I WANT TO MAKE YOU HIGHER –

Oct. 16, 2021 – Our belief that complicated psychological ambitions might be accomplished through the possession of an object is the distinctive and poignant feature of our age. In our reverence for the transformative capacity of material things, we are a little like the Bakongo or Songye peoples of the Congo Basin, who rely on what anthropologists know as fetish objects, small wooden figures (often traded for very high sums) which are thought to be able to oversee major interventions in daily life: to sort out troubled relationships, help adolescents on the journey to adulthood, lift the moods of the downcast or dissolve family tensions. Like the Bakongos or Songyes, we too hope that our fetish objects will have success in transforming complex and elusive bits of our internal functioning: a soap might bring an end to anxiety, a bag could assist one in recovering hope, a watch could unblock a relationship with a wary child. Almost all religions have in some way made use of material objects. They’ve invested in particular sorts of furniture, clothes, buildings, statues and images – and seen these as adjuncts to their spiritual mission. But this has not been without controversy within the religions themselves. Reliance on material forms has intermittently come under fire from a minority of believers who have argued that spiritual transformations should only ever require spiritual means; material objects being wholly redundant to the project of healing the soul.

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