Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away Opens in China 18 Years After Its Original Release: See Beautiful New Posters for the Film

in Animation, Film | June 17th, 2019

Ani­ma­tion fans all over the world love the films of Japan­ese ani­ma­tor Hayao Miyaza­ki, but ani­ma­tion fans in Chi­na have nev­er, until very recent­ly, been able to see them on the big screen. Part of the prob­lem has to do with the sen­si­tiv­i­ty of Chi­nese author­i­ties to what sort of media enters the coun­try — espe­cial­ly media from a coun­try like Japan, with which Chi­na has not always seen eye to eye. “Miyaza­ki films did not open the­atri­cal­ly in Chi­na until a re-release of My Neigh­bor Totoro in Decem­ber 2018,” writes Indiewire’s Zack Scharf, “one sign that the rela­tion­ship between Japan and Chi­na is get­ting less tense.”

Miyaza­k­i’s Stu­dio Ghi­b­li has pro­duced few char­ac­ters as win­ning as Totoro — the out­sized guardian of the for­est who resem­bles a cross between a cat, an owl, and maybe a bear — and his win­ning over of Chi­na’s cen­sors seemed to have opened the gates to the Mid­dle King­dom for the rest of Miyaza­k­i’s beloved fil­mog­ra­phy. “The Totoro release was a huge box office suc­cess with more than $26 mil­lion,” writes Scharf, “and Spir­it­ed Away is wide­ly expect­ed to per­form even bet­ter giv­en its endur­ing pop­u­lar­i­ty.” Hav­ing opened in Japan back in 2001 as 千と千尋の神隠し, or “The Spir­it­ing-Away of Sen and Chi­hi­ro,” it stands not only as the top-gross­ing film of all time at the Japan­ese box office, but one of the sev­er­al undis­put­ed mas­ter­pieces among Miyaza­k­i’s works.

Spir­it­ed Away tells the sto­ry of a ten-year-old girl who, lost in an aban­doned amuse­ment park, finds her way into a par­al­lel world pop­u­lat­ed with the count­less spir­it crea­tures enu­mer­at­ed in the Japan­ese folk reli­gion of shin­to — which, as revealed in Wise­crack­’s video essay “The Phi­los­o­phy of Hayao Miyaza­ki,” fig­ures heav­i­ly into some, and per­haps all of the mas­ter’s work. As dis­pleas­ing as the pres­ence of reli­gion, let alone a Japan­ese reli­gion, may long have been to Chi­nese high­er-ups, the Chi­nese pub­lic’s enthu­si­asm for Miyaza­k­i’s films can hard­ly be dis­put­ed.

That pow­er­ful force could even return to Spir­it­ed Away the title of most suc­cess­ful Japan­ese ani­mat­ed film ever, which it held until Mako­to Shinkai’s Your Name came along in 2017. The mar­ket­ing of Spir­it­ed Away’s eigh­teen-year-late Chi­nese the­atri­cal release, which includes this series of posters new­ly designed by artist Zao Dao, will cer­tain­ly help give it a push. Every Ghi­b­li enthu­si­ast in Chi­na will cer­tain­ly come out for it, and with luck, they may also be able to see the upcom­ing How Do You Live? — Miyaza­k­i’s next and per­haps final film, for whose pro­duc­tion he came out of the lat­est of his retire­ments — in the­aters along with the rest of the world.

via @MadmanFilms

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Phi­los­o­phy of Hayao Miyaza­ki: A Video Essay on How the Tra­di­tion­al Japan­ese Reli­gion Shin­to Suf­fus­es Miyazaki’s Films

Watch Hayao Miyazaki’s Beloved Char­ac­ters Enter the Real World

How the Films of Hayao Miyaza­ki Work Their Ani­mat­ed Mag­ic, Explained in 4 Video Essays

Watch Hayao Miyaza­ki Ani­mate the Final Shot of His Final Fea­ture Film, The Wind Ris­es

Hayao Miyazaki’s Mas­ter­pieces Spir­it­ed Away and Princess Mononoke Imag­ined as 8‑Bit Video Games

