Reality and the Feelings of the Inanimate

[omorka]

I hadn't ripped any Hiatt! How crazy is that?

So I was listening to this, and was reminded of a recent post by quantumduck. I, also, often anthropomorphize objects, to the point of feeling sorry for them. My particular worry, though, is not their breakage or their wearing out, but their abandonment.

In my head, inanimate objects borrow whatever consciousness they have from us, so abandonment is the worst thing that can happen to them - it unreifies them, consigns them to oblivion in a way that their physical destruction doesn't. This shows up in the Toy Story movies, of course - being tortured and disassembled is horrifying, but it doesn't un-do them in the way that being abandoned does.

I suppose it all ends up back in Velveteen Rabbit territory, but that particular system makes things real once and for all. I'm not sure I think it works like that, at least in that the consciousness of things doesn't seem to extend into times and places in which they're not being used. (Maybe "use" for a thing is the proper analogue for "life" in a being?)

What's the correlation between treating objects as beings and treating beings as objects? I think to a certain extent, having a sufficient capacity for empathy automatically demands that it be extended, at least in imagination, to pretty much anything we interact regularly with - the mental exercise of seeing/feeling someone else's perspective becomes so habitual that we do it for things that don't have perspectives of their own. In reverse, then, it seems that someone who didn't have that habit ingrained would be more likely to act as if a being, with feelings and motives of its own, would have no more emotional resonance than a screwdriver. Of course, this links back to the old idea of "delusions of ownership" - you can't own a being in the same way that you can own a thing, but those who are deficient in empathy act as if you could.

Or can you? "Ownership" doesn't describe anything in the real world. There's no way you can tell from physically examining an object who it belongs to. Maybe one way of getting out of our ugly, patriarchal/capitalist ideas of people-ownership is to see object-ownership in terms of relationship. Instead of modeling the relationships between beings on the relationship between a being and an object, model the relationship between being and object on the relationship between two beings. Certainly adopting a functional animism seems like it would lead to a more humane way of dealing with Others, whether human, being, or object.

But then does it take something away from the power and numinousness of Life to treat the non-living as a Thou, rather than an It? Is imitation flattery, or a cheapening?

What happens when an It eventually (inevitably?) becomes a Thou? We already treat our computers like they were marginally conscious; what happens when that becomes objectively true? One problem with allowing an It to become a Thou-Other is that it makes it okay to fear it . . . And then there's the problem of feeling parental about something that isn't one's flesh and blood, writ large when it's not flesh and blood at all.

Hmm. Any thoughts?

Comments

[altamira16.livejournal.com]

Your whole post reminded me of The Ikea Commercial (http://www.aa-pahoehoe.com/ikea/mov/video.html).

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

Becoming emotionally attached to objects makes it difficult to treat them objectively. I remember being a kid and crying when my parents got a new car and got rid of the old one. It was perfectly understandable and completely unreasonable. We already get too attached to non-physical "entities" like nations, races, and ideas, with no end of problems as a result. Do you really want that sort of thing happening over your screwdriver, too?

[moontyger.livejournal.com]

It already does, for me at least, with some objects. I feel guilty throwing things out, even if I don't use them. I always feel terribly sad if I cut my hair, for example, and I know I will feel horribly sad and guilty when I change out my car. I feel the same way when moving, like I am abandoning my previous apartment after all the good times I have had in it.

[omorka.livejournal.com]

Becoming emotionally attached to objects makes it difficult to treat them objectively.

Is this any different from the way it works for beings? I'll admit, I can substitute "beings" for "objects" in the sentence and it doesn't change a darn thing for me.

And I feel much better about being attached to a particular screwdriver than to an abstraction like an ideology. At least I have concrete experiences attached to the screwdriver . . .

[memeslayer.livejournal.com]

No, it's no different. That was the point. Getting emotionally attached to people causes *lots* of problems, and it's only worth it because lots of good comes out of it as well.

