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. With Magical thinking and the stuff we value
I was pleased to see somebody pick up on the Andrew Andrew stuff at the end of Buying In, and relate it to magical thinking. That post, on the Psychology Today blog of Matthew Hutson, led me to his article on the subject of magical thinking. Since I’m away from home and I’m going to be a little busy today, I point you to that article if you’re looking for something to read. It may be a bit long to read online, but here’s one bit of interest relating to magical thinking and material culture:
To some, John Lennon’s piano is sacred. Most married people consider their wedding rings sacred. Kids with no notion of sanctity will bust a lung wailing over their lost blanky. Personal investment in inanimate objects might delicately be called sentimentality, but what else is it if not magical thinking? There’s some invisible meaning attached to these things: an essence. A wedding ring or a childhood blanket could be replaced by identical or near-identical ones, but those impostors just wouldn’t be the same.
What makes something sacred is not its material makeup but its unique history. And whatever causes us to value essence over appearance becomes apparent at an early age. Psychologists Bruce Hood at Bristol University and Paul Bloom at Yale convinced kids ages 3 to 6 that they’d constructed a “copying machine.” The kids were fine taking home a copy of a piece of precious metal produced by the machine, but not so with a clone of one of Queen Elizabeth II’s spoons—they wanted the original.
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Reader Comments
Rob, am intrigued by this magical thinking post. Never thought about it before.
“What makes something sacred is not its material makeup but its unique history.”
You, your book, your ideas — trying to figure out how and if it relates to me. You say everyone is affected and you’re probably right. How important is it to me, or anyone else, to feel or know that they are or that they are not like everyone else?
What makes something sacred is it’s unique history. Gotta think about that more Rob.
Not quite registering as true. Does it for you?
best,
bonnie
Richmond, VA
USA
“How important is it to me, or anyone else, to feel or know that they are or that they are not like everyone else?” That’s a big question! And one only you can answer, if you know what I mean.
I think there is at least some truth to the “unique history” argument. If I think about what I’d grab before the hurricane hit or whatever, most of it would be stuff that has a unique history to me, at least. (I guess I would stress more the history of the object in relation the individual’s life — the value of my wedding ring to me has nothing to do with its market value as an object, etc.) And less personally, there’s certainly no question that “John Lennon’s piano” has a kind of value (sacred or not I don’t know) that “exactly like John Lennon’s piano” lacks, and that’s because of the former’s unique history … right?
Hi Bonnie and Rob,
If you want to learn more about such magical thinking then please check out the site and the forthcoming book.. some very nice comments.
Best
Bruce
http://www.brucemhood.com
Thanks for passing along the link to your web site, Bruce. I’ll head right over there and tell you to check out my book.