Do you think inanimate objects are alive?

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Me too! That was my favorite movie when I was little.

I have always felt that objects were alive in a way. I'd get upset whenever someone threw one away, threw it on the ground, or called it stupid, junk, etc. It's like that. When I am mad or yell at an object (such as my ipod when it stopped working for a short while) I feel sorry for it later and say sorry.

I'm glad I'm not alone in thinking this. I remember when I got these plastic animal toys, my sister wanted to see them and I remembered that she didn't like a specific animal, so I hid the toy of that animal because I was afraid she would say bad things about it and make it feel bad. But I also felt bad for having to hide it too. I also remember a time when I went outside in a storm and saw a balloon that had blown up against a tree. I quickly brought inside and I felt that it was lucky to have gotten caught where I could see/reach it, and I remember wondering about the adventures it had had as it had obviously been let go and then blew by my house in the storm. I kept that balloon until it ran completely out of air, and even then I felt sad that it got thrown away. I never really told anyone about these things except for my sister because she understood, and people would sometimes get angry at me if I objected to them throwing away or mistreating an object.

Like some others have said here, I feel really close to objects. My stuffed animals have names and personalities, and unlike with people I know that they will never hurt or insult me or judge me for the way I am. Whenever a toy of mine gets broken, I do my best to fix it and even if I can't I still keep it. I have a lot of small plastic cats and two of them got chewed up really bad by my pets but I still keep them beside all the others like I feel the others will take care of them. I know the objects can't really feel, but I can't help thinking that they do, so I always try to treat them carefully.

I also get attached to cars and devices and other objects besides toys-I named my computer and ipod and talk to them when no one else is around. I'm sure people would think that is really weird, but I see it as not much different from talking to yourself, only you are talking to something.

Also (yes, I'm aware that I'm rambling-I can't help it! xD) two things happened today and yesterday that relate to this. Last night the internet on my computer stopped working (though later it turned out it was the internet in our house that was the problem, not the computer) and I was so worried something was wrong with my computer I started crying (this is coming from someone who barely ever cries) because I was worried about the computer. Not the internet-not anything I was doing on the computer, but the computer itself. I was afraid there might be some problem with it and I stayed up really late worrying. I was so relieved that the problem didn't have anything to do with the computer itself-I love my computer, it makes me calm and happy when I'm around it and it (along with my other objects) is a very comforting thing to see. It's hard to explain why I feel so close to an object, like a friend, but it's good to know there are others who feel this way.

The other thing that happened was with my stuffed animals. When I was little I tried so hard to give them equal attention but I don't do that so much anymore (I do give them company of other stuffed animals though) but I still feel like they have feelings. I love organizing things, so certain types of stuffed animals are in certain places. I have a hammock thingy near the ceiling which is where I put my (store-bought) Pokemon stuffed animals. There is room for a lot more and other areas are overcrowded but I feel like only the Pokemon ones should go there and I shouldn't move the others because they belong in their own special places. I also have a place for stuffed animals I have made myself. One of them, the one I'm most proud of, is a stuffed animal of Scyther (a Pokemon). Since my parents really liked it and it can't stand up on its own they bought me this stand thingy to put it on and put it on my dresser. Recently though, no matter what I do I can't get it to stop looking like its staring sadly up at the hammock where the store bought Pokemon stuffed animals are. Despite the fact that I know better, he seems so sad, and it's been bothering me lately and making me feel sad when I look at the stuffed animals. I might move him up there with the others soon. I know a lot of people would say I care too much about objects, but if I didn't care they really wouldn't have much of a point to me. And I like caring about them because even though it does make me feel a bit sad sometimes, the majority of the time they make me happier.

I'll stop before I get any more carried away than I already have.

Only when I trip over things. I get mad, feel hostile and swear at the inanimate obstacle. This is irrational and very silly, but it is my reptilian brain at work.

ruveyn

Do you think inanimate objects are alive?

Absolutely! Some more than others though...
A rock, for instance, seems to me to have a great deal more personality than an empty plastic soda container. And an animal is way more alive than a rock.

On an absolute non-local level, however, we're all made of the same stuff and everything resonates and communicates with everything else. Distinctions between life and non-life, to me, are basically useless from a non-linear perspective.

When I was young, I was convinced that all of my stuffed animals had feelings and were really alive. I had at least a hundred of them and I worked out a complicated system so that each was treated fairly and shown love. I would rotate 2-3 of them into my bed every night and when I slept I even tried to rotate snuggling time with them. I still have all of my stuffed animals today as I still cannot bear to part with them and sometimes I even feel a twinge of guilt that they are packed away in boxes. I also name all of my cars and hate to sell them (I still have my first car). I never realized that these feelings towards inanimate objects could be related to being an Aspie, so this thread has been very enlightening!

