Jonah Berger was a puzzled man.
He had spent nearly a decade studying what made people share information. He had proved scientifically exactly what made things ‘go viral’.
They were always useful, visually prominent, made us laugh, cry or get angry, helped us look good when we share them.
And yet here was this week’s ‘most emailed’ New York Times article.
An article entirely about sneezing.
No useful know-how on preventing colds. No graphic images of people mid-eruption, no flu-related jokes. Not even a new, sexier way of blowing your nose.
It seemed to confound every one of Jonah’s rules. But did it?
One of Jonah’s rules was that physiological arousal induced by strong emotions led to more sharing.
When we chuckle, when we’re mad, physiological changes make us more prone to share things.
He proved it by asking a group people to jog on the spot for a few minutes, then read an article. With their heart pumping, these runners were more than 60% more likely to share the article with friends than a control group was.
He went through years of ‘most emailed’ articles, listing all the emotions that triggered sharing, grading each by how much physiological effect it usually had.
But as Jonah was about to discover, he had missed one emotion off his list. The one that makes us share more than any other. The one so powerful that we’ll even share an article about sneezing with everyone we know.
It’s called awe.
That feeling when we’re faced with something infinitely larger than ourselves.
With a deed more powerful than anything we could do.
With knowledge more complex than anything we thought possible.
You see, this article wasn’t just about sneezing. It was about extraordinary lenses and precisely placed mirrors, about splitting light with the finest of razor blades and capturing minute disturbances in the air, never seen before by man.
It was about breakthroughs in scientific discovery. Ones that could change our understanding of airborne bacteria and transform our ability to fight them the world over.
When Jonah’s researchers went back to their data they found that nothing correlated more clearly with sharing, and that nothing moved us more than the feeling of awe…
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The final movement of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s ‘Jupiter’ Symphony begins with a very simple tune: C, D, F, E. It’s the first of five melodies that make up this sparkling, joyful piece of music.
After nine minutes, when each has had its say, the movement draws to a close, leaving just enough time for one final burst of the opening tune:
C, D, F, E. Loud and triumphant.
But then, out of nowhere, the second melody enters.
On top of the first.
And then third on top of that.
Followed by the fourth and the fifth.
For nine minutes we thought these were separate melodies. But here there are – all five, singing out without a clash, one on top of each other.
The surprises don’t end there.
It turns out these aren’t even melodies at all. Each of them is as happy rumbling away in the cellos as it is soaring above in the flutes. What we thought were just tunes are also bass-lines and middle-parts too.
(Melodies, bass-lines and middle-parts, that is, that all fit perfectly together. In absolutely any order you want.)
It’s world’s first and only example of quintuple inverted counterpoint. I would say how extraordinary that is, but I can’t because we haven’t even mentioned the most impressive thing yet:
How it sounds.
Not for one moment is there a sense that anything has been contrived, mathematically conceived. Never do thoughts of construction or impossible jigsaw puzzles colour the richness and beauty of the music.
Instead, it sounds like Mozart’s only desire was to write his most glorious symphony to date, the very best music he could think of. You’d be forgiven for thinking all this complexity just happened by accident or for not realising its even there.
Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised then, that the first manuscript shows Mozart calmly and neatly wrote out the whole thing in a single take.
Awe.
That feeling when we’re faced with something infinitely larger than ourselves.
With a deed more powerful than anything we could do.
With knowledge more complex than anything we thought possible.
https://youtu.be/6VtKy1uXHeg?t=1h02m29s
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