Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id PAA06001 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 6 Dec 2000 15:10:52 GMT User-Agent: Microsoft Outlook Express Macintosh Edition - 5.0 (1513) Date: Wed, 06 Dec 2000 10:07:49 -0500 Subject: Re: eeing how the spirit moves us From: William Benzon <bbenzon@mindspring.com> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> Message-ID: <B653C073.5EED%bbenzon@mindspring.com> In-Reply-To: <20001206142849.AAA20741@camailp.harvard.edu@[128.103.125.215]> Content-type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
on 12/6/00 9:30 AM, Wade T.Smith at wade_smith@harvard.edu wrote:
> Seeing how the spirit moves us
>
> By Gareth Cook, Globe Staff, 12/6/2000
>
> Show people scenes from the life of Mother Teresa, laboring in the filth
> of Calcutta, and they will get a feeling often described by prophets and
> poets, but not recognized by science.
>
> Even a glimpse of human kindness - a hand placed on a leper's forehead,
> or a newborn, once fragile and abandoned, being lifted from its crib -
> can be enough to evoke what University of Virginia psychologist Jonathan
> Haidt calls ''elevation.'' A branch of the vagus nerve is activated, he
> said, giving the chest a ''sensation of expansion,'' provoking chills,
> causing the tear ducts to well up, and, in some cases, clenching the
> throat.
>
> Haidt has embarked on a quest to prove that elevation deserves
> recognition as a distinct emotion, like anger, with its own constellation
> of physical symptoms.
>
[snip]
>
> Ekman and others speculated that elevation might be a kind of awe, which
> has become a favored topic of research among emotion specialists. Just as
> the dizzying, rough-hewn walls of the Grand Canyon can inspire a
> transforming feeling of being in the presence of something greater, so
> can acts of what Haidt calls ''moral beauty.''
You might be interested in Manfred Clynes' *Sentics: The Touch of Emotions.*
While not as well known as Ekman's work, in some ways it is deeper.
Reverence (awe) is one of the basic emotions that Clynes has uncovered in
his research. Along with grief and love, it involves parasympathetic
activation, as opposed to the sympathetic activation of joy, hate, and
anger.
You can find some of Clynes' papers at his website:
http://www.microsoundmusic.com/clynes/default.htm
Bill B
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