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| A sense of humility can also be comforting |
I was standing at the foot of Wyrdfa, formerly known as Snowdon, in North Wales a week after my father died. My wife and I came here for a few hours to breathe fresh air after the shock of death in the family.
It was a cloudy day and a very difficult day to climb the mountain. So we stopped just off the A498. I remember looking up at the mountain tops, I saw a water pipe connected to a high slope.
The pipe, connected to a hydroelectric power station built in the early 20th century, runs up a mountain and then disappears into the mist. The clouds were so low that it was not possible to see where the pipe was going, nor could the mountaintops be seen.
So all I had left was my imagination. I see in my imagination that the slope goes up out of sight and goes on and on and never ends.
On that day when death dominated my thoughts, I could feel nothing but overwhelmed. But at that moment, letting my imagination run wild and realizing how small I am in this vastness felt so comforting.
It felt the same way when staring at the ocean, my imagination diving into its depths, or gazing at the stars, imagining how far the light had traveled in the universe to reach my eye. There is a mill. When you are faced with something bigger than yourself, it evokes a mixture of emotions such as wonder, fear, but also humility.
Perhaps it's because so much of our lives are now spent staring at smartphone screens that writers and intellectuals in the 18th century tried to describe this combination of feelings as sublime. Moments where the flight of imagination is limitless.
He used words like 'terrible joy', 'pleasant fear', or 'insolent majesty' to describe this state.
Through this area, they gained a sense of their place within the world, as well as an awareness of their mental strengths and limitations.
As the essayist Joseph Edison wrote in 1712: 'Our imagination loves to be filled with something or to conceive of something, that is far greater than its capacity. We feel awe before such infinite scenes, and a pleasant calmness and wonder in the soul from their awe.'
Sometimes, it's easy to forget that there's still a vast and ambiguous world out there, waiting for our exploration.
Perhaps this is because we now spend so much of our lives on our smartphones. Maybe it's over-familiarity. The forest that was remote in the 18th century is now full of tourists or you can find it through a Google search. Or maybe it's because we've given up on the quest. However, the present time is already overwhelmed by information overload, fast-paced technology, injustice, climate change, and more.
However, many benefits can be discovered by connecting to something larger than the individual self. That's why in the coming months BBC Future will explore all of these extreme experiences in a new series, called 'Immensities'.
Through stories from the worlds of science, philosophy, psychology, and history, we aim to revitalize the meaning of greatness and show how to see the world with fresh eyes, but first with a straightforward question. Let's get started: How can being overwhelmed by something too big be a good thing?
Great world
When poet William Wordsworth was a boy, he stole a boat in England's Lake District. However, while he was enjoying his mischief, he looked up and saw a tall peak that frightened him. He felt as if the mountain was following him and increasing in size. The experience was so disturbing to the young Wordsworth that he hurried back to shore and was troubled for several days afterward.
A decade or so later, in his early 20s, Wordsworth once again plunged into the mountains, but this time, it was more complicated than boyhood fears. As he describes in his autobiographical poem 'The Prelude', it was early morning, when the moonlight revealed a wonderful scene on the slopes of Snowdon. He and a friend had decided to climb the peak in hopes of seeing the sunrise. Instead, they saw an unusual meteorological phenomenon called a temperature inversion, during which a walker moves above the clouds. As he later recalled: '...a silent sea of mist stood at my feet. / On the hills their dark backs grew cold Above this sea.'
However, the hints of danger and mystery were not completely gone. In the dark space between the clouds, he saw "a still, poor, gloomy, breathing place," through which he could hear the distant power of nature: "... the roaring of the waters, the floods, the streams, the bays." Count, roaring with a voice!"
Seeing and hearing this, he reflected on the capacity of human intelligence to reach something greater than itself: "There I saw a mind like Saw the symbol that nurtures the infinite... a mind sustained by the recognition of extraordinary power."
Wordsworth was not the only writer of the period to realize infinity. He and many other 18th-century Europeans were inspired by this majesty, finding a new appreciation for the dynamic power and vastness found in nature.
In his writings, you can find lists of settings where such an experience can be found. A Kenzidek Arfa means "open plains, high cliffs, a vast uncultivated desert, huge mountains, thunderstorms, volcanoes, hurricanes, and waterfalls. These settings are often referred to by their size, power, and uncertainty." It was featured
Although there was disagreement over animals, art, and even the 'unbearable stench', most writers agreed that vastness, anonymity, and hints of gentle menace were central to Arfa's appreciation.
Also, there was an important difference in the concept of beauty and elegance. Beauty is a characteristic of qualities like lightness, delicacy, softness, and shine. They believed that examples of beautiful things could include a garden or a forest. In contrast, Arfa (Sublime) is somewhat more complex and intellectually stimulating. This includes experiments with scalability, anonymity, and soft threat signals. , when observing a mountain, storm cloud, or waterfall from afar, the viewer may feel awe and admiration, but may also recognize his own smallness and limited existence. This combination of emotional intensity and psychological distance can create a sense of both fear and security that is described as "sweet fear."
One of the reasons why Arfa was so attractive to writers like Wordsworth was its ability to stretch the imagination.
Philosopher Emily Brady wrote in her 2013 book that a commonality among different theories of grandeur is that as the imagination expands, we also realize our capacity to take on vastness or great power. As a result, we can develop a sense of our own strengths. Or it can be empowering and motivating.
