Recently I have discovered this inexplicable and yet undeniable tendancy to anthropomorphise everything. (Not Everything2, this place has a life and a growth of it's own and any anthropomorphising is only natural!) My alarm clock looks at me smugly, when I wake in the morning 7 minutes exactly before it rings... I capitalise the First person,personal pronoun I because it feels lonely (*shudder* what does that say about the hidden depths of my psyche?) and worst of all I get shocked and sometimes angry looks at work for talking to (or swearing at) the PC for being an obdurate lump of junk.

I find this quite disturbing.... I used to be a rational, sane, stable adolescent (see Oxymoron).. now I give things personalities!

On a more serious note, I believe that the anthropomorphisation of everyday objects is perfectly natural. It simply shows an active imagination and a desire to shape the world of perceptions to something slightly less austere.

It once seemed to me that the tendancy to anthropomorphisation could best be summed up in the apparant arranging of everyday objects in the environment--buildings, shadows on walls, objects seen in perspective, but all perfectly natural--into faces.

Many reports of those who injest themselves with psychodelics, both for recreation, and religious purposes purposes, suggest that the vision of the face of God may not be an uncommon experience.

I'm not sure I would use the phrase desire to shape the world, as sAnTa above does, rather it seems to me that, on the face of it, this is the active imagination striving to see itself in the world--and having little choice about it.

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