Reflecting Ourselves

Leave a comment

There once was an old man from New Hampshire. No, this isn’t a limerick. He was famous enough to get his face on the state quarter, back when they were doing that state quarter thing. Then he fell. The Old Man of the Mountain was no more. We like to see ourselves in stone. On a trip with my wife and a couple of friends in my post-grad days in Edinburgh, we were driving around the Isle of Skye. The largest of the Inner Hebrides, the island has a mysterious natural beauty. One of the most famous monuments on Skye is the Old Man of Storr. Postcards always show it to be a rock pillar jutting up by itself at the base of a mountain. As we approached the old man from the north, I got the joke. My friends still dispute it, but if you look at the mountain crest above the pillar, it forms a perfect profile of an old man’s face. Then what is the rock pillar? It’s just the right distance from the old man’s face to be, well, you get the picture. I’m convinced that those from Skye laugh at all the tourists taking a picture of the old man’s naughty parts.

The technical term, as I’ve discussed before, for seeing that which isn’t really there is pareidolia. Some people call it matrixing. Our brains, wired to see other people, often see them where they don’t exist. The Old Man of the Mountain formed a passable human face before the rock face collapsed in 2003. This past week I read an article in the Washington Post of the collapse of Duckbill, a rock formation in Oregon’s Cape Kiwanda State Natural Area. Like many cases of pareidolia, this rock pillar was only seen as a duck by those whose brains make the connection. People like to go see that sort of thing. It makes us feel less alone.

Do you see it?

Do you see it?

The article by Cleve R. Wootson Jr., however, points out that Duckbill didn’t jump. He was pushed. A group of eight guys, caught on video, rocked the pillar until it toppled. This is why we can’t have nice things. The deliberate destruction of monuments is a crime, and the culprits are being sought. Make Way for Ducklings, the Robert McCloskey children’s classic, was cast in bronze in Boston’s Public Garden. In 2009 vandals stole one of the ducklings, which was quickly replaced. It’s difficult to understand the mentality of those who wish to destroy our duckbilled friends. Yes, Duckbill was only rock. No, I never had the chance to see it. As long as the Old Man of Storr lies recumbent in the Scottish highlands, however, we will have grounds to wonder.

Measuring Religion

Leave a comment

How do you measure the religiosity of a people? While the boundaries of the United States are somewhat porous, internally, we nevertheless still consist of somewhat self-governing states. One measure of religious belief is to take your metrics by state. Of course, some people—perhaps many—owe their state of residence to their work and not their natural choice. You’re judged by the company you keep, regardless. So when the New Jersey Star-Ledger ran a front page piece about religion in the Garden State last week, I was intrigued. I do spend quite a few of my waking hours in the neighboring New York, but for statistical purposes (and taxes and tuition) I’m considered a New Jerseyan. So what’s the damage?

IMG_2702

The story is actually about a Pew survey undertaken last year. New Jersey, it seems, ranks 19th from the top when it comes to religious states. Ranging from Alabama as the most religious to New Hampshire as the least, the measures of devotion are four: do you attend worship, do you pray frequently, do you believe in God, and do you profess yourself religious? Each of these questions provides its own set of problems when it comes to being an actual measure of someone’s commitment to religion. I maintain, as I often declare on this blog, that religion is one of those non-quantifiable aspects of life. It cannot be measured accurately because the tangibles are immeasurable. Deep commitment may be found among those who don’t frequently attend worship. What if your religion is a very private affair? And besides, doesn’t all of this measuring sound like a locker room contest?

As a nation, we spend a lot of time worrying about how religious we are or aren’t. Since such events as presidential elections have hinged on candidates’ piety since I’ve been old enough to vote, that’s understandable, I suppose. Nevertheless, such surveys are about surface belief. I recall in college being told that if your living space didn’t have enough evidence to convict you, you weren’t really religious at all. I know I’ve got quite a few Bibles laying around, and although we rent, we do have some religious artwork on our walls and mantle. I blog about religion daily. Still, I wonder where I might fall on some survey designed to tell me how religious I am. Such things can’t be measured with surveys, but in situations where the stakes are so high, we will do what we can to understand the imponderable.