Awe

Many Indigenous peoples: My colleague Richard Nisbett has argued that cultures divide in terms of their systems thinking, which is more prevalent in East Asian cultures than in the West, shaped so by classical Greek philosophy and the Age of Enlightenment, and its privileging of reductionistic analysis. Nisbett, Richard. The Geography of Thought: Why We Think the Way We Do. New York: Free Press, 2003.

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the centrality of systems thinking: Wulf, Andrea. The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt’s New World. New York: Vintage Books, 2015.

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Experiences of awe open: For a fascinating account of how extraordinary perceptual experiences lead people to new systems of thought, often of a spiritual or religious quality, see: Kripal, Jeffrey J. The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2019.

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shift us from the illusions: Bai, Yang, Laura A. Maruskin, Serena Chen, Amie M. Gordon, Jennifer E. Stellar, Galen D. McNeil, Kaiping Peng, and Dacher Keltner. “Awe, the Diminished Self, and Collective Engagement: Universals and Cultural Variations in the Small Self.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 113, no. 2 (2017): 185–209.

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complex systems of interdependent adaptations: Wilson, Edward O. The Meaning of Human Existence. New York: Liveright Publications, 2014.

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systems-like patterns of agency: Valdesolo, P., and Jesse Graham. “Awe, Uncertainty, and Agency Detection.” Psychological Science 25 (2014): 170–78. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0956797613501884.

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Being cultural animals: Keltner, Dacher, and James J. Gross. “Functional Accounts of Emotion.” Cognition & Emotion 13, no. 5 (1999): 467–80.

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Index

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of the book. Each link will take you to the beginning of the corresponding print page. You may need to scroll forward from that location to find the corresponding reference on your e-reader.

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A

ABBA, 152

Abhidhamma, 52

ability, 8–9, 11, 78

Abu Ghraib, 185–86

Adams, John, 149, 150, 162–64

addiction, 215

admiration, 56

adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), 73, 268n

aesthetic emotions, 115–16, 155

aesthetics

science of, 179

see also art; visual design

Afghanistan, 119, 129

Africa, 113, 159, 160

afterlife, 208, 255n

Age of Wonder, The (Holmes), 37

Agrawal, Radha, 94–97, 114, 210

AIDS, 233, 290n

Alexander, Michelle, 70

allowing goodness its own speech, 69, 70, 77–79, 87, 91, 92, 243

Almond Blossoms (Van Gogh), 180

American River, 129–31

Amy Foundation, 82

Anderson, Craig, 130, 229–30

Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare), 59–60

anxiety, 106–8, 118, 128, 130, 133, 156, 215

Arabian Nights, 162

Aristotle, 59

Armenians, 109–10

Armstrong, Karen, 289n

art, 13, 121, 122, 155, 245, 246, 247, 249

meaning in, 155, 172

Murdoch on, 166, 167, 180

see also visual design

Art Forms in Nature (Haeckel), 177

Art Institute of Chicago, 172

Ashker, Todd, 89–90

Ashker v. Governor of California, 89

ASMR (autonomous sensory meridian response), 48–49, 63, 264n

astonishment, 56

astronomy, 38

atrocities, 13

attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, 128

Aua, 203

autoimmune problems, 118

awe, xiv–xviii, 4, 6

beauty and, 19, 22–23, 26

bodily expressions of, 56–57, 115, 116

categories of, see eight wonders of life

culture and, xvi, xviii, xxiii, xxiv, 9, 25, 57–65

defining, 7–11, 19

etymology of word, 19, 177–78

everyday, 23–26, 63, 125, 178, 262n, 267n

fear and, 9, 19, 22–23, 26, 53, 257n

finding, xiv, xviii, xxii–xxiii, xxiv

flavoring themes and, 8–10

goose bumps and, 53

growth from, xxiii, xxiv

in literature and poetry, 59–63, 77

personal stories of, xvii–xviii, xxiii–xxiv, 10–19, 23–26, 31

purpose of, 249–50

relation to the world transformed by, 29–42

rigorous thought promoted by, 39–40

science of, xiv, xvi, xviii, xxiii, 20–26

sensory systems and, 249

and something larger than the self, 31–37, 52

systems and, 244–50

tears of, 48

threat and, 9, 10, 25, 37, 129, 257n

use of word, 240

vastness and, 7–8, 38, 54, 55, 124, 154, 231

wonder and, 37–40

awe walks, 105–7, 233

in India, 216–19

axes, 282n

ayahuasca, 9, 211

B

babies, 115, 128, 224, 225

birth of, 224–29

lullabies and, 146

Baca, Judy, 187

Bach, Johann Sebastian, 146

backpacking, 135, 136