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Why 'existential humility' may be the answer to today's culture wars

Embracing humility can help us open our minds and challenge our beliefs – but how do we do it? Cultivating the emotion awe may help, finds David Robson

By David Robson

15 November 2023

Pillars of Creation (NIRCam and MIRI Composite Image) By combining images of the iconic Pillars of Creation from two cameras aboard NASA???s James Webb Space Telescope, the universe has been framed in its infrared glory. Webb???s near-infrared image was fused with its mid-infrared image, setting this star-forming region ablaze with new details. Myriad stars are spread throughout the scene. The stars primarily show up in near-infrared light, marking a contribution of Webb???s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Near-infrared light also reveals thousands of newly formed stars ??? look for bright orange spheres that lie just outside the dusty pillars. In mid-infrared light, the dust is on full display. The contributions from Webb???s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) are most apparent in the layers of diffuse, orange dust that drape the top of the image, relaxing into a V. The densest regions of dust are cast in deep indigo hues, obscuring our view of the activities inside the dense pillars. Dust also makes up the spire-like pillars that extend from the bottom left to the top right. This is one of the reasons why the region is overflowing with stars ??? dust is a major ingredient of star formation. When knots of gas and dust with sufficient mass form in the pillars, they begin to collapse under their own gravitational attraction, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars. Newly formed stars are especially apparent at the edges of the top two pillars ??? they are practically bursting onto the scene. At the top edge of the second pillar, undulating detail in red hints at even more embedded stars. These are even younger, and are quite active as they form. The lava-like regions capture their periodic ejections. As stars form, they periodically send out supersonic jets that can interact within clouds of material, like these thick pillars of gas and dust. These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old, and will continue to form for mi

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

HAVE we reached the peak of the culture war? Looking at my social media feeds, it seems that polarised thinking and misinformation have never been more common. Even users I once admired now draw on dubious evidence to support their beliefs.

Perhaps it is time for us all to embrace a little “existential humility”. I came across this idea in a paper by Jeffrey Green at Virginia Commonwealth University and his colleagues. They build on a decade of research examining the benefits of “intellectual humility” more generally – our ability to recognise the errors in our judgement and remain…

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