The Simp­sons Pay Won­der­ful Trib­ute to the Ani­me of Hayao Miyaza­ki

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

 

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A Wild 40-Minute Race Down Alpe D’Huez

in Sports | June 16th, 2019

Damien Oton, win­ner of last sum­mer’s Megavalanche, mount­ed a cam­era on his hel­met and record­ed his race down Alpe D’Huez. Buck­le in, and enjoy the exhil­a­rat­ing wild ride. Once you start, it’s hard to stop.

via Metafil­ter

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

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Scenes from HBO’s Chernobyl v. Real Footage Shot in 1986: A Side-By-Side Comparison

in History, Television | June 14th, 2019

Audi­ences today can’t get enough of his­to­ry, espe­cial­ly his­to­ry pre­sent­ed as a pod­cast or a pres­tige tele­vi­sion series. Best of all is the his­tor­i­cal pres­tige tele­vi­sion series accom­pa­nied by its own pod­cast, cur­rent­ly exem­pli­fied by Cher­nobyl, HBO’s five-episode drama­ti­za­tion of the events lead­ing up to and the after­math of the tit­u­lar Sovi­et nuclear dis­as­ter. “The mate­r­i­al cul­ture of the Sovi­et Union is repro­duced with an accu­ra­cy that has nev­er before been seen in West­ern tele­vi­sion or film — or, for that mat­ter, in Russ­ian tele­vi­sion or film,” The New Yorker’s Masha Gessen writes of the show. “Sovi­et-born Amer­i­cans — and, indeed, Sovi­et-born Rus­sians — have been tweet­ing and blog­ging in awe at the uncan­ny pre­ci­sion with which the phys­i­cal sur­round­ings of Sovi­et peo­ple have been repro­duced.”

But along with all the praise for the accu­ra­cy on Cher­nobyl’s sur­face has come crit­i­cism of its deep­er con­cep­tion of the time and place it takes as its set­ting: “its fail­ure to accu­rate­ly por­tray Sovi­et rela­tion­ships of pow­er,” as Gessen puts it, or to acknowl­edge that “res­ig­na­tion was the defin­ing con­di­tion of Sovi­et life. But res­ig­na­tion is a depress­ing and untelegenic spec­ta­cle. So the cre­ators of Cher­nobyl imag­ine con­fronta­tion where con­fronta­tion was unthink­able.”

Among the chill­ing truths of the real sto­ry of the Cher­nobyl dis­as­ter is how many peo­ple involved knew before­hand what could, and prob­a­bly would, go wrong with the reac­tor that explod­ed on April 26, 1986. But Cher­nobyl, adher­ing to “the out­lines of a dis­as­ter movie,” instead pits a lone truth-teller against a set of self-serv­ing, malev­o­lent high­er-ups.

Cher­nobyl cre­ator and writer Craig Mazin is not unaware of this, as any­one who has lis­tened to the minis­eries’ com­pan­ion pod­cast knows. On each episode, Mazin dis­cuss­es (with Peter Sagal from Wait Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, inci­den­tal­ly) the com­pli­ca­tions of bring­ing such a com­plex event, and one that involved so many peo­ple, to the screen three decades lat­er, and the inher­ent trade­offs involved between his­tor­i­cal faith­ful­ness and artis­tic license. The video essay from Thomas Flight above com­bines clips from the Cher­nobyl pod­cast with not just clips from Cher­nobyl itself but the real-life source footage that inspired the show. The six-minute view­ing expe­ri­ence show­cas­es the often-aston­ish­ing recre­ations Cher­nobyl accom­plish­es even as it casts doubt on the pos­si­bil­i­ty of ever tru­ly recre­at­ing his­to­ry on the screen. But watch­ing cre­ators take on that increas­ing­ly daunt­ing chal­lenge is pre­cise­ly what today’s audi­ences can’t get enough of.

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Haunt­ing Drone’s‑Eye View of Cher­nobyl

The Ani­mals of Cher­nobyl

200 Haunt­ing Videos of U.S. Nuclear Tests Now Declas­si­fied and Put Online

A is for Atom: Vin­tage PR Film for Nuclear Ener­gy

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall, on Face­book, or on Insta­gram.

