The article doesn't even consider the best tip, the one I follow and the one depicted on "Joe Pera Talks With You"...
... a ritual of encountering every sunrise, accepting the day's offering, anywhere from solid gray to melodramatic phantasmagoria. I wouldn't try to calculate the chances of achieving a state of awe. You're going to head out to an occasional sunrise with the thought of dosing yourself with some awe?
Here's Smalley's study: "Beyond blue-sky thinking: Diurnal patterns and ephemeral meteorological phenomena impact appraisals of beauty, awe, and value in urban and natural landscapes" (Science Direct):
[E]xisting research has tended to focus on appraisals of urban and rural scenes under uniformly clement, ‘blue-sky’ conditions, with few studies considering how diurnal rhythms and fleeting meteorological processes might impact landscape appraisals. To address this gap, we conducted an online experiment that presented participants (n = 2,509) with either an urban or natural virtual setting, strictly matched in terms of scenic structure, within which six ‘ephemeral phenomena’ were applied.
Oh! They looked at photographs.
We assessed ratings of beauty, awe, and willingness-to-pay to visit in each condition. Supporting existing findings, results demonstrated the natural setting was generally rated more positively than the urban setting. However, ephemeral phenomena substantially moderated this effect, with rainbows, storms, and nightfall each reducing the divergence. Sunrise and sunset were the most valued conditions within both environments, outcomes that were partially mediated through increased ratings of beauty and awe.
A photo always shows what is ephemeral — that one captured instant — and it shows it completely not ephemeral — permanently captured.
Going out to see the sunrise is an entirely different experience. You don't know what you'll get or when or what the peak will be, even if you know the official sunrise time. You don't know how it will reflect on the water or what birds will draw new lines.
Any passing second could increase or decrease the beauty, and you may or may not be thinking thoughts like, now, it's more beautiful, now it's less beautiful. Or: Surely, this is awe, no, this, this is true awe, now, awe subsides, the best is gone.
I'd let those thoughts go.
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I am consistently in awe of how bad Chicago is getting. It's shocking really. I'm in awe of how shocked I am.
I think CS Lewis said joy (which is a form of awe) was the byproduct of some other experience. "Surprised by Joy" was the title of his autobiography. Same with awe. When you forget about it, you may have a better chance of experiencing it.
I see the sunrise over a lake from my living room most every morning. When I first moved here, I found it an inspiring way to start my day, but I'm not a person who has rituals. I get bored by repetitious activities. I'm more likely to find discovering something for the first time awe inspiring. When the first big flock of ducks arrives in the spring, and the whole formation glides into the water together, I love being awake and aware it has happened again. Sometimes I see it, but most years it happens at night, and I just hear it. The loud quacking wakes me up, and then I can just wait for the splash down. If they woke me up every night, they would be annoying. Part of the pleasure is not knowing exactly when they will arrive. I can set my clock by the sun. Now if the sun just slept late one morning, that would inspire awe, but the sunrise is entirely predictable.
All that said, today's will be a clunker. April snowstorm!
The night sky is another great beauty to appreciate. Now that we are out of a city, we look at the stars nearly every clear night. Our vantage point has recaptured so many, although still probably not quite as many as when we were young and general background lighting was much lesser. Sometimes we just stand on the sidewalk craning our necks for a minute or three, and we imagine our neighbors wondering what on earth we are looking at. It is not so novel to them. But it sure is beautiful. I think we get a feeling of refreshment from looking at the skies, and there is certainly awe mixed in there. The firmament offers one clue to the vastness of God's creation.
The article doesn't even consider the best tip...
opening your Eyes, and seeing the Glory of GOD?
For a dose of awe, be sure to watch SpaceX first launch of their "Super Heavy" rocket, the most powerful rocket ever sent into space.
Livestream starts at 8:15 EDT, on YouTube or SpaceX website.
This is sad to admit, but I would be in awe of myself if I got up and out in time to see the sunrise.
Debussy wrote in his column that Wagner was a beautiful sunset confused with a sunrise.
Things that bring awe:
Sunrises.
Sunsets.
Natural water locations: ocean, river, lake.
Mountains
We're blessed to live by the Gulf, and near one of the most beautiful beaches in America, where we can watch gorgeous sunsets nightly.
If only we actually went nightly. It's amazing- when we do go, we always love it and both of us remark, we're so lucky to have this in our backyard. But we don't do it often enough.
Now...back to SpaceX.
Why does awful not mean full of awe?
