Hood, Bruce - Supersense

The numbers were such that one had to simply go with the silent majority. There was no turning back. Whenever a whisper emerged in the crowd, a disembodied voice from some unseen church authority reprimanded and commanded us with a stern ‘ Silenzio ’. We were expected to maintain a reverential state. However, just as museums tell us, ‘Please do not touch’, it was understandable why visitors wanted to poke their hands through the iron grid to make physical contact with the ancient stone monument behind. Some were engaged in silent prayer as they touched the stone.

It was then that I witnessed something quite disturbing and essentialist in nature. A monk came in and watered the permanent flower arrangements at the front of the tomb. The water from the flowers started to trickle over the ancient stone. What I did not expect, and could not photograph because of the restrictions, was a sudden frenzy in those nearest to this part of the tomb. As if they had been parched beyond thirst by a desert sun, they pressed their faces against the grid trying to lick the water as it dribbled over the Holy Shrine. Fingers wetted by the excess water were licked in an effort to imbibe some of the vital fluid. Water that was probably drawn from an ordinary tap from the municipal supply only minutes earlier had become sacred by contact with the tomb. It was all too bizarre. Admiration and adoration had become essential contamination of ordinary water.

SACRED SOIL

Such essential thinking is at the heart of a business dream of Alan Jenkins and Pat Burke. 42I met them last year on a Dublin chat show, where they were talking about their new business venture, the Auld Sod Export Company. Alan is an elderly, more reserved man and maybe a little too serious, whereas Pat is a much younger, jovial agricultural scientist who enthused about the new product they were selling in the United States: Irish dirt. Not just any old dirt, but true, authentic Irish soil. Alan got the idea when he attended a funeral in Florida and overheard the relatives lamenting that the departed could not be buried in the auld country and that just a little sprinkle of Irish dirt on the coffin would have been a comfort.

Dirt is full of microbes and potential contaminants. US customs and agricultural import restrictions are some of the most stringent in the world, and so the dirt would have to be thoroughly sterilized to remove any potential biohazard. This was Pat’s role in the business – to produce the cleanest dirt in the world. Good enough to eat. It sells at $15 for a twelve-ounce bag, and one elderly New Yorker originally from Galway has ordered $100,000 worth so that he can have his Irish grave in Manhattan. The company is now branching out into shamrocks that can be grown in the United States in Irish dirt in time for the ever-popular St Patrick’s Day celebrations. The belief is that somewhere in what must be the most sterile soil on earth the essence of Ireland remains. With such potential for psychological essentialism at work in the large expatriate Irish American community. Alan and Pat may have struck pay dirt.

During the Second World War, Germany invaded Yugoslavia, and the royal family fled to exile in London. King Peter II, the last king of Yugoslavia, married Princess Alexandra of Greece in 1944, and they were expecting their first son the following year. Anxious about the heir to the throne not being born in his homeland, King Peter II made a special request to Winston Churchill. For a single day in the summer of 1945, the British prime minister, Sir Winston Churchill, conceded room 212 of Claridge’s Hotel in Brook Street, London, over to Yugoslavia so that Prince Alexander could be born in Yugoslav territory. A pot of Serbian soil was placed under his bed to add the essential ingredient to a political decision. 43

And how did our vampire from the beginning of this chapter move around and remain safe during the daylight hours? By travelling in coffins that contained the dirt from his native Transylvania, of course.

WHAT NEXT?

In this chapter we examined ways in which humans can experience or seek out an intimate connection with significant others supported by beliefs that they can absorb another person’s qualities. This experience can be either positive or negative depending on the properties that we believe we may incorporate. While biological contamination through viruses and microbial infection is a real mode of transference between individuals, we also believe that other non-physical properties such as vitality, morality, and even identity can similarly be transferred as if they were physical entities. Such beliefs may be based on a naturally developing notion of essences we infer when thinking about other individuals. I think these beliefs are a natural product of the way that we think about other people.

Essential reasoning comes from the gut as much as it comes from the mind. That’s because it’s based on intuitive feelings that stir the emotions.

Emotions are the fuel that fires the decisions we make. Without emotion, our decisions are cold and without feeling. This may be fine when choosing which newspaper to buy or socks to wear, but when it comes down to decisions about other people, emotions are important guides to how we think. If these people are significant others in our lives with whom we share some degree of interpersonal commitment, then emotions are essential – in that the relationship must have some emotional component to be significant and in that it is easier to understand the experience of emotion as coming from some inner truth about the person with whom we feel connected.

If our emotions towards others are based on essentialist reasoning, we should be able to demonstrate that the principles of essential contamination apply as well. Personal possessions, items of clothing, and former dwellings of significant others will take on something of the previous owner. In other words, we will start to treat inanimate things and objects as if they are tainted by the essence of significant others towards whom we hold some emotional stance. To do so, we have to see that other person as a unique individual.

CHAPTER EIGHT

WHY DO TRAVELLING SALESMEN SLEEP WITH TEDDY BEARS?

WHEN I LEARNED that SuperSense was to be published, one of the people I wanted to tell was Steve Bransgrove. Four years ago, I had wandered into Steve’s tiny shop on a cobbled street in the ancient nearby Somerset market town of Frome. Steve Vee Bransgrove Collectables was an Aladdin’s cave of memorabilia with items from bygone times such as postcards, tin toys, comics, medicine boxes, and all manner of common objects of no obvious worth. But people would pay good money for them, toys in particular. The objects were so evocative. If you closed your eyes, you could smell the decades pass you by. Literally, the shop had a wonderful aroma of the past, laced with the scent of Steve’s hand-rolled tobacco.

I remember the day I became addicted. I had casually flicked through some picture postcards in a box and discovered one of Tommy ‘Twinkle Toes’ Jacobsen, the armless pianist. The publicity shot showed a jovial moustached man wearing a black tuxedo carefully balanced at a piano playing it with his bare feet! I was amazed that there was once a time when individuals like Twinkle Toes were considered celebrities. I bought the card, and that was the beginning of my brief collecting obsession. Over the next couple of years, I would visit Steve’s shop regularly. At first it was postcards from vaudeville and freak shows. Then for some reason I expanded into black-and-white postcards of beautiful 1930s’ movie starlets. Often on my visits to Steve’s shop I had no intention to buy, but we would chat about collecting and the people (mostly men in his experience) who follow this strange pastime. On each visit I invariably left with yet another small addition to my collection.