[ExI] Why vast open spaces fill us with awe and wonder

[Keith Henson]

On Wed, Mar 11, 2026 at 6:33 PM John Clark via extropy-chat
<extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>>
>> > It’s because Julie Andrews is there, at the peak of her awesome wonderfulness.
>
>
> Maybe. Or maybe it's because early hominids that happened to like living in areas that had large expenses of grass that was high but not too high were able to pass on more of their genes into the next generations than hominids that did not like such places; the grass was high enough to attract vegetarian prey animals, but not so high as to hide dangerous carnivorous animals. Maybe that's why even modern humans like to have manicured grass lawns surrounding their houses.

That makes sense and is what you would expect from evolution.

There are also elements of human psychology that arise as side effects
of something else that was selected.  Awe at large spaces does not
obviously fit either one.

Keith
> John K Clark
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