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ANIMISM_CREATIONS
August 29, 2022
I did a quick spin around the net
looking for information about
animism in general, and in particular The web, in particular
I was interested in whether animists wikipedia, is of course
tended to regard human creations as useful for general info:
also having a spirit of their own.
Animism was a concept
Nearly everyone who talks about introduced by E.B. Tylor
"animism" is really talking in 1871-- he was
nature-worship (which is often essentially the first
subtly anti-human, though cultural anthropologist,
doesn't have to be): there's no (and he displayed all the
acknowledgement that a human biases of 19th century
creation can have a spirit anthropology, a dimissive
view of the "primitive"
When they *define* animism, they cultures he studied, and
often say "all things" or "all the presumption that the
objects", then they drop that and modern world was much
begin talking as though only superior.)
natural objects are included.
That the "primitive"
view has its problems
is not something I
would doubt, the
assumption that the
"modern" is all that
much better often
seems dubious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animism
From the wikipedia page for animism, in a passage
that (going by the attached reference link) seems
to be based on Graham Harvey, "Animism: Respecting
the Living World" (2006):
"Animism encompasses the beliefs that all material
phenomena have agency, that there exists no ANIMISM_HARVEY
categorical distinction between the spiritual and
physical (or material) world, and that soul,
spirit, or sentience exists not only in humans,
but also in other animals, plants, rocks,
geographic features such as mountains or rivers,
or other entities of the natural environment:
water sprites, vegetation deities, tree spirits,
etc. Animism may further attribute a life force to
abstract concepts such as words, true names, or
metaphors in mythology."
Despite the wide ranging field of examples there, there
isn't a single reference to a human creation: The Empire
State Building? Picasso's "Guernica"? Doko-chan's
sacred armor? Don't these have a soul of their own?
One notable exception: I
found a youtube video (?!)
of a dude in San Francisco,
essentially just reading
aloud an essay by an
Alf Hornborg, which in turn
used some extensive
quotations from Latour.
Latour talked about "hybrid objects" Interestingly, they keep using
or "quasi objects": part nature, terminology about "relatedness"
part society, and "brimming with and "relationships", meaning
agency". He makes the point that that the animist treats objects
objects around us are often in much the way they would a
"imbued with politics, meanings, human partner, having a
and human intentions". "relationship" with it.
Hornborg works with this insight That's a common usage of
suggesting that the way we really "relationship" (e.g. love
need to see the world is to both and/or sex with another
recognize that there's objective human), but there are
scientific data about things, but more general meanings.
to *also* embrace a kind of
animism, and to engage in If block A is on top of
relationships with things. block B, you can say
they have a relationship:
one is on top of the other.
Considering your connection
with things as relationships Database people talk about
is I think supposed to the "relational" model,
produce a more enlightened where a relation is a
kind of behavior. row of data, a collection
of pieces of information
attributed to an object.
John Reid, in a 2014 TedX talk
leads off with the idea that
embracing animism turns "things
around us from things we *use*
to something we *relate* to".
Evidently they have a hard time thinking
of examples of human beings that treat
other human beings as things they use.
What a nice world they live in.
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