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Hear What’s Likely the Only Known Recording of Frida Kahlo’s Voice (1954)

in Art | June 14th, 2019

Per­haps no artist in mod­ern his­to­ry, save Andy Warhol, has been so well doc­u­ment­ed, and self-doc­u­ment­ed, as Fri­da Kahlo, or has used doc­u­men­tary meth­ods, sur­re­al­ist and oth­er­wise, to so unflinch­ing­ly con­front ideas about dis­abil­i­ty, gen­der, sex­u­al­i­ty, nation­al iden­ti­ty, and rela­tion­ships. These qual­i­ties make her the per­fect celebri­ty artist for our times, but unlike the aver­age 21st cen­tu­ry star mak­ing art out of self-pre­sen­ta­tion, Kahlo’s voice has nev­er been heard, though she lived in a time almost as sat­u­rat­ed with mass media—of the radio, TV, and film variety—as our own.

That is, per­haps, until now, with the unearthing of what the Nation­al Sound Library of Mex­i­co believes to be a record­ing of her voice, “tak­en from a pilot episode of 1955 radio show El Bachiller [“The Bach­e­lor”],” writes Steph Har­mon at The Guardian. The show “aired after her death in 1954,” like­ly the fol­low­ing year. Though the pro­gram does not intro­duce her by name, the pre­sen­ter does refer to her as recent­ly deceased, and she does read an essay about her hus­band Diego Rivera, which hap­pens to be writ­ten by Fri­da Kahlo. The case seems fair­ly con­clu­sive.

Pre­vi­ous­ly the lit­tle evi­dence of what she sound­ed like came from writ­ten descrip­tions, such as French pho­tog­ra­ph­er Gisèle Freund’s char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of her voice as “melo­di­ous and warm.” Hear for your­self what is very like­ly the record­ed voice of Fri­da Kahlo in the audio above. In her typ­i­cal­ly florid yet unspar­ing style she paints a ver­bal por­trait of Rivera full of unflat­ter­ing phys­i­cal detail and lay­ers of emo­tion and admi­ra­tion. In one Eng­lish trans­la­tion, she calls him “a huge, immense child, with a friend­ly face and a sad gaze.

River­a’s “high, dark, extreme­ly intel­li­gent and big eyes rarely hold still. They almost pop out of their sock­ets because of their swollen and pro­tu­ber­ant eyelids—like a toad’s.” His huge eyes seem “built espe­cial­ly for a painter of spaces and crowds.” The Mex­i­can mural­ist, she says is like “an inscrutable mon­ster.” These are the words of a writer, we must remem­ber, who was pas­sion­ate­ly in love with her sub­ject, but who did not pre­tend to ignore his phys­i­cal odd­i­ties. As she had prac­ticed lov­ing her­self, she loved and admired Rivera because of his unique appear­ance, not in spite of it.

Researchers are mak­ing con­tin­u­ing efforts to ver­i­fy that the voice on the recod­ing is Kahlo and search­ing through about 1,300 oth­er episodes of the show, record­ed for Tele­visa Radio, to find out if there are any more record­ings of her. Giv­en Frida’s flam­boy­ant per­sona and minor art star­dom in her life­time, it’s hard to imag­ine we won’t hear more of her, if this is in fact her, as oth­er archives reveal their secrets.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Fri­da Kahlo’s Pas­sion­ate Love Let­ters to Diego Rivera

Dis­cov­er Fri­da Kahlo’s Wild­ly-Illus­trat­ed Diary: It Chron­i­cled the Last 10 Years of Her Life, and Then Got Locked Away for Decades

A Brief Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the Life and Work of Fri­da Kahlo

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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The Brilliant Colors of the Great Barrier Revealed in a Historic Illustrated Book from 1893

in Art, Biology, History, Nature | June 14th, 2019

Paul Simon’s famous lyric about every­thing look­ing worse in black and white
is hard­ly a uni­ver­sal truth, but when it comes to William Sav­ille-Kent’s ground­break­ing 1893 book The Great Bar­ri­er Reef of Aus­tralia: its prod­ucts and poten­tial­i­ties, the asser­tion may have some mer­it.

