Frustrations with "Awe"

There are no pertinent pictures for abstract musings, so this
is Shangri La. You'll have to just pretend you're there if you
want the full effect, because as Walter Benjamin notes, the
age of mechanical [digital] reproduction is not the best at
reproducing aura/awe.

I've had a tough time wrapping my head around the idea of awe this semester, because I feel like it can be so subjective (and as I'll discuss later, I think moments of awe are most often isolated and individual). As I've read posts from people's wonder journals, I've thought to myself time and time again, "I'm not feeling it," and at times I get the sense that sharing my moments of awe through social media is really just cheapening my true moments of wonder and making me search for them in places where they aren't. I grew even more frustrated when I read Burke's treatise on the sublime, because though I followed his argument and found myself agreeing with pretty much everything  he was saying, I still didn't really feel like it encapsulated my idea of awe or wonder at all. It's then that I began to wonder if maybe awe and the sublime are not so synonymous as we like to make them and, aside from that, if awe is truly communicable. The conclusion that I've come to is that while awe and the sublime are certainly related, they nonetheless represent separate experiences which are transferable but not to the same effect or potency as the original experience.

So, as to the question of whether the sublime and awe are the same thing, I thought about what each is composed of. I originally did a ton of searches for the physiology of awe/wonder/the sublime but turned up little that was of value. Apparently, scientists care little about things like the sublime, and those involved in humanities research have a poor working definition of physiology, because the only things I could find were interpretive, personal findings rather than the brain scans and endorphin maps that I was hoping for. So, as personal, opinionated interpretations are all that is to be had, I figured I would offer my own. 

As Burke seems to be the authority on this subject, I start with his definitions in trying to break down awe and the sublime. Burke suggest that terror is an essential part of the sublime, and while the point is valid and his argument well thought out, I don't think it has much of anything to say about awe. As I've thought about awe with relation to fear, I've realized that really none of my experiences with awe have been accompanied by fear or terror or anything of the sort but have instead made me feel as if I had come home. Perhaps awe is a substituent component of the sublime, the companion to terror, but in my mind, trying to group the two under a single category entirely muddles their most important distinction, that is, the quality of the wonder that we experience, the mental condition into which it brings us. Staring into a vast chasm, for example, evokes quite a different emotional and psychological response than does staring into the endless night sky. It was this realization that got me thinking about beauty versus the sublime, especially since Burke has plenty to say on that matter. One of Burke's main points is that there exists a dichotomy between beauty and the sublime. The two are connected in certain regards, but essentially, they are distinct states. For me, though--someone whose perceived moments of awe have been integrally tied to beauty--that certainly raised some questions. If awe is a part of beauty and beauty is distinct with regard to the sublime, then clearly awe and the sublime can't be thought of as synonymous, despite their clear connection. In short, I think Burke's definition of the sublime is better suited as a definition of terror, or if that's not the case, then our conflation of awe and the sublime ignores fundamental distinctions between the two experiences.

This post is already getting a bit long, so I'll try to be more compact. I recently had a good back and forth with +Paul Bills and +Carly Brown about whether awe is truly transferable. They were more than patient with my belligerent insistence that awe is isolated, and I'm sticking to my guns on this one, but I loved something that Carly posted: "If we can't transfer moments of awe then why do we have them? I have a hard time believing they are just for us." That really struck me, and I've been thinking about that question since then. I think in the end, we experience moments of awe to bring us to a recollection of the truths we have forgotten--to a realization of God's greatness, man's divine potential, the sacredness of the earth and the creative faculty, and so in some sense, we can help others to remember as we share our own moments of awe. But in another sense, I think there are moments that are just for us and others which are understandable or meaningful only for us as individuals, because in the end, we experience life through the lens of self. While we are free to share these moments of awe with others, that first encounter is distinct from those that follow, and the sense of wonder that we convey in relating our own experiences is a separate, created entity. That's part of the beauty of humanity, is that we can create awe for others. It's not the same awe that we experience, but I don't think that has to be a bad thing.

I was thinking about this question the other day as I was rereading bits of the The Prophet, by Kahlil Gibran, and I came across a passage that was rather pertinent:

The teacher who walks in the shadow of the temple, among his followers, gives not of his wisdom but rather of his faith and his lovingness.
If he is indeed wise he does not bid you enter the house of wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.
The astronomer may speak to you of his understanding of space, but he cannot give you his understanding.
The musician may sing to you of the rhythm which is in all space, but he cannot give you the ear which arrests the rhythm nor the voice that echoes it.
And he who is versed in the science of numbers can tell of the regions of weight and measure, but he cannot conduct you thither.
For the vision of one man lends not its wings to another man.
And even as each one of you stands alone in God's knowledge, so must each one of you be alone in his knowledge of God and in his understanding of the earth.

In the end, we approach God and wonder and individuals, our vision obscured or enabled by our own experiences, and I think there is something both sublime and beautiful in that simple realization.