In Times of Trouble, Seek Moral Beauty

The Atlantic

22-05-2025

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Maximilian Kolbe was a Polish priest and Franciscan friar who was arrested by the Gestapo in 1941 for hiding Jews and publishing anti-Nazi tracts, then sent to Auschwitz. He might have survived the camp and the war had he looked out for himself. Instead, he volunteered to take the place of a man randomly selected to be starved to death in retribution for another prisoner's escape. After several weeks without food, he was still clinging to life and leading other prisoners in prayer. The impatient guards finished him off by lethal injection. Kolbe submitted calmly, offering his arm to the executioner and waiting for death.
His story lives on, in no small part because the man whose place Kolbe took, Franciszek Gajowniczek, did survive the camp. In the decades after the war, his account of Kolbe's self-abnegation came to inspire millions of people, of all faiths and no faith. This is an example of how an act of moral beauty—visible in any form of charity, kindness, compassion, forgiveness, courage, or self-sacrifice—can acquire an extraordinary power.
When you can see moral beauty in others, you will find goodness in yourself as well. If you're frustrated with, or cynical about, the state of the world today, or if you simply want a sure way to get happier, looking for such moral beauty might be just what you need.
Jonathan Freedland: The unheeded warning
Acts of selflessness are at the center of many ancient teachings and religious traditions, both Abrahamic and karmic. Kolbe's own Christian faith teaches, 'Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.' Charity toward others is one of the Five Pillars of Islam. Dharma in Hinduism refers to the righteous path that a person's life should take, which includes being honest, avoiding causing harm, and showing generosity toward others.
Although self-sacrifice might seem unnatural and against human nature, the reverse is true. Some evolutionary biologists contend that altruism is an innate trait that evolved to foster cohesion in kinship groups; they note that the characteristic is also found among nonhuman primates. This behavior extends even to laying down one's life for friends and kin, a phenomenon that scholars believe occurs because of what they call 'identity fusion': I am willing to die for you because I believe my membership in this community is paramount, so defending it is worth my sacrifice; in that sense, I am dying for me, too.
Such courage and self-sacrifice toward kin can certainly be inspiring, but moral beauty is most striking in acts of goodness toward others with whom one does not have obvious ties, exhibiting a degree of altruism that is clearly contrary to one's individual interests. This occurs when a person helps another for no reason at all, forgives someone who truly does not deserve it, or—in the most extreme circumstances—gives up their life for a stranger. Witnessing this kind of moral beauty elicits what the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt calls 'moral elevation,' which is experienced both psychologically and neurologically. Indeed, researchers writing in the journal Brain Research have identified specific areas of the brain that are stimulated by moral beauty.
The psychologist Rhett Diessner has written a great deal about moral beauty and elevation. With his co-authors, he notes that this association induces 'pleasant feelings of warmth in the chest, feeling uplifted, moved.' Further, as Diessner told me by email, new research undertaken in his laboratory at Lewis-Clark State College, in Idaho, demonstrates that these 'magical' feelings lead to a desire to be better people ourselves and to help others. This results in prosocial actions, which can provide higher levels of individual and collective happiness.
Happiness derived from self-sacrifice is much deeper than plain positive feelings. Psychologists writing in 2016 showed that people feel that their life has more significance when they either help another person, without self-aggrandizement or any expectation of gain, or work to make the world a better place. The scholars found this has the greatest benefit when people are suffering from a loss of their sense of significance, perhaps after being rejected in a relationship or losing a job.
Arthur C. Brooks: A compliment that really means something
Putting all the research together, we know that witnessing acts of moral beauty can elevate us to higher happiness, all the more so if we imitate these acts. We should seek out moral beauty in our lives, especially in times of suffering, when we need inspiration and a reminder that there is good in the world. Here are three ways to do so.
1. Keep more morally beautiful company.
One obvious way to find more moral beauty in your life is to spend time with people who are generous and dedicated to other-serving behavior—and to avoid those who are not. This is not always easy; in fact, we commonly seek out people who are negative in the ways that we are—especially toward others—because making common cause helps us feel bonded to them. But this can create a vicious cycle that only intensifies unhappiness through mutually reinforcing negativity. So ditch the gossip circle, and find friends who are more positive and generous than you are, people who model the moral beauty—and thus the happiness—that you want in your life.
2. Make moral beauty your leisure pastime.
I have met many people who have dramatically improved their lives by dedicating their leisure time to serving others. They may spend their weekends and free time volunteering in their communities or take service trips instead of beach vacations. What they typically tell me is that when they volunteer for the first time, they're deeply inspired by the people they meet, and want to feel that way more. When they make serving others a way of life, their happiness and sense of meaning rise—just as the research predicts.
3. Practice gratitude.
Humans are not by nature grateful creatures. Our survival as a species has favored individuals who are vigilant, suspicious, and hyperaware of threats, rather than those who bask in the glow of gratitude. This has resulted in what psychologists call 'negativity bias,' which causes things we resent, such as others' bad behavior, to grab our attention, whereas the things that we're grateful for, such as acts of moral beauty, tend not to. (This shared bias obviously explains in part the appeal of the mean-gossip circle.) You can override this tendency by consciously focusing on things you're grateful for. By taking time each day to reflect thankfully, you will start to notice acts of generosity and self-sacrifice, and people who are good and kind. You'll see moral beauty all around you if you only stop to notice it.
Arthur C. Brooks: The bliss of a quieter ego
One last, important point: We are naturally drawn to moral beauty, and it is very good for us to follow that attraction. But many of us have a competing fascination with moral depravity.
By way of illustration, from 2018 to 2021, documentary content on streaming services increased by 63 percent, with the largest growth in the genre of true crime; from 2019 to 2024, the number of true-crime-podcast listeners nearly tripled. According to the Pew Research Center, these trends were especially clear among women and people under 30. Scholars have tried to account for this rising interest only in a glancing way, suggesting that it provides a complex kind of pleasure that combines pursuit of knowledge with 'cultural tourism.' Maybe this anodyne description suffices, but it's hard not to feel that, at some level, such morbid curiosity is akin to focusing not on the beautiful acts of Maximilian Kolbe, but on the sadistic, deviant behavior of his captors.
This is not actually an argument based on taste—or, rather, distaste. It concerns the risk to well-being, with potential longer-term damage to character. We know that consuming news about crime can raise fear and lead people to overestimate the danger of being a victim of crime. By analogy, treating moral ugliness as a form of entertainment may almost certainly arrest and even reverse the effects of moral beauty in your life. Instead of achieving elevation, expect depression. But choose what's morally beautiful, and you will be rewarded.