Sav­ille-Kent, a nat­u­ral­ist whose work in var­i­ous British aquar­i­ums even­tu­al­ly led to a gig rebuild­ing deplet­ed Tas­man­ian oys­ter beds, fell hard for the col­or­ful fish, bêche-de-mer, corals, sponges, tur­tles, and oth­er marine species he encoun­tered in Aus­tralia.

He pho­tographed the Great Bar­ri­er Reef while serv­ing in Queens­land as Com­mis­sion­er of Fish­eries. 48 of his images were pub­lished in the afore­men­tioned book, offer­ing read­ers an unprece­dent­ed arm­chair tour of a coral reef, albeit in black and white.

 

While Sav­ille-Kent def­i­nite­ly achieved his goal of fur­ther­ing the public’s aware­ness of the reef, he also upstaged him­self by includ­ing 16 col­or lith­o­graphs inspired by his orig­i­nal water­col­ors.

These plates, by Lon­don-based lith­o­g­ra­phers Rid­dle and Couchman—whose work usu­al­ly ran toward por­traits of well-born gen­tle­men—exude a live­ly Seuss­ian appeal.

Saville-Kent’s care­ful­ly cap­tured fish, echin­o­derms, and anemones lit­er­al­ly pale in com­par­i­son to the bright spec­i­mens the lith­o­g­ra­phers, who pre­sum­ably lacked his first­hand expe­ri­ence of the forms they were depict­ing, brought to such vibrant life in the back of the book.

These days, alas, the Great Bar­ri­er Reef resem­bles Sav­ille-Ken­t’s pho­tos more close­ly than those gor­geous lith­o­graphs, the vic­tim of back-to-back bleach­ing events brought on by pol­lu­tion-relat­ed cli­mate change.

Sav­ille-Kent is buried at All Saints Churchin Mil­ford-on-Sea, Hamp­shire, Eng­land. His grave is dec­o­rat­ed with coral.

Browse a dig­i­tal copy of The Great Bar­ri­er Reef of Aus­tralia: its prod­ucts and poten­tial­i­ties here.

via The Pub­lic Domain Review

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Ernst Haeckel’s Sub­lime Draw­ings of Flo­ra and Fau­na: The Beau­ti­ful Sci­en­tif­ic Draw­ings That Influ­enced Europe’s Art Nou­veau Move­ment (1889)

Two Mil­lion Won­drous Nature Illus­tra­tions Put Online by The Bio­di­ver­si­ty Her­itage Library

New Archive Dig­i­tizes 80,000 His­toric Water­col­or Paint­ings, the Medi­um Through Which We Doc­u­ment­ed the World Before Pho­tog­ra­phy

Ayun Hal­l­i­day is an author, illus­tra­tor, the­ater mak­er and Chief Pri­ma­tol­o­gist of the East Vil­lage Inkyzine.  Join her in NYC on Mon­day, June 17 for anoth­er month­ly install­ment of her pub­lic domain-based vari­ety show, Necro­mancers of the Pub­lic Domain. Fol­low her @AyunHalliday.

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An Interactive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Journey in Homer’s Odyssey

in Literature, Maps | June 13th, 2019

The Odyssey, one of Home­r’s two great epics, nar­rates Odysseus’ long, strange trip home after the Tro­jan war. Dur­ing their ten-year jour­ney, Odysseus and his men had to over­come divine and nat­ur­al forces, from bat­ter­ing storms and winds to dif­fi­cult encoun­ters with the Cyclops Polyphe­mus, the can­ni­bal­is­tic Laestry­gones, the witch-god­dess Circe and the rest. And they took a most cir­cuitous route, bounc­ing all over the Mediter­ranean, mov­ing first down to Crete and Tunisia. Next over to Sici­ly, then off toward Spain, and back to Greece again.