Though my common sense says inanimate objects are not alive---I still regard them as having feelings. I have always done this. When I was a child I used to roam through the garbage and dig out certain things---broken toys, etc. and bring them back into the house. I still do it---and I am 44 years old.

When I was in junior high school I couldn't find my Christmas stocking that I had since I was little---and I mourned over it. At school it was about all I could think about. Finally, the stocking turned up.

But I am still like that. Is this an Asperger's thing? I think I read about it once, but I can't remember for sure how they worded it on this. I am interested to know.

Oh, ABSOLUTELY!!

Even to this day I think so. Though my perception doesn't tell me that inanimate objects are "alive" per-sa, but rather that they have a will, and the power to implement that will to manifest in maliscious ways towards me, especially when I am feeling at my lowest.

My car for example, which I guess I have exaserbated this situation by personifying it with a name and personality. Th car itself is an old Rover Metro C. So old it has a manual choke. Her name is Betty Blue, or BB for short, named partly for her similarity to "The Betty" vessel from Alien Resurrection, and partly coz she's blue.

Now due t9o the fact that she was manufactured in 1993, you can imagine she has a few infrequent teething problems and a couple of more major problems that has caused me much exhasperation due to the fact that she is my car, and my first car at that. I rfely on her for my freedom and transportation.

Anyway, during the most recent problems, I remember she wouldn't start and I actually said out loud "Betty, if you don't start I swear to god I'm taking you down the crushers".

And she immediately fired up. hehehe.

But with all this said, yes I do believe at times, with the aid of my wonderful paranoia, that inanimate objects are more than they appear. Not however necessarily alive though.

Being an adult can certainly be kind of a drag, eh?

Of course I did! But even now, I take care of and never abuse any kind of items or equipment, and waste nothing. And in return, they have always operated as asked.

It is hard to throw anything away...but then one never needs for anything.

z

You expressed this perfectly; my thoughts exactly!

Anyway...

When I was a child, I felt sorry for the toys I didn´t play with much. I also felt sorry for the clothes I didn´t wear much, and sometimes I would try to wear them to make them feel better. I also used to think that every doll I owned was a real person somewhere. I thought that was what made us live, that someone somewhere was controlling us; if I felt lonely and my life was boring, I imagined myself as a discarded doll on some girl´s shelf somewhere. I felt obligated to make up nice lives for my dolls, so they wouldn´t be sad like me. (I did this mostly through my imagination, or I took them places).

As an adult, I see some of these tendencies, though not as much. Most big things that I rely on- (car, computer)- have had some kind of live essence for me. If an appliance doesn´t work well, or breaks a lot, I get offended, and think of it as being "ornery" or "moody". If it works well for me, I love it, and I think of it as being "dedicated". I always have been a little superstitious about things, too.

YESSS!! FINALLY!
I think Toy Story had alot to blame for the toys part, but that was just a 'I wonder if...' thing.
However I used to and still have a problem with throwing some things away due to thinking they may have feelings, even stupid little pieces of junk or paper! I hate changing cars (I get used to them obviously) and because I see all cars as having faces in their lights and numberplates and they all have personalities, some looke evil, some look gentle etc and I feel getting rid of them may upset them because we don't want them any more. I feel sorry for the things I throw away and still cannot sell things, I find it so much easier to donate to charity shops rather than post away to someone new. I used to photograph packages and letters I sent to my German penfriend for Chrissakes. WEIRD OR WHAT
I have thought about this alot, how strange it is

ME TOO!

I have a doll named Brenda I consider her my girlfriend. I watch TV and movies with her. Her favorite TV shows are Family Guy, and American dad her favorite movie is Dedication
I am in love with her and she is very much alive to me.

I work in antiques... there is a living history to things as they persevere, characteristics they take on... almost a personality.


M.

Hello. I'm not sure if this is the place to write this, but this post is the first one I have ever read from WrongPlanet, and it made me seriously think I might have Aspergers. I have always displayed practically all the traits, but they have never affected how I act physically, just the way I think about things, and so I assumed that I must just have traces of it but not the full thing.

But then today, my week-old umbrella broke, and I was walking around with the handle in one hand and the rest in the other, and I told my friend that "if I were anyone else, I would seriously consider returning this umbrella to the store, but of course I'm not going to do that because I don't want to make it feel bad, and because then all of that effort 'breaking it in' would have been for nothing".