Brady refers to the emotional experience of gazing at the night sky to illustrate this: "When we look at the night sky, we encounter something vast and seemingly infinite, and this experience of vastness produces a special kind of emotional response that is different from the response to something we can intellectually understand."
By experiencing the vastness and infinity of the night sky, we can begin to develop a sense of our own limitations and weaknesses and gain greater meaning for the mysteries and complexities of the world around us.
A sense of dread
Over the past two decades, psychologists have combined 200-year-old concepts from different angles. Through this innovative approach, psychologists have been able to shed light on the benefits of feeling small in the face of bigness.
Two decades ago, scientists Decher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt were interested in studying emotions that they believed were often overlooked in the field of psychology.
Keltner and Haidt were inspired by the experience of awe, which is a feeling of wonder that can be triggered by encountering something overwhelming or surprising. Keltner and Haidt's work explored the experience of fear and its potential impact on human emotions and well-being. Helped draw attention to the effects.
After researching and studying historical, artistic, human, and religious events, Decher Keltner and Jonathan Haidt came to the definition of awe as a sense of the presence of something vast beyond one's current awareness of the world. It has been noted that there is some disagreement about whether awe can be seen as a type of grandeur or whether grandeur and awe are intertwined.
Keltner and his team conducted research on fear through laboratory experiments and surveys in 26 different countries. He discovered that fear can arise from different things such as experiencing nature, life, and death, listening to great music, seeing the visual design, spirituality, or moments of moral beauty.
Not everyone experienced fear in the same way, and there were cultural differences. Keltner and his colleagues found through experiments that different cultures experience and express fear differently, but they have in common the aspect of being overwhelmed by something greater than oneself.
The work Keltner reviews in his forthcoming book Eve (Penguin, January 2023) helps illustrate that fear comes with numerous mental benefits. Various studies have shown that experiencing fear can reduce stress and increase well-being.
It increases attention to detail, enhances memory, and encourages critical thinking. Fear also has social benefits. Fear can have a positive effect on a person's social behavior and relationships.
People who experience fear are more likely to show generosity to others and focus less on their own individual needs and desires. They may feel a greater sense of connection with other people and the world around them, leading to a greater sense of social cohesion.
For example, when Keltner and Michelle Shiota of Arizona State University conducted a Seeing a T. Rex bone in a museum inspired people to feel fear in an experiment. Participants reported feeling more likely to feel part of the community after the experience.
In another study, Keltner and Jennifer Stiller of the University of Toronto took people to the observation deck of a high-rise tower at the University of California, Berkeley. Keltner writes that compared to a control group, these participants had "a greater sense of helplessness and that the direction of their lives depended on many interacting forces beyond their own agency. Fear tells us this." That we are part of highly interdependent, collaborative networks of individuals.
This only scratches the surface of social and psychological changes, so we'll return to them later in BBC Future's Amnesty series, but Keltner sums it up this way: "Fear makes us healthier bodies and more bring joy, meaning, and community with creative minds ... [it] silences the nagging, self-critical, overbearing, status-conscious voice of our self, or ego, and Empowers us to collaborate, open our minds to wonder, and see the deeper patterns of life.
Wonderful world
The Victorian geologist Charles Lyell wrote about the discomfort of trying to understand the vastness of the universe. Lyell writes about how difficult it can be for humans to comprehend the vastness of space and time
The discomfort of trying to comprehend the vastness of the universe can be met with a sense of anxiety. This has been expressed by many other thinkers throughout history who have tried to deal with the vastness of the universe.
To illustrate his point, Lyell uses the metaphor of a circle of light spreading through the darkness to illustrate how he felt when considering the vastness of the universe. They suggest that as the sphere of light grows larger, so does the boundary between light and dark and that as we learn more about the universe, we realize our importance and the limits of our knowledge. Become aware. Lyell wrote that although we make progress in our understanding of the universe, there is still much to discover. Our quest for knowledge and understanding is a never-ending journey, and although we may never fully understand the infinite, our efforts to do so can still lead to meaningful insights and discoveries.
That's true, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't try harder to understand our place in the wider world out there.
According to psychologist Frank Kiel, people can experience a powerful sense of wonder when they encounter something unfamiliar or unknown. Kell describes this feeling of wonder as a more active form of fear, which means that people are completely distracted from what they are experiencing.
Wonder is the driving force behind innovation and exploration, which means that when we experience a sense of wonder, it motivates us to explore and discover new things.
He describes wondering as the "accidental drive" behind humanity's greatest achievements, suggesting that many of the world's most important discoveries and inventions were the result of people being curious and inspired by the unknown.
Wonder encourages us to ask questions, such as "how, what, where, when, what will happen?", which can lead to new insights and knowledge.
"It is one of our most powerful motivations as human beings and no one can take that away from us," he says.
In the current geological age, human activity has a significant impact on Earth's ecosystems, we need an attitude of wonder and respect more than ever. If we are to face the many challenges that come our way without succumbing to arrogance or fear, we have to look at the world with a sense of infinity, awe, or wonder.
By harnessing the collective power of human thought and imagination, we can find creative solutions to the problems we face and overcome the obstacles that stand in our way.
When I think back to that glorious day in Wales more than a decade ago when I didn't know much about the philosophical or psychological implications of the sublime, I felt its majesty at the foot of the mountain.
What matters most is how I felt at that moment. Perhaps it is part of the human condition that he finds comfort in the infinite vastness. Now that I know everything, I look for such experiences. This desire is not only a natural process but also beneficial to our well-being. Sometimes a sense of humility is good.