Overriding Selfishness by Experiencing Awe

As biological animals, we are genetically and even behaviorally programmed to be self-centered, even though we can “self-program” to override this instinctual urge, which is geared to self-preservation. We are naturally economizing beings, oriented like squirrels to store up as any nuts as we can for winter, given the natural conditions of scarcity and uncertainty in the human condition. Yet we eschew selfish people and generally expect some extent of generosity from benevolence (benevolentia), which in turn is based on good will (benevolentia). To be sure, we can take measures not only to hold us back from abject selfishness, but also override the instinctual urge even for self-preservation. One such way has to do with experiencing awe.  

It is easier to accept that self-interest, which can manifest narrowly as selfishness, has a biological basis refined by the process of natural selection in evolution than it is to believe that experiences of awe have biological effects that reduce or even eclipse a self-centered orientation in perception and behavior. According to one researcher, an experience of awe “activates our vagus nerve. That’s ‘the big bundle of nerves starting in the top of your spinal cord that helps you look at people and vocalize’ . . . and it also ‘slows our heart rate, helps with digestion and opens up our bodies to things bigger than us.’”[1] The neurological feature of perceiving (and perhaps even judging) other people is particularly salient in regard to self-centeredness. For as the vagus nerve is being activated from an experience of awe, a region of the brain is deactivated—the default mode network. “That is where all the self-representational processes take place: I’m thinking about myself, my time, my goals, my strivings, my checklist. That quiets down during awe.”[2] As thoughts about oneself become recessive, we would expect the vagus nerve to look at people less fettered by interlarding thoughts about oneself and one’s own interests.

An experience of awe does not necessitate there being a religious experience; “finding awe and wonder” in the world around us “can be as simple as pausing and noticing . . . something as seemingly small as a newly blossomed flower to something as bigas a sunset stretched across the entire sky.”[3] Another source of awe is of a moral sort, as evinced in “witnessing the kindness or goodness or generosity of other people.”[4] I submit that witnessing or being on the receiving end of compassion for a detractor or enemy transcends awe from a virtue to instantiate spiritual awe, especially if God is believed to be love itself, theologically speaking. To be sure, such awe, or moral awe, need not be experienced for the biological processes to kick in; “listening to music, seeing art and contemplating big ideas” may suffice to trigger an experience of awe.[5]

Perhaps regularly having intense experiences of awe can reduce self-referential thoughts to the extent of a person being willing to die for a larger principle than self-preservation. Religious martyrs and warriors who are willing to die for their country (or cause) on a battlefield may thus be so inclined for biological as much as religious/patriotic reasons.

Furthermore, being less self-referential cognitively can, in itself and as this affects how other people are perceived (via the vagus nerve), render a person more moral in terms of being more benevolent, and thus generous, and less selfish. This orientation is in line with Bentham’s utilitarianism, wherein a person should act in line with the greatest good for the greatest number possible of people, and with Kant’s categorical imperative wherein a person should treat other rational beings not merely as means to one’s own interests, but also as ends in themselves. This formulation is in line with the Golden Rule in Christianity: love others as one loves oneself. Though in depressing the latter, loving others becomes more like selfless, or agape, love, which is self-emptying (kenosis) rather than self-aggrandizing. 

That such lofty theological notions may have correlates in biology does not take away from the value of the former as being sacred even if biology is viewed as profane. Even if a religious person is of another world, being in the earthly realm before any after-life cannot be doubted. Even though Augustine held that human love even as directed “upwards” to God is the best that we mere mortals can do, Calvin was more idealistic in viewing us as being capable not merely of Augustinian caritas love, but also of divine-sourced agape love—this species of theological love being much closer to selflessness than is caritas, which is based on garden-variety eros. Ironically, Calvin’s claim may find support from biological processes that are deactivated and activated.

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1. “Scientists Asked People . . .,” The Huffington Post, December 27, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.

Pope Francis: Urbi et Orbi against War

Although Pope Francis of the Roman Catholic Church could not amass a countervailing military force, he could use his pulpit to excoriate the world’s military aggressors in moral terms. Gone are the days when popes wielded military forces and whose threats of excommunication and damnation could be used with effect; modern-day popes speaking to a global audience, which includes non-Christians (not to mention non-Catholics), must resort to moral suasion. So it is ironic that as unprovoked military attacks on civilians have become more massive and increasingly against the norm expected of governments, the influence of popes has decreased, both militarily and theologically, in international affairs. Even so, Pope Francis was able to appeal to a theological belief and value in Christianity during his Christmas Day, 2024 public address at the Vatican. Although not in itself enough to thwart the invasions and related crimes against humanity in Gaza especially, but also in Ukraine, the main impact may be said to be in throwing some light on just how antipodal Russia’s President Putin and Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu were from the distinctively Christian the kingdom of God, both as a concept and a spiritual reality fundamentally at odds with the ways of the world. In other words, there is value in the world being able to grasp that two degrees of separation exist between military invaders intent on harming and killing innocent civilians and the kingdom of God as described in the Gospels by Jesus.