I like anthropomorphizing too, but not enough to make a society out of it. I find it interesting that the example of an object to fear that you picked(the computer) is feared because of lack of education, not some innate ability to cause harm. Mysticizing objects is IMHO a step backwards for our collective understanding of the world. I know you're not all that fond of materialist philosophy, but I think we could definitely use some more of it in our everyday lives.

Besides, what is unrequited love going to give us that fear and greed don't?

My 2.3 Cents Worth

[phoenixstarfire.livejournal.com]

My Tarot deck (Fair Maria) gives a crap whether she is being treated as an inanimate object or not. That girl telepaths "read me now" to random people even when none of us are thinking about her. It gets annoying.
In any case, energy boils down to an interconnected system of consciousnesses; the fact that something is not acting sentiently does not mean that it is not sentient. You can talk to a pair of shoes and it will talk back when you speak to it-this is a function of your paying attention, not it becoming suddenly and temporarily aware.
Anyway, I thought you'd be interested to hear that my Tarot deck goes so far as to say "you're reading me wrong, idiot," which is not exactly the way *I* do readings. Hugs!

[briareos.livejournal.com]

Have you thought about the fact that higher level communication depends on a certain amount of empathy. Ok, maybe empathy isn't the word but at the very least, it depends on an assumption that the objects out there that share our own base characteristics (ie humans) think and feel in a similar fashion to ourselves. The ability to predict other's behaviour depends on empathy. IMHO, humans are quite capable of immense cognitive dissonance. Therefore, they are capable of being empathic enough to predict other's behaviour, and yet they can ignore the very thoughts and feelings they have deduced when it comes to acting decently towards other people.

I make this point because I treat people as people because I can empathize with them, and I very rarely anthropomorphize objects. Just as I don't believe in an afterlife because all my thoughts and feelings seem explained by the matter present in my skull, I don't make objects into beings because they do not have the requisite structures. I do, however, talk to cats as if they were small children, and give them much more concern than I do objects. Once an object can suffer (a point which is somewhat ill-defined so far)I can consciously alter my behaviour towards it. It seems to me there's no real reason to adopt animism, unless it is to preserve a sense of wonder at the world rather than to ensure fair treatment.

[moontyger.livejournal.com]

The whole idea of ownership of people is the biggest reason why I am poly. It seems to me that in our culture, we have two words for owning people (well, adults, minors are a whole other issue, but I think that is generally fucked up, too): love and slavery. And I don't think either is right. Using "my" to refer to a lover can just be indicating relationship, not ownership, of course, but other common usages and possessiveness about the beloved really bother me. Really unheathly attitudes towards other people are encouraged and regarded as normal; for example, I think there is something seriously wrong when a culture can regard "Every Breath You Take" as a sweet love song.

Wow!

[quantumduck.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit on something big here! I only felt bad for inanimate things that were lost if it meant that they would, for instance, get caught in the rain and mold. I figured that spending time in servitude to human masters was the last thing that any self respecting stapler or desk lamp wanted to do. Toys? Sure, they loved their kids, but in the long run those children grow up.

That was when I was young. Now, as a parent, I think I'm right there with you on this abandonment issue.

I was deeply touched by "The Brave Little Toaster" because of its use of this theme of abandonment. I loved the film's odd resolution where the child brings childhood things along to college, essentially giving a second life to desk lamps, toasters, etc.

When I went to college I met an old paper folding machine that was hated by its master. The folder was this magnificent 1960's machine with shiny green painted metal parts and an old air compressor that hissed wildly when it ran. The head of the copy dept. at the college said it was broken, so it needed to be used a certain way. She hated it, and wasn't very nice to it. Mostly it sat while humans did the folding. I lubricated the parts, adjusted the old valves, and had it singing in just a day or two. I often wonder what happened to it after I left. It hadn't been loved in a long time when I met it, and I worry it won't be ever again.