Mr. Delistraty is working on a book about Spiritualism.

“Awe deficit disorder,” a term that’s bopped around the internet for at least a decade, does not have a formal medical diagnosis, but its symptoms are endemic. The desire for efficiency, for digital distraction, for staying inside has taken awe from our lives. It’s knocked us from time spent staring at the stars, from imagining, from confronting the grandness of the world.

Without awe we become stuck. The neuropsychologist Paul Pearsall got it right when he wrote that languishing and despair are symptomatic of being “awe deficient.”

Trying to describe awe is near impossible. Is it religious? Emotional? Neurological? Philosophical? Awe is not........

© The New York Times