The Biological Advantage of Being Awestruck - by Jason Silva on Vimeo.
I've been reading a lot lately on the evolutionary advantages of storytelling—first in Brian Boyd's monumental On the Origin of Stories, which treats art in general and stories in particular as an adaptive response, and now in Jonathan Gottschall's The Storytelling Animal, which describes fiction as "a powerful and ancient virtual reality technology that simulates the big dilemmas of human life." So when Jason Silva (who was featured in conversation on this blog last month) posted a video the other day about the evolutionary edge that stems from the state of wonder, I took notice.
Jason's video was inspired by his own reading—in particular, Nicholas Humphrey's Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness, which the Times Book Review described as "exuberant," and Ross Andersen's "Golden Eye," an essay on the marvels of deep space that appeared in the LA Review of Books. Jason borrowed the title for his video from Humphrey, but the exuberance is all his own. Enjoy.
