Dacher Keltner (2023) writes about the wonder (Awe) to be found in music and in visual designs (such as those found in the terracotta warriors in China). Awe is to be found in collective effervescence—which Emile Durkheim (1912/2001) believed resided at the emotional core of religion. This effervescence is evident in the “buzzing and crackling with some life force that merges people into a collective self, a tribe, an oceanic ‘we.’” (Keltner, 2023, p. 13). Awe is also evident in spiritual and religious texts and in stories of life and death. These texts and stories “lead us to epiphanies—when we suddenly understand essential truths about life.” (Keltner, 2023, p. 17)
The psychic storm can be quite horrifying—yet still somehow enthralling. Keltner (2023, p. 13) writes about the inspiring natural Awe to be found in witnessing a cataclysmic event such as an earthquake, thunderstorm, or wildfire. Horrible and dreadful images and pictures of gods in primitive cultures continue to attract us—think of the superhero movies that populate our movie theaters and cable channels. These competing images lead us to feelings of profound admiration or profound disgust—often both. This is the perfect psychic storm. Somehow, a power from outside time or space seems to intervene and lead us to an experience that penetrates and changes our inner psyche. And we don’t know how this will happen. It is beyond our control or true comprehension.
I suggest that monetary concerns evoke a psychic storm. It is a numinous experience. It is both enthralling and frightening when we first encounter the prospect of gaining wealth. Having acquired some money, we face exhaustion and deep fear associated with newfound wealth. We want to run away and hide from the psychic storm. We submerge our own identity–and even a collective identity. This alternative, neurotic course of escape, according to Fromm, is characterized by its compulsive character. This neurotic pathway resembles that taken when we are threatened and in a state of panic: we look around us for help and are willing to sacrifice our own individual integrity to become wealthy. Living in the shadow of the numinous and our psychic storm, our behavior is characterized by Erich Fromm (Fromm, 1941, pp. 140-141) as:
“. . . the more or less complete surrender of individuality and the integrity of the self. Thus, it is not a solution which leads to happiness and positive freedom; it is, in principle, a solution which is to be found in all neurotic phenomena. It assuages an unbearable anxiety and makes life possible by avoiding panic; yet it does not solve the underlying problem and is paid for by a kind of life that often consists only of automatic or compulsive activities.”
This analysis, offered by Fromm (and augmented by Jung and Otto), leads us to consider one of the traditional avenues of escape and distortion: consumption and excessive accumulation of wealth. It is at this point that we reintroduce an important concept, “locus of control” (Rotter, 1966). Having accumulated wealth, we assume that we have some, if not total, control over what is occurring in this life. We feel responsible for what is occurring and take action to correct what we don’t find to be desirable. At points when we have no money, we assume that we have little, if any, control over what is occurring in our life. We have to sit back and watch what is happening.
