Awe

I was delighted by this paragraph from an article in my recent Sierra magazine, “The Science of Awe” by Jake Abrahamson:

Scientifically speaking, the storm [an amazing scene described previously] brought me into a state of awe, an emotion that, psychologists are coming to understand, can have profoundly positive effects on people. It happens when people encounter a vast and unexpected stimulus, something that makes them feel small and forces them to revise their mental models of what’s possible in the world. In its wake, people act more generously and ethically, think more critically when encountering persuasive stimuli, like arguments or advertisements, and often feel a deeper connection to others and the world in general. Awe prompts people to redirect concern away from the self and toward everything else. And about three-quarters of the time, it’s elicited by nature.

My last intense awesome experience was a trip to Ireland sponsored by the Sierra Club.  The trip included about six miles of hiking daily.  There were moments of standing wordless at some incredible view.  I would often think, I need to be in the present moment because I can’t take the intensity of this beauty home with me. This paragraph reminds me that I can.  And I don’t mean the memory of a scene, though the pictures help.  I mean the kind of change Abrahamson describes. I'm sure I haven't been improved as much as he describes above, but his article helped me understand that moments of awe do expand my love for the universe and, I think, increase my level of peacefulness.  Sometimes I think these trips are a lot of trouble and expense.  This reminds me that it’s worth it. It also reminds me to be aware of the awe that exists at the art gallery, the concert hall, and in my own back yard.

Give...until it feels good.

I love this picture.  I have a copy of it on the cover of the notebook where I keep my financial records.  Of course it's a ridiculous way to be charitable, but the over-the-topness expresses some kind of truth.

An article at the Vox website is titled, "Giving money away makes us happy.  Then why do so few of us do it?" by Christian Smith and Hilary Davidson.  They say, 

We find a strong and highly consistent association between generous practices and various measures of personal well-being like happiness, health, a sense of purpose in life, and personal growth. In our book we discuss the various causal mechanisms that produce this association. While greater well-being can encourage generosity, practices of generosity also enhance well-being. The causal mechanisms we identify involve everything from reinforcing positive emotions to developing a sense of self-efficacy to expanding social networks to increasing physical activity. Generosity, for example, often triggers neurochemical systems that increase pleasure and reduce stress. It also has the capability of reducing the maladaptive self-absorption that many ungenerous Americans experience. By giving away some of our resources for the well-being of others we can enhance our own.

They then go on to say, that "at least 85 percent [of Americans] give away less than 2 percent of their income." There are a number of reasons why people don't give, but it's kind of discouraging.  I wonder what would happen if everyone gave away at least two percent or more of their income and maybe two percent of their time as well.  It seems like it could change the world.

(This article suggested by Andrew Sullivan @ The Dish)

What are you afraid of?

Margaret Talbot  ends an op-ed piece in the New Yorker with this:

While fears of Ebola—a disease from which one person in the United States has died—clouded the campaign like one of those imaginary miasmas to which doctors once attributed illness, real dangers seemed to slip from view. The latest school shooting, on October 24th, in Washington State, generated almost no discussion on the campaign trail, especially not of gun control. Just a week earlier, researchers affiliated with the Harvard School of Public Health had published findings showing that mass shootings in the United States—those in which the shooter did not generally know the victims, and in which at least four people were killed—have tripled since 2011. Over the past three years, a mass shooting has occurred, on average, every sixty-four days; over the previous twenty-nine years, one occurred every two hundred days. Gabrielle Giffords, the former Arizona congresswoman, who became a gun-control advocate after she was wounded in a shooting in which six people died, toured the country in the run-up to the elections, calling for tighter legislation in order to help save lives. Not a single candidate joined her. 

Feeling Down?

Thanks to The Dish.

A culture "perfectly suited for contagions of hysteria and overreaction"

Earlier this month, David Brooks wrote an interesting column on the different kinds of fear contributing to the panic about Ebola.  It’s worth a read, but I found these two passages particularly interesting:

That means there are many more people who feel completely alienated from the leadership class of this country, whether it’s the political, cultural or scientific leadership. They don’t know people in authority….So you get the rise of the anti-vaccine parents, who simply distrust the cloud of experts telling them that vaccines are safe for their children. You get the rise of the anti-science folks, who distrust the realm of far-off studies and prefer anecdotes from friends to data about populations. You get more and more people who simply do not believe what the establishment is telling them about the Ebola virus, especially since the establishment doesn’t seem particularly competent anyway.

It’s a weird phenomenon of the media age that, except in extreme circumstances, it is a lot scarier to follow an event on TV than it is to actually be there covering it. When you’re watching on TV, you only see the death and mayhem. But when you’re actually there, you see the broader context of everyday life going on alongside. Studies of the Boston Marathon bombing found that people who consumed a lot of news media during the first week suffered more stress than people who were actually there.

I don’t know if this helps the situation, but for me it provides a small comfort; there a certain rationality to this panic.