From: The Atlantic

Awesomeness Is Everything

The Atlantic:

october, Jeff Bezos’s space-flight company, Blue Origin, passed a crucial safety test when it successfully detached a crew capsule from a rocket. In the process, would-be space tourists came one giant leap closer to suborbital selfies. A joyride to 330,000 feet would be, quite literally, awesome.

Research on awe (an emotion related to Edmund Burke’s notion of the sublime, Sigmund Freud’s oceanic feelings, and Abraham Maslow’s peak experiences) reveals both its triggers and its far-out effects. and may even adjust our worldview to accommodate it. Psychologists have described awe as the experience of encountering something so vast—in size, skill, beauty, intensity, etc.—that we struggle to comprehend it. A waterfall might inspire awe; so could childbirth, or a scene of devastation. 

Read the whole story: The Atlantic


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