Sunrise/sunsets always evoke humility in me. Just for a second in considering that big bright ball is 93 million miles away and is but a minor star in a tiny galaxy within a universe 15 billion light years in diameter.
The summary (or whatever that was) seems like something out of the Babylon Bee or a hoaxster's creation, in some respects.
---Grand natural environments, such as waterfalls and canyons, are commonly used to elicit feelings of awe (Gordon et al., 2017) but everyday settings can also instill feelings of wonder, particularly if they possess qualities of vastness or novelty (Sturm et al., 2020). By moderating landscape aesthetics, might the presence of ephemeral phenomena lead to variations in awe within a landscape view, and thus make this emotional response and its consequences more readily accessible?
Yes. Even though those are the dangerous words of a controller. Let's "moderate" these aesthetics right now, right NOW! Make more awe; make it more common. But wouldn't that be less awe-full?
The concern here seems to be how to generate natural inspiration in an urban environment, where grandeur is hard to find; beyond, as he writes, the way sunrise and sunset can garner feelings of awe. Hey, his word choice. It is amazing how a small-scale and familiar setting can communicate something more unusual at times. Unusual lighting can do it; exposure to the scene at an hour unfamiliar to the viewer; or a change of season that shows the scene's nature in a different and often brief moment -- those are ways I have found some of the most humdrum of urban or suburban settings to evoke something different and greater. Awe? Maybe. Delight, for sure. A patch of ragged turf at the edge of a field can suddenly reveal newly open dandelion and budding clover, and, especially seen close-up, they insist on displaying their beauty even in a worn-out kind of setting.
But those variations are not given through some master controller's controlling devices. They are the vagaries of nature.
And the fact remains that it is still better out in the country.
"[E]xisting research has tended to focus on appraisals of urban and rural scenes under uniformly clement, ‘blue-sky’ conditions, with few studies considering how diurnal rhythms and fleeting meteorological processes might impact landscape appraisals. To address this gap,…"
I'm sure glad someone is addressing this gap.
Science!
We were positioned perfectly on a lake shore for the last eclipse. It was spiritual. My wife was reduced to tears.
"All that said, today's will be a clunker. April snowstorm!" said Dan from Madison, using the future tense, at 6:41 AM, and thereby letting it show that he is no follower of the sunrise.
Space X launch canceled. Bummer. Really wanted to see that today.
Blogger rwnutjob said..."We were positioned perfectly on a lake shore for the last eclipse. It was spiritual. My wife was reduced to tears."
My observing mate and I were shaking. Great example of 'awe'!
Blogger Kai Akker said..."The night sky is another great beauty to appreciate. …we imagine our neighbors wondering what on earth we are looking at."
I always make a point to new neighbors; don't be alarmed at my roaming outside after dark. Just me appreciating the universe.
After having lived in Manhattan for nearly 41 years, I feel true awe looking at the night sky from my front or back yards. The light pollution in NYC effectively erases stars from sight. Now, with a phone app, I can point at the sky to identify which of the brighter spots of lights I see are stars or planets in our solar system.
I feel awe in looking at a shining physical object in the sky that I know to be Jupiter or Saturn or Mars or Venus, and that I am seeing as it exists in the universe right in the moment, (more or less, given the varying delays for the light from each planet to reach earth).
I feel awe looking at the stars, knowing even the closest of them are outside our solar system, wondering how close to one another each may be. In scanning the stars in the sky we're seeing countless solar systems at once, all incredibly far from us and each incredibly far from each other. I'm awed when I consider that some or many of the stars have orbiting around them (unseen) planets that bear life of some kind, sentient or not.
AWESOME!!
Laughing at Dan From Madison's comment. Ain't it the truth though!
"Space X launch canceled. Bummer. Really wanted to see that today."
Reminds me of another awesome event. The awe in this case was human accomplishment.
It is the small gifts nature gives us that I find inspiring.
One of the few times I observed multiple sunrises and sunsets was on safari in Africa. Best time to observe the greatest variety of fauna.
Is a sunrise or sunset really "weather"? One is astronomical. The other is meteorological (But then, are meteors meteorological?).
"Awful" did once mean "full of awe," but if you get hit with the awful power of God, it can be pretty awful.
Is awe similar to perceiving the sublime? We feel the power of the sublime because of it's overwhelming power, potentially a destructive power. Shouldn't that be a little unsettling and frightening, anything but comforting and reassuring?
“ Is a sunrise or sunset really "weather"?”
I spent some time looking into that when I was writing the post. My original answer was no, but I could see a way to say yes. It is about how sun goes through the atmosphere.
Good point re: awful, Lurker21!
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