If you’re look­ing for an easy way to visu­al­ize all of the twists and turns in The Odyssey, then we’d rec­om­mend spend­ing some time with the inter­ac­tive map cre­at­ed by Gisèle Moun­z­er. “Odysseus’ Jour­ney” breaks down Odysseus’ voy­age into 14 key scenes and locates them on a mod­ern map designed by Esri, a com­pa­ny that cre­ates GIS map­ping soft­ware.

Mean­while, if you’re inter­est­ed in the whole con­cept of ancient trav­el, we’d sug­gest revis­it­ing one of our pre­vi­ous posts: Play Cae­sar: Trav­el Ancient Rome with Stanford’s Inter­ac­tive Map. It tells you all about ORBIS, a geospa­tial net­work mod­el, that lets you sim­u­late jour­neys in Ancient Roman. You pick the points of ori­gin and des­ti­na­tion for a trip, and ORBIS will recon­struct the dura­tion and finan­cial cost of mak­ing the ancient jour­ney.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. Or fol­low our posts on Threads, Face­book, BlueSky or Mastodon.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in Decem­ber, 2013.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Homer’s Ili­ad Read in the Orig­i­nal Ancient Greek

What Ancient Greek Music Sound­ed Like: Hear a Recon­struc­tion That is ‘100% Accu­rate’

Dis­cov­er the “Brazen Bull,” the Ancient Greek Tor­ture Machine That Dou­bled as a Musi­cal Instru­ment

Learn­ing Ancient His­to­ry for Free

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New Interactive “Murder Map” Reveals the Meanest Streets of Medieval London

in Maps | June 13th, 2019

How dan­ger­ous was medieval Lon­don? That’s a ques­tion that has recent­ly been stud­ied by the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cambridge’s Vio­lence Research Cen­ter, and they have pro­vid­ed a handy inter­ac­tive map for our perusal. Just in case we go back in time in a TARDIS or some such machine, we’ll know what parts of the city to avoid. And those parts are…well, most of it, actu­al­ly.

The data con­tain­ing info of 142 homi­cides comes from sur­viv­ing coroner’s rolls from the first half of the 14th cen­tu­ry. A coro­ner dur­ing this time was a bit clos­er to a police detec­tive in ours, called to the scene of any sud­den and unnat­ur­al death. And if it looked liked foul play a neigh­bor­hood jury of some­where between 12 and 50 peo­ple were called to offer a ver­dict.

Hov­er over a mark­er on the map and you can dis­cov­er what hap­pened at that loca­tion. Here are a few exam­ples:

On the evening of July 20, 1325, Peter Clark, a bak­er, was stabbed in the heart by a fel­low bak­er called Wal­ter after an argu­ment. Wal­ter took sanc­tu­ary in a church, con­fessed to the crime, and a month lat­er made his way out of the coun­try by boat.

On Decem­ber 21, 1325, Roger Scott, a tai­lor, was quar­rel­ing with Robert de Oun­dle in the streets of Bish­op­gate, when Robert stabbed Roger with a hid­den knife, killing him instant­ly. He also fled, to where nobody knew.

On Feb­ru­ary 13, 1324, William War­rock and William de Northamp­tone were argu­ing in the high street of Cas­tle Bay­nard, when the for­mer stabbed the lat­ter in the heart. War­rock, who had no belong­ings, dis­ap­peared.

Sens­ing a theme here? We’ll nev­er know the rea­son for these fatal alter­ca­tions, but the knife indus­try was doing well out of it. The study crunched the num­bers and found some sta­tis­tics: the time of year did not seem to be a fac­tor, but like today, the week­end was a dead­lier time. And the hours between ear­ly evening and the first hour of London’s cur­few, when the city insist­ed all fires be extin­guished and peo­ple go to bed.

A whop­ping 52% of mur­ders hap­pened in the pub­lic square or the high street. No oth­er loca­tion cracks 10%. And long knives were the weapon of choice at 35%, sec­ond only to short knives at 20%. And though it wasn’t reflect­ed in the three ran­dom exam­ples, most peo­ple got stabbed in the head. Unsur­pris­ing­ly men com­mit­ted the major­i­ty of the crimes, and all class­es of soci­ety and pro­fes­sion mur­dered their way around Lon­don, includ­ing priests. (One exam­ple is giv­en of a priest who stabs a gar­den­er to death when the lat­ter dis­cov­ered him steal­ing apples.)

