When we see ourselves in the context of wonder, it makes us humbler.
“Of all the forces weakening liberal democracy today,” the political theorist William Galston writes, “its defenders’ naïveté about human motivations may be the most dangerous.” Galston’s concern centers on what he calls the “dark passions”—captured by the title of his new book, Anger, Fear, Domination—and how they are fueling today’s attacks on liberal democracy.
“Rational self-interest does not always drive human events, the passions matter, and evil is real,” Galston argues. “The dark side of our nature is here to stay.”
We saw that with the horrifying political assassination last week of Charlie Kirk, one of the right’s most influential activists. The dark passions in America have been unleashed as well by Donald Trump, an accomplished demagogue. He is unlike anything America has faced before; he has made cruelty fashionable, and his rule is threatening the country’s institutions, the rule of law, and liberal democracy itself. Of course, Trump isn’t alone in stoking the dark passions; they aren’t exclusive to any single political group, any single nation, any single religion. Hate, including lethal hate, doesn’t respect borders or boundaries. It can take up residence in any tribe.
Those who wish to understand politics “need a psychology as rich as the political life they seek to comprehend,” according to Galston. And the “triadic psychology” that focuses on sentiments such as empathy, solidarity, and love leaves too much out. Galston lists ameliorative policies and institutional reforms as important steps that need to be taken, but adds that speech is indispensable.
“The only counterweight to bad speech is better speech that challenges the darkness within us in the name of our higher aspirations,” Galston writes. “The future of liberal democracy rests on the bet that these aspirations have not vanished from our souls.”
Galston is making the right bet. But right now the dark side is winning, and our higher aspirations need to be reawakened.
AWE IS A COMPLICATED EMOTION, in part because it isn’t usually a single feeling but a blend of several. It’s often evoked by being in the presence of great beauty, something powerful and sublime, mysterious and even overwhelming. It can elicit amazement and veneration. And because awe transcends ordinary experiences, because it sometimes exceeds our understanding, it can be difficult to describe
“When I play, I feel the vibration in my heart,” the cellist Yumi Kendall told Dacher Keltner, a psychologist who studies awe. “It is beyond language. Beyond thought. Beyond religion. It is like a cashmere blanket of sound.”
The science of awe is, relative to other fields, still in its infancy, so there’s much we have to learn. But the research we do have indicates that a sense of awe can have positive effects on individuals, including calming down our nervous system, reducing feelings of anxiety and stress, and lowering inflammation markers in the body.
Awe provides us with a greater sense of purpose and meaning. It encourages an appreciation for beauty and creativity. It can improve our mood and sense of well-being, make us more curious and less self-preoccupied. It can quiet negative self-talk. Awe may also increase our sense of satisfaction and weaken the grip of materialism.
“Awe is a lightning bolt that marks in memory those moments when the doors of perception are cleansed and we see with startling clarity what is truly important in life,” the clinical psychologist David Elkins argues.
But the positive effects of awe hardly end there. Unlike the dark passions, awe is a pro-social emotion. It can encourage attitudes of generosity and altruism; of selflessness, empathy, and compassion. The sense that we are part of something vast and meaningful can create bonds of connection.
According to Herodotus, in the fourth century B.C.E., a six-year war between the Lydians and the Medes suddenly ended because the armies were awestruck by a solar eclipse that turned day into night, which they took to be a divine omen.
When we see ourselves in the context of wonder, it makes us humbler. People who have been touched by a sense of awe tend to be less rigid, more open to hearing the views of others, more collaborative. Awe also seems to encourage people to be more helpful, more charitable, and more likely to volunteer. The moral circle of care—the boundary that encompasses those whom we consider worthy of our concern—expands.
“Our investigation indicates that awe, although often fleeting and hard to describe, serves a vital social function,” a 2015 study concluded. “By diminishing the emphasis on the individual self, awe may encourage people to forego strict self-interest to improve the welfare of others.”
Awe is central to many theistic religions, including Judaism, which will soon mark the Days of Awe—10 days of repentance and renewal between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—and to Christianity, which is my own faith tradition. The early Church was described in the Book of Acts as being “filled with awe.”
Awe has long been understood as the proper response to encountering God’s goodness and greatness. Both the Hebrew scriptures and the New Testament frequently refer to “fearing the Lord,” which has less to do with being afraid of God and more to do with cultivating a profound respect for his majesty and holiness. It is very much tied to feelings of reverence, which often lead to worship. Awe is the beginning of wisdom, we’re told in Proverbs; it allows us to better perceive the sacredness of things and therefore enriches life in this world. It is the antithesis of indifference. Awe helps us perceive in the world “intimations of the divine,” according to the Jewish theologian Abraham Joshua Heschel.
“Awe, then, is more than a feeling,” Heschel wrote in God in Search of Man. “It is an answer of the heart and mind to the presence of mystery in all things, an intuition for a meaning that is beyond the mystery, an awareness of the transcendent worth of the universe.” He added, “Awe precedes faith; it is at the root of faith. We must grow in awe in order to reach faith. We must be guided by awe to be worthy of faith.”
Whether one is religious or not, awe seems to be a part of human nature, a thread that runs through the human story. The causes of awe can change, depending on the culture in which we are shaped, but the experience of awe seems universal. Like all virtues, though, it needs to be cultivated.
The way that awe is nurtured varies from individual to individual, of course, but it’s often achieved in nature, beholding beauty and grandeur; by seeing great works of art and architecture; by reading great works of literature and poetry, and listening to music that profoundly moves us; and by witnessing extraordinary acts of human excellence—moral beauty, the birth of a child. People cultivate awe through meditation, through spiritual practices and liturgy, by unplugging from technology, by recalling past experiences, by being mindful of small moments of wonder, by slowing down, by staying present in the moment.
I spent last week in the Cascade mountains, returning to a cabin overlooking a lake where I spent some of the happiest days of my youth, moved by the majesty before my eyes. My wife and I have begun to visit more regularly the National Gallery of Art, which brings together centuries of masterpieces from around the world. I’ve become enchanted by the stunning images of the cosmos that are available to us thanks to the James Webb Space Telescope. And I find that music acts as a portal in ways that nothing else quite does, moving me to a realm that is almost supernal. In each of these things, I see intimations of the divine.
None of these experiences are new in my life, and I don’t cultivate a sense of awe nearly as much as I should. But I have found myself being more intentional about this than in the past, partly because in America, the dark passions are now dominant. Even people who aren’t temperamentally drawn to dark passions can, in our current political and cultural moment, get drawn in by them. We can succumb to powerlessness, cynicism, and discouragement as well. That isn’t a good place to be, and it’s not the appropriate one. “Here is the world,” the theologian Frederick Buechner said. “Beautiful and terrible things will happen. Don’t be afraid.”
For the dark passions to be displaced, or at least contained, our hearts need to be drawn to what ennobles us. That’s where awe comes in. It can refine our sensibilities. It can reframe, at least here and there, now and then, how we see the world and our place within it.
The better speech that Galston advocates for, which can challenge the darkness within us, is desperately needed. But Galston would agree that it needs allies in summoning the higher aspirations that have not vanished from our souls but that have been submerged and deadened in recent times.
“The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious,” Albert Einstein wrote in Living Philosophies in 1931, reflecting an appreciation of the limits of the rational mind. “It is the source of all true art and science. He to whom this emotion is a stranger, who can no longer pause to wonder and stand rapt in awe, is as good as dead: his eyes are closed.”
But eyes that are closed can be opened.
