🏡 Shock and Awe

Laura Francois, founder of the research collective Awe Exchange, who hosted a “Room of Awe” at our recent festival in Tangier, thinks that awe can mobilize and empower social action. She’s specifically interested in what might happen if eco-anxiety were replaced with eco-awe.

awe is more than an individual experience. As Keltner suggests, awe can mobilize us toward social progress. It can help us address the systemic shocks that have made our reality so weird. In fact, awe may be the key to solving the polycrisis

You could call all of these events surprising, but I’m not sure any of them could be convincingly labeled unexpected. Such is the paradox of our times. While Black Swan events such as 9/11 or the Covid pandemic used to disrupt the regular run of things, we are now thrown off course by predictable events waiting in plain sight. These incidents are n... See more

The shock we’re experiencing now can’t be summarized as present shock, which happens when we become blindly obsessed with the present moment. Nor is it a form of future shock, which happens when we feel that change is taking place too quickly. Instead, the shock we’re feeling today is an affront to our most basic understanding of reality. And the m... See more

In an era when people trust businesses more than they trust governments and nonprofits, companies are uniquely poised to spark wonder and curiosity. Whether they advocate for climate action, aim to create workplaces that foster connection and belonging as powerful tools against loneliness and social isolation, or seek to promote overall social prog... See more