Today we're as likely to anthropomorphize the actions of our pets, cars, computers and other gadgets, such as smartphones, we've come to depend on, as we are gods. If a car doesn't start, a computer crashes or you lose important data off your table or phone, its the device somehow conspiring against you. Except of course cars and computers, etc. don't have thoughts or feelings, they are simply objects manufactured by other human beings to serve our needs.
Research has shown that we use similar regions of the brain for thinking about human and non-human objects. Although various other motivations also come into to play. Its helps us to simplify and make sense of complicated entities we don't understand, like computers for instance. In much the way way our ancient ancestors attributed things they didn't understand, like earthquakes, to the anger of the gods.
We're also more likely anthropomorphize something if it appears to have traits similar to those of humans (for example, through human-like movements or physical features such as a face). Research has shown we can attribute agency to abstract shapes moving through a landscape and anthropomorphize that they are either helping or hindering each other.
While car manufacturers have long known that the front of a car symbolises a face and that attribute can can have a significant impact on now a car is perceived and sold. A Lamborghini with a cute face or a VW Beetle with a snarl instead of a smile, is not going to sell well for instance.
So where am I going with all this? I'm not superstitious, I don't believe in the supernatural or that inanimate objects have agency.
Well about ten months ago I won a new pair of walking boots for a letter I wrote about a walk up the Wrekin. So I decided to re-walk that same route in the boots I'd won and send a thank you letter with a picture of myself on the summit in the new boots. Only one problem on the way up I scratched myself on something and ended up spending a week in bed hallucinating that purple piranha were swimming round the bedroom and spent several weeks on powerful antibiotics to get rid of a very nasty case of cellulitis.
Shortly afterwards I struggled with breathless on the Brecon Beacons. Then collapsed trying to set a new personal best on the Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge with dangerously high Blood Pressure that triggered a mild TIA.
So when I went up the Wrekin today to admire the 'Beacon on the Wrekin', I wore an old pair of boots, as wearing technical boots like 'those boots' I'd won would have been overkill for such an easy walk OK? Incidently looking at the previous couple paragraphs they say bad things come in threes, but that's Triaphilia and a whole new blog.