The full essay is at "Pope Francis's Christmas Urbi et Orbi Message."

The Vatican on the Brink of Bankruptcy: The Missing Piece

During at least its first millennium, Christianity—with the notable exception of Clement of Alexandria—held that greed is tightly coupled to profit-seeking and wealth. Amid the increased trade, and profits, during the Commercial Revolution in the Middle Age in Europe, Aquinas began the trend severing the coupling to allow for greedless moderate profits, and thus wealth. Also in Medieval Europe, the Roman Catholic Church allowed monasteries to have collective wealth (including land) without being subject to having to go through the eye of a needle to enter the Kingdom of God.[1] With it supply of gold and real estate, the Vatican could be considered rich in the twenty-first century. When the exemption for collective wealth justifies those holdings from the stain of greed is one question; here I look at reports in 2024 that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy, and why, for at least in one media report, one major reason is curiously left out even though that reason may have been making all the difference, and may even be considered just, whether in terms of divine or human justice.

Pope Francis admitted that the Vatican was in trouble financially. “The current system is unable to guarantee in the medium-term compliance with pension obligations for future generations.”[2] According to the Daily Express in late 2024, the Vatican’s “unprecedented financial crisis as of late . . . was caused by a decline in donations.”[3] In 2023, “the Vatican reported an operating deficit of $87 million,” and a larger deficit was the case in 2024 as of mid-December.[4] The question is why.

The Vatican had been “embroiled in debt after the European recession in 2012 and once again during the [coronavirus] pandemic in 2021.”[5] Also, the price of gold decreased in the early 2020s. Some conservative Catholics blamed Pope Francis’ “progressive” policies as “causing a decrease in donation.”[6] But on conservatives’ hot-button issues of abortion and homosexuality, the pope had reaffirmed the Church’s magisterium (i.e., teaching) that both are sins, and opposing climate change was not an unpopular position globally by 2024. As for emphasizing the poor, Jesus in the Gospel narratives does as much, so the pope was by no means an outlier in that respect. In fact, it could be counter-argued that the conservative, theologically excluding policies of the preceding pope, Joe Ratzinger, had caused church attendance, and thus donations, to decline. A church that views itself as more like a hospital than a club of saints will, everything else equal, enjoy larger attendance.

Entirely omitted, however, is the decreased attendance due to the Roman Catholic priests who had been molesting and even raping children for decades without being defrocked—Joe Ratzinger being among the many sordid bishops who reassigned rather than defrocked pedophile priests for the good of the reputation of the universal Church. The lack of accountability within the Vatican, such as in the ceremonial role in the Vatican being given to Cardinal Law by Pope John Paul II, who would be canonized as a saint by the Church he led, after news had surfaced of Archbishop Law having protected nearly 100 pedophile priests in Boston at the expense of 550 victims and with court judgments “that eventually topped $85 million.”[7] Even though the Boston Archdiocese was responsible for paying out the judgments, the hit to the credibility of the Roman Church from not only there being so many pedophile priests (and bishops), but also there being so little accountability—not even a resulting change at the top due to the serial unaccountability from Rome—led to a marked decline in church attendance. Besides this meaning less in donations, surely a significant number of the laity decided not to contribute financially to a religious organization in which employees thereof had been molesting and even raping children over decades. In any democratic state, a government covering up and even harboring so many rapists and their superiors would have faced a no-confidence vote, yet neither Pope John Paul II or Benedict XVI was pushed out or resigned for that reason, although it may be that the International Criminal Court made a deal with the latter pope, Joe Ratzinger, that would drop the charges pending against him in exchange for that conservative pope breaking with tradition and resigning, as well as being confined to Vatican City for the rest of his life. Even efforts inside the Vatican to hide this deal would be consistent with the efforts to cover-up cases of pedophile priests and their clerical protectors, such as Archbishop Law of Boston.

In short, no one should be surprised that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy, though were the Vatican to sell some of its real-estate and gold the organization’s pensioners might not have had to fear being left high and dry in a worldly rather than heavenly sense. Although such fear would not be just for innocent priests and bishops, the extent of orchestrated covering up by the Vatican since at least 2002 and even the possible culpability psychologically of clerical celibacy as a church tradition from the Middle Age regarding the molestation and raping of children as a result of dysfunctional repression means that in addition to guilty priests and bishops being defrocked, the Roman Catholic Church was facing natural and perhaps even divine justice in being on the brink of bankruptcy. That is a powerful statement—much more so than one blaming the Vatican’s weak financial condition of Pope Francis, as if his policies were progressive, and if they really were so, blameworthy too.  

