I Try Not To Anthropomorphize Everything, Because Some Things Don't Like It

[elisem]

Earlier this week I mailed some earrings to a customer because the earrings they already had and these were a quartet which I had goofed up on posting. I didn't actually come right out and say these earrings missed the other ones, but that's pretty much what it was.

Do you anthropomorphize much?

P.S. I also talk to the toaster, but I don't think that counts because it's mostly threats.

Comments

[madgastronomer]

I am an actual animist, at least in theory. I assume everything could talk to me if I could understand, and some things talk to me and I do understand.

[azurelunatic]

My partner and I both have cars shaped like toasters, and we call both of them "The Toaster", and occasionally "your Toaster", "my Toaster", and "Number 6" if we have to differentiate. (Mine is red, and therefore it is named after the Cylon in the red dress.) Our actual toaster is generally humble and well-behaved unless it's trying to shoot toast much further out than it's supposed to. (We tell Kittenpants "The Miracle of the Toast will Not Be Repeated!" due to the time the toast landed on the floor. For years after the sound of the toaster was very exciting to her little kitten brain. Since it happened nearly twice, there was discussion as to whether the toaster could be beatified.)

[jazzfish]

ANTHROPOMORPHIZERS UNITE! We have nothing to lose except Mr. Dignity!

I have been known to speak encouragingly to my car Hactar when he's struggling with a hill, and to apologise to various pieces of furniture after running into them.

My tarot deck has definite Opinions about my life, though it does seem to like my most recent partner. But that's just tarot decks, I think.

[sovay]

We have nothing to lose except Mr. Dignity!

"Mose shrugged his shoulders. 'I don't particular like to take those fellows out, but the dogs got to earn their living somehow. Railroading isn't going to feed Mister Dog.'

"'Mister Dog,' Danny said. 'Why you call everything mister?'

"For a minute Mose looked at Danny out of the corner of his eye, like he had a joke and was making up his mind whether to let Danny in on it. 'Isn't enough dignity in the world,' Mose said."

–Theodore Strauss, Moonrise (1946)

[starlady]

I talk to things kind of a lot but I mostly don't name them, for some reason that strikes me as weird. I did name cars back when I was using ones that belonged to my immediate family.

[sine_nomine]

I am so confused. You are someone who sees, and works with, energy. They definitely missed each other, but how is that anthropomorphic? You recognized a state of being.

Same reason various things in my house feel better near each other, and why figuring out where something wants to live can take a while.

[madgastronomer]

Attribution of human motivations, characteristics, or behaviors to "inanimate" objects or processes is one of the definitions of anthropomorphism. How is this not that?

ETA: I mean, obviously I think it's also just true. But under materialist definitions and notions.

[sine_nomine]

Because your definition (rightly) makes note of assigning "human" characteristics, and all things have energy. What is inherently human about like energy calling to like?

[madgastronomer]

"Missing" is an emotion, not an energy. While animals other than humans can miss people, animals and places, it doesn't say "uniquely" human. Besides, the entire concept of anthropomorphization is a materialist idea, and does not grant the notion of "energy".

[elisem]

"Missing" is an emotion, not an energy.

I was about to say this.

[madgastronomer]

Emotions carry energy with them, and they can change the flavor of energy from a person feeling them, but that's not the same thing.

[sine_nomine]

Good point ((as is everything you have said; you are getting me to ponder!)

[elisem]

like energy calling to like

Oh, now, to me, that's a different (and also interesting) thing. Possibly there is something about the word "calling" that assigns intent, in some meanings, and doesn't in others. (Is the fire alarm calling me? Well, actually, if the fire alarm was trying to call me, it did not succeed, back when I worked at MPR and was left in the building during a fire drill. I couldn't hear it.)

[pameladean]

I do it to a ridiculous degree. I'm filling up my weekly pillboxes and I shake a bunch of pills out into my hand and when I'm done doling them out into their little compartments, there is one left, so I put it back in the bottle. Is it relieved or did it want to go with its friends?

I threaten recalcitrant and uncooperative appliances and utensils too, but then I think that if I'm in a fairy tale, this is bad strategy and it's better to treat them kindly.

This is the spillover of various narrative habits ingrained over many years. And these are also quite weird stress reactions, I recognize that. Stupid pandemic. Stupid climate change.

I am not sorry to make an enemy of the pandemic or the climate change, if they happen to understand this. But mostly I'd rather not make enemies of inanimate objects.

P.

[kaberett]

Bike gets threats. Wheelchairs and mass spectrometers get sweet-talking.

[elisem]

Bike gets threats. Wheelchairs and mass spectrometers get sweet-talking.

As we used to say, I am delight!

[kellan_the_tabby]

As I sat outside the town's behavioral health offices, whiling away the time after my therapy appointment, waiting for my roommate to be done with theirs, & attempting to verbally (& occasionally loudly) coerce the wire to do what _I_ wanted it to do instead of what _it_ thought was appropriate, I contemplated something similar.

... although come to think of it, it might have been more along the lines of 'how worried are the nice mental health professionals going to be about me having long, sweary conversations with recalcitrant inanimate objects'.

(I was all ready to say, in skeptical tones, "But don't _you_ swear at your craft materials? ... you don't CRAFT? What do you DO?")

[athenais]

No, I don't. I am convinced any animal can understand me, though, so I talk to them as if it were so.