Awe: An underrated climate strategy
Fast & Furious for kids + how AI hallucinates academic citations (Issue #348)
Climate dread is everywhere: the panic, the guilt, the looming sense that nothing we do is enough. But what if that mindset is part of the problem? What if urgency alone can’t carry us forward?
Eco-spirituality suggests that caring for the environment isn’t just political or practical — it’s sacred. Wildlife filmmaker and naturalist describes this practice as living in rhythm with the natural world. He writes about watching birds, composting scraps, sitting with decay. “A mysticism of the obvious,” he calls it. Attention becomes devotion. When you stay close to what’s alive, the impulse to control or extract begins to fade.
Holistic lifestyle educator likewise explores how connection to nature can catalyze a spiritual awakening. What began as a casual interest in crystals and moon phases became a deeper orientation toward nature: barefoot walks, backyard altars, tracking natural cycles. “It wasn’t a discipline,” she says. “It was relief.” Disconnection stopped feeling tolerable. Alignment became instinct.
Research from UC Berkeley and UC Irvine found that experiencing awe can cause people to act more benevolently toward each other. In one study, just one minute of gazing at a grove of eucalyptus trees made participants more likely to help a stranger. “When people experience awe,” said psychologist Paul Piff, “they really want to share that experience with other people.”
Eco-spirituality might not save the planet directly, but it might rewire us to want to. Awe expands our field of care. It reminds us that we’re not separate from the systems we’re trying to fix — we’re inside them. And when people feel part of something bigger, they act differently. Not out of guilt or panic, but reverence.
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Stories you need
- Last week, the Trump administration released a MAHA Commission report that cited multiple non-existent studies. , explains how this could have happened, and how smart readers can look for signs of AI hallucinations: “Don’t let a dense-looking citation fool you into accepting questionable ‘facts.’ It’s easy to check; just paste the full article title into a search box and check whether the details (author names, journal name, full title) all match up.”
- We’ve been talking a lot about civic space in this newsletter recently, driven by a lot of great stories on Medium about it. Here’s another one, Civic space is closing: How local journalism can open it up, which asks: What if newsrooms helped people find one another and connect, instead of just reporting the news?
- This personal reflection from colorblind artist Iban Van der Zeyp will open your eyes to the very specific challenges visually-impaired creatives face, from developing techniques for handling colors they can’t easily distinguish to this: “The saddest part about being a colorblind artist is that I will never see my own work as others do.”
From the Archive
Writer and comedian (@electrolemon on social media), being interviewed in the Guardian this week, was asked “What is the most effort you’ve put into a joke that you wished more people appreciated?” He answered:
A couple of years ago, I wrote a fake children’s book that retold the story of the Fast and the Furious films. I had a friend illustrate it for me, and I just put it on Medium. It was a very accurate recap of the franchise. But it just came and went! It’s like I let my child out in the world and now I have no idea where it is.
So let’s give it some love, and appreciate it as the masterpiece of children’s literature that it is! Presenting: The Night Before Fast & Furious
Your daily dose of practical wisdom on changing your own mind
Want to change one of your core beliefs about yourself? It’s a tall order, but it can be done, if you first start to challenge the core pieces of evidence that underlie that (probably mistaken, thb) belief.
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