felt his identity
46:07 in the sun I felt his hand on my back two times
46:13 where it was on my back you know and I
46:16 was just like okay I'll wait it'll pass it was
46:19 still there so as a as a skeptic like me
46:23 it changed everything for me you know it opened me up.
46:27 It uh opened me up to thinking about metaphysics and spirituality.
46:31 It opened my spirit up to what we never will understand
46:36 fully with science and rationality and and I feel better for it.
46:40 You know, I feel more open to dialogues
46:43 with a fundamentalist Christian who has different political views than myself.
46:49 Yeah.
46:48 Uh you know, and and that's happened through awe or a Mormon, right?
46:53 And so, yeah, it was a [laughter]
46:57 It was a big life-shifting experience of mystery and and uh and beauty.
47:04 Do you think maybe the experience of awe is the birth of the religious impulse?
47:11 I do.
47:12 I I really do.
47:13 And you know that was Emil Durkheim the great French sociologist
47:17 that vibrating together when you at that concert you had this experience.
47:21 Jose Gonzalez collective evercence, right?
47:24 Yeah.
47:24 collective effrovescence.
47:26 Uh you know that was William James's project
47:29 of of the mystical feeling which is a lot like awe is
47:34 is the beginnings of spirituality and and you know this is
47:38 what I learned from working with Jonathan height on awe.
47:41 John studied a lot of the world's religions when
47:44 we wrote about awe 25 years ago 20 years ago.
47:47 You know, you read the Bhagavad Gita,
47:49 you read the great Buddhist texts and sutras,
47:52 you read the, you know, the yoga sutra of Patanjali, it's a lot of awe, right?
47:58 And and Emerson and throw and uh Julian of Norwich.
48:02 So, it's right there.
48:03 Um, and what I like is it's back to our overarching thesis,
48:08 which is however we get to this emotion, what it does for us is it makes us
48:13 be part of large things and take care of them.
48:16 in indigenous traditions, the ecosystem around us, and then in religion,
48:21 the people around us, and and we need that.
48:23 If you're right, and I think you are, that awe is this basic human need.
48:28 Um, what is your advice to people looking
48:32 to snatch a few minutes of it every day?
48:36 Yeah.
48:36 You know, I've taught happiness for 30 years at Berkeley
48:40 and teach it to medical doctors and federal judges and hard,
48:44 you know, PE or people with hard jobs.
48:47 And I always tell people like look for a few minutes a week.
48:52 That's it.
48:54 And with awe, pause, slow down your breathing a little, put down your devices,
49:02 um, open your mind, and rely on those eight wonders, right?
49:08 So, look around at nature, uh, sunsets and clouds and trees.
49:15 Listen to music that really that means something to you.
49:19 Like, stop the Spotify playlist and find something that means something to you.
49:22 But when the Bob Dylan movie came out,
49:25 I was just weeping the whole time cuz I grew
49:27 up on Bob Dylan when I was 3 years old.
49:29 Uh he was I like the Beatles,
49:31 but Bob Dylan was everything and it just opened me up, you know, nature, music.
49:37 Reflect on someone who has inspired you
49:40 and just name them and like, "Oh yeah, man.
49:43 That teacher in high school, they gave me that." Right?
49:47 Um just uh look for visual things.
49:49 Get to a museum.
49:50 It's not that hard.
49:52 Um, and we got a ton of new data showing it's good for stress,
49:56 anxiety, long COVID symptoms, loneliness, um, just a couple of minutes a week.
50:01 Well, if you're looking for all you you
50:03 certainly won't find it on your Twitter feed, so get the hell out of there.
50:06 [laughter] Yeah.
50:07 And get off of the devices.
50:09 I think that's a perfect place to go.
50:12 Um, if besides getting your book, um,
50:15 where can people go to to follow your your work and your latest research?
50:22 Yeah, I have uh the science of happiness
50:24 podcast uh at the greater good science center.
50:27 Um and uh we have a lot of awe represented and things you can do.
50:33 So uh there there are there's a lot we can start working
50:37 with in terms of those couple of minutes a week to find some awe.
50:40 All right people, let's get started.
50:42 Dr.
50:43 Kelner, this is great.
50:44 Thank you for coming in.
50:46 Thank you Sean.
50:46 It's been a great conversation.
50:48 Hey, thanks for watching.
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