To be sure, religion does not reduce to morality; Yahweh in the Hebrew Bible is more concerned with being worshipped exclusively and thus in covenant, than in sticking to human ethical principles. But it is God, rather than Popes and other bishops (and priests), who has license to trump ethics when needed for theological purposes. When us mere mortals decide unilaterally to trump the dictates of justice by inflicting harm on other people and by enabling the perpetrators who are aggressive especially against the weak, then we can expect that our own suffering is just. Therefore, it is just that the Vatican was on the brink of bankruptcy at the end of 2024.

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1. See my books, Godliness and Greed, and God’s Gold, the latter text reflecting my further thought on the topic, especially on how Christianity can be held off from the increasing susceptibility to greed theologically.
2. Alana Loftus, “Vatican ‘On the Brink of Bankruptcy’ Due to Dramatic Decline in Global Donations Under Pope Francis’ Leadership,” MSN.com, December 17, 2024.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. Phillip Martin, “The Pope Promises Accountability to Victims Abused by the Church. Where is Cardinal Law?” The World, August 3, 2015.

Church of the Peripheries

One of the leitmotifs of the four Christian Gospels is the surprising value of peripheries even over people who are up front, whether politically, economically, socially, and even atop religious institutions. “The last are first, and (most of) the first are last” is a Biblical staple for Christians. In terms of compassion, the value being espoused here is consistent with Jesus’s preachment that compassion to one’s detractors and even sworn enemies is the way into the spiritual Kingdom of God, which, being within a person and between people in the spirit of inconvenient love/compassion, is at hand rather than pending Christ’s Second Coming. This point is dramatically made in the film, Mary Magdalene. It was also made in Pope Francis’s decision to skip the grand opening of Notre Dame in Paris and go instead to the French island of Corsica in December, 2024. In making this choice, the pope evinced distinctively Christian leadership, which can also be practiced by heads of governments and even CEOs.

Skipping an ornate state ceremony in Paris, Pope Francis went to a small Mediterranean island, “highlighting local traditions of popular piety on the one hand and migrant deaths and wars on the other.”[1] The symbolism of the trip thus goes beyond Corsica. “The Mediterranean is the backdrop of this trip, surrounded by situations of crisis and conflict,” Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, said.[2] The notion and value of compassion that is inconvenient is especially welcome in the context of suffering, and, indeed, a person who oneself has suffered greatly may be particularly inclined to redress hate in the world with compassion. This is much more valuable than meeting with the president of a country.

Hence, rather than meeting French President Macron at his palace, the pope was scheduled to “meet privately with Macron at the airport before departing . . . back to Rome.”[3] The first are last. “The pontiff pointedly did not make the trip to Paris . . . for the pomp surrounding the reopening of the Notre Dame Cathedral following the devastating 2019 fire.”[4] Rather than going to Paris, the pope went to an island whose population numbers only 340,000 people. As they had been embroiled in pro-independence violence, the context there was ripe for soothing, compassionate attention. Like a good shepherd who goes after a lost lamb so it would not be eaten by a wolf, a good pastor goes to the periphery where fear can be expected to eclipse happiness and contentment. A good pastor shirks the contentment of pomp and lavish display in order to go to a sparce periphery.

So too, Macron could have followed suit, assuming he values Jesus’s example, by not only venturing into the poor suburbs of Paris, but also giving Corsica its political independence instead of limited autonomy. The island is closer to Italy anyway. Lessening violence is worth more, I submit, than attending a highbrow grand opening of Notre Dame. Rather than worship the spurious crown of thorns that was returned to the cathedral just after its opening, a Christian following in the pope’s footsteps would be more inclined to evince inconvenient compassion not only to strangers, but, even more so, to people who have been rude, rejecting, and even hateful to oneself.

Benevolentia universalis is commonly thought to be the epitome of Jesus’s life and teaching on how to enter the Kingdom of God; I submit that something more—something even more difficult—is needed to usher in the Kingdom in the world, one person at a time.  Put another way, “the last are first” can be interpreted not only as going to the least rather than the first in society (and in a church!), but also as treating one’s detractors as the last in the sense of being the first in receiving one’s compassion and even love. This is in sync with self-sacrifice and the difficult exercise of free-will, and thus with agape, self-emptying love that is uniquely the epitome of divinity in Christianity, and thus the religion’s real presence. Even in ritual reality, which is qualitatively different than metaphysical reality, agape itself is the real-presence being ritually sought and received. Once ingested, it is for naught if it does not issue outward in compassion to the most difficult of people rather than just to compliant strangers.

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1. Daniel Bellamy, “Francis Becomes the First Pope to Visit the French Island of Corsica,” Euronews.com, December 15, 2024.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid., italics added.