My friend laughed and said he wondered what actually went through my head at times like these, and although I had tried to explain my position of "thinking to things" several times to him, I used the occasion to try again. I told him the following:

"Ok, take this umbrella handle. Hold on to it. Now seriously consider for a moment that it can hear you think. Imagine that it truly does have thoughts of its own. Imagine that it also contains all of the thoughts which I have imparted to it. It completely changes the things you want to think about, doesn't it? You don't want to think, 'oh, what a crappy umbrella, it broke', because you feel like you are insulting it. You know, without it having to react at all, that it feels insulted, and so you decide not to think of it as a crappy umbrella anymore. Now imagine that everything you see before you has just this same sentience. That's why I don't want to return it to the shop."

He seemed almost able to sympathise with this, and he said that he did feel that way about certain buildings - in that he often felt like he could read the building's thoughts and it could read his. But he had never felt this way about an umbrella, or clothes, or food, or a soft toy, or other mundane items that he dealt with on an every day basis.

He then proceeded to question me about whether I treated a wall or a brick as a single entity, or a word or a letter, and I realised quite miraculously that whichever object I focused on, even if it was a subset of a bigger object, I assigned that object sentience, and that shortly after forgetting that object, its sentience ceased to bother me. Even my own hands seem to have a sentience of their own, particularly when they play the piano or something. All of a sudden, I became acutely aware of just how many potential objects there were in the immediate vicinity, and it felt for a moment as if the whole world was listening.

I completely agree with all the comments so far - I hate letting things go, especially to the rubbish bin. But I also "think to things" a lot when they are brand new. I always want to justify all of my thoughts to a new object, because there is no way it will understand me straight away. I have no need to justify my thoughts to objects which are 'used to' me, and so after wearing a new shirt or using a new umbrella about half a dozen times, I just assimilate with it, and don't have to treat it so much as a separate entity any more. This is what makes it so hard for me to let things go - because they have either become an integral part of me, or haven't yet had the chance to, and the loss of either of these things would be dreadful.

Anyway, upon getting home, I googled "talking to inanimate objects", to see if I was not alone, and came up with nothing better than a couple of Yahoos saying they liked to yell at their computer (go figure - who doesn't?), so I then tried "thinking to objects", and although that is not strictly the title of this forum, I was led here, and all of the things that everyone does here resonated with me so strongly that I was convinced to create an account. I love the Brave Little Toaster!

Obviously this wasn't completely out of the blue - I have always suspected that I have at least mild Aspergers, if for no other reason than that I have always been considered a "gifted/"genius"" child, and that I like to do things like memorising pi, and singing the alphabet backwards, but that's just because I can, and because I find it amazing fun.

Then recently I discovered the concept of "Synesthesia", which you all probably already know of I suppose, as assigning personalities or colours etc. to things, and I had such a fantastic time comparing my versions of letters to the statistical norms - my 'a' is definitely red, for example, but there is no way that my 'e's are yellow - although I only 'feel' the colours of various letters and numbers etc., and don't actually experience what you would call 'real' synesthesia. So I still thought I probably didn't have Aspergers, but it was enough for me to go out and buy Daniel Tammet's book, though I haven't read it yet.

But this action of assigning sentience to inanimate objects is such a crucial and irreversible part of the way I think, that, if it truly is a trait of people with Aspergers, I can see no alternative. I have always felt that nobody else out there thinks the way I do, and frankly having Aspergers would explain a lot. I'm just not too sure, because I have always been told that people with Aspergers don't understand metaphors/analogies, while I thrive on them.

Diagnose me, someone, please!
And if you think I do have Autism or Aspergers or something, I don't suppose you know of a place in New Zealand where I could meet some like-minded souls?
Sorry this is so long. I think I tried to cover too much ground. That's always my weakness.

As a very young kid, I thought that I WAS certain objects, specifically that talking blue chair from Pee Wee's Playhouse.

But not as an adult. I do have an attachment to certain objects but not because I think they have feelings.

As far as I know, projecting thoughts and feelings onto inanimate objects is a sign of schizophrenia.

Yep and it drives everyone nuts... I cant stand to throw a stuffed animal out because i think it has feelings and i start to cry...

This is one of those things about myself that I really don't like. If someone falls over, that's their fault and they need to suck it up. But if I drop my calculator on the floor, aww... poor calculator.

I remember when I was a child I hit my head on the top bunk. My dad spanked the thing to make me feel better but I felt bad about it so I put a band-aid on the spot.