That’s worded poorly; let me explain.
I know someone who I’ve discovered does not like patterned clothing on himself or his family, because “they are symbols of other religions trying to influence us”.
I do not know this person well enough to ask just what religion HE is so stuck on that believes this, but I’m curious as hell.
Does this ring a bell to anyone?
Islam is not big on graven images, but I suspect this is not the answer to your question.
Hehe, I wouldn’t think so, but who knows. I know they’ve been part of most of the churches in their area, which aren’t many, but spanning from Quaker to Baptist, so I’m thinking likely not Islam. It’s just…odd.
It sounds to me more like a psychological quirk than a religious one.
Entirely possible. He is moving his family to Montana because God told him to, so…he’s obviously got a special relationship going on there.
Hm…Quaker, Mennonite or Amish? I know Amish women don’t wear patterned clothing. Apparently they are among certain Christian groups called “plain people.” I’ve always understood it to be related to humility and not calling attention to oneself rather than a fear of oppression through symbols, though.
Could be he’s just nuts, of course ;).
Mennonites often have patterned clothing, usually flowers.
Slight hijack:
A friend was showing me a photo album of her Mennonite relatives. In one, a bunch of women were sitting together, wearing their long dresses and bonnets. One was playing a Strat.
Awesome! :p:p
I was thinking, too, maybe it was a Friends thing; really do not know and just wondered if it was his own personal hanguup or if he was taught that somewhere. Seems an odd thing to make up all on one’s own, but…
At some level, I’m going to go with “psychological quirk” theory, except that it’s more common than that, so maybe not exactly a “quirk”. After all, so many peoples’ need for religion is so strong that if they didn’t have it, they’d have to invent it. Which quite probably is exactly why we have religion.
It’s a nearly-uniquely human quirk that we have a strong ability to associate symbols with real-world objects (nouns), actions (verbs), and attributes (adjectives, adverbs). That is exactly what our use of language is all about. This works for words (spoken), visual representation (written words), and all manner of other signs and marks (symbols). We associate the symbols with the things they stand for.
Sometimes, and more so for some people than others, there is a tendency to confuse the symbols with the things they actually stand for, and react to the symbol as we would react to the actual thing. The more a symbol is associated with a thing, and the stronger reaction we have to a thing, then the stronger reaction we have to the symbol as well. Clear modern example in Western thought: Our reaction to the swastika (which in fact has been in the news and on this board lately).
Religions are heavily inbued with symbols (some more so than others). The Catholic religion, ISTM, is very heavily into symbolism. Other Christian churches also to varying degrees, and all other religions too, to whatever extent. And there is a tendency to see your own symbols as very good, and others’ symbols as evil. Witness the chronic ranting about the Proctor & Gamble “man in the moon” logo, for example. The more fundamentalist-thinking people are the most likely to do this.
Political ideologues also commonly think like this. In the days of the anti-Vietnam-war peace movements, for example, the “peace symbol” was seen by right-wing political ideologues as a Communist symbol, the very presence and sight of which would capture the minds of our youth and brainwash them towards the ends of the gleeful godless Communists (well, the fluoridated water helped too).
There is evidence that other animals do this too, to a lesser extent. There have been all those animal-language experiments that taught some rudimentary language skills to chimps, gorillas, dolphins, sea lions, and parrots. There was one study I heard of with raccoons, who instinctively wash their food in rivers before eating. Some raccoons were taught to accept tokens for certain behaviors, which could later be exchanged for food. When they got the food, they washed it. But after a while, they began washing their tokens too. This is a non-human example of animals starting to treat their symbols like the real thing that those symbols stand for. (ETA: This came from a book called “How Animals Misbehave”, IIRC, but I don’t know the author off-hand. Maybe I can find it Real Soon Now.)
That’s pretty cool, Senegold. I might have to find that book, too!
Just googled it myself, can’t find it. I heard of it from an animal behaviorist professor, circa 1984. Maybe it was some academic book that you would only find in a psychology research library. (Maybe it wasn’t even a book. Maybe just a published paper in a journal?) I don’t know who the author was, but it was some animal behaviorist.
You can google How Animals Misbehave to find various hits on the subject, though. And you can certainly find lots of stuff about all those animal language projects. (I was an assistant on the dolphin language project for a few years, 1981-1984.)
Will certainly look! Had a friend, once upon a time, who worked down at DRC in Key West and loved loved it. Interesting stuff for sure.
This MIGHT be it. It’s an article, not a book.
The Misbehavior of Organisms (PDF) by Keller and Marian Breland. Something resembling the raccoon story is on the second page, half-way down the first column.
The (NJ) Quakers that I’ve met do not have any distinctive dress or seem to have any problem with secular imagery, at least not any more than your random Presbyterian or Greek Orthodox would.
I know some Amish and Mennonite people and neither of these groups are monolithic. For example, the Old Order Amish of Lancaster, PA have different practices than the Beachy Amish of Virginia. There are independent churches as well as many conferences (groupings of churches that sort-of form a denomination more or less) I believe some Amish and Mennonites do have problems with patterned clothing, but I understand that it is based more around the humility aspect than a belief that symbols hold inherent magickal, occultic, or Satanic power.
Amish men often will not wear belts (they prefer suspenders), or coats with lapels.
Have you looked at the DRC web site? It has pages overviewing some of their research projects.
Here’s another place: The Dolphin Institute in Honolulu, which evolved out of the Kewalo Basin Marine Mammal Laboratory. One of the pages on that site gives an extensive list of publications. Scroll down a bit to find these:
(and click on those to see the full abstracts). Those were the projects going on when I was there.
I think Catholicism wins the prize: icons & stained glass windows, holy water, incense, elaborate uniforms for the Pope, bishops, priests & nuns, crucifixes, rosary beads, parading the lifted Bible down the aisle, crossing one’s self in prayer, copious amounts of ritual in preparing communion, candles, grottos, Lent diet, etc…
Actually, you reminded me of something I saw once walking in downtown Cleveland. A woman near me was wearing a cloth overcoat which had the names *Allah *and *Muhammad *repeated over and over again over its entire surface, in square Kufic script. Each of the names was shaped into a square about 6" on a side. Square Kufic is such an abstract-looking pattern, a person who doesn’t read Arabic could look at it for a million years and never guess that it’s writing. When I went up to her and told her what her coat said, she was so surprised she didn’t know what to say. She wasn’t Muslim. I think she said she got it from Penney’s (not sure if I remember that right). That was over 20 years ago. I’ve always wondered who sneaked an Islamic message into an American department store, totally under the radar.
Maybe he is a Vampyre -
In the Terry Pratchett Diskworld novel Carpe Jugulum
the progressive vampyre Count Magpyr has trained his brood to tolerate the holy symbols of many faiths, using flash cards and drills.
When the vampyres are backed into a corner, they revert to type (vampires) and suddenly discover that all those helpful drills and cards enable them to recognise holy symbols everywhere they see them, in every random assortment of lines and shapes. This ends badly for the bloodsuckers.