Pro­fes­sor and crim­i­nol­o­gist Manuel Eis­ner summed up the work of his group thus:

“The events described in the Coro­ners’ Rolls show weapons were nev­er far away, male hon­our had to be pro­tect­ed, and con­flicts eas­i­ly got out of hand. They give us a detailed pic­ture of how homi­cide was embed­ded in the rhythms of urban medieval life.”

And in fact, giv­en the pro­por­tion of crime to the gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion, Lon­don was pret­ty dead­ly, about 15–20 times high­er than a mod­ern British city.

But Eis­ner notes the com­par­isons can only go so far: “We have firearms, but we also have emer­gency ser­vices. It’s eas­i­er to kill but eas­i­er to save lives.”

Vis­it the inter­ac­tive medieval mur­der map here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

An Inter­ac­tive Map of the 2,000+ Sounds Humans Use to Com­mu­ni­cate With­out Words: Grunts, Sobs, Sighs, Laughs & More

An Inter­ac­tive Map Shows Just How Many Roads Actu­al­ly Lead to Rome

An Inter­ac­tive Map of Odysseus’ 10-Year Jour­ney in Homer’s Odyssey

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

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Atheists & Agnostics Also Frequently Believe in the Supernatural, a New Study Shows

in Religion | June 13th, 2019

To be a non-believ­er in some parts of the world, and in much of Europe for many cen­turies, means to com­mit a crime against the state. Even where unbe­lief goes unpun­ished by the law, “athe­ists, agnos­tics, and oth­er non-believ­ers,” writes Scot­ty Hen­dricks at Big Think, “are among the most dis­liked, untrust­ed, and mis­un­der­stood peo­ple.” Iden­ti­fied with Satanists (who are equal­ly mis­un­der­stood), non-believ­ers are pre­sumed to be anti-the­ists, hell bent on destroy­ing, or at least maim­ing, reli­gion with their know-it-all dog­ma­tism and hatred of dif­fer­ent beliefs.

There may be some pro­jec­tion going on here, and maybe it goes both ways at times, though the bal­ance of pow­er, at least in the U.S., decid­ed­ly tips in favor of cer­tain dog­mat­ic reli­gions. But as a new whitepa­per from the UK group Under­stand­ing Unbe­lief found, in a wide-rang­ing sur­vey of non-believ­ers in six coun­tries around the world, “pop­u­lar assump­tions about ‘con­vinced, dog­mat­ic athe­ists’ do not stand up to scruti­ny.” The out­lier here is the reli­gious­ly inflamed U.S. “Although Amer­i­can athe­ists are typ­i­cal­ly fair­ly con­fi­dent in their views about God, impor­tant­ly, so too are Amer­i­cans in gen­er­al.”

The paper’s authors are pro­fes­sors in the­ol­o­gy, psy­chol­o­gy, anthro­pol­o­gy, and reli­gious stud­ies from four major U.K. Uni­ver­si­ties. They out­line their eight key find­ings at the out­set, then get into specifics about what the data says and how it was obtained, with large, full-col­or charts and graphs. The study shows more agree­ment than most of us might assume between the reli­gious and non-reli­gious on “the val­ues most impor­tant for ‘find­ing mean­ing in the world and your own life.’”

“Fam­i­ly” and “Free­dom” ranked high­ly. “Less unan­i­mous­ly so,” did “’Com­pas­sion,’ ‘Truth,’ ‘Nature,’ and ‘Sci­ence,’” which may come as lit­tle sur­prise. The social and polit­i­cal iden­ti­fi­ca­tions of non-believ­ers fluc­tu­ate wide­ly between the six countries—Brazil, Den­mark, Japan, Chi­na, the U.S., and the U.K.—but, “with only a few excep­tions, athe­ists and agnos­tics endorse the real­i­ties of objec­tive moral val­ues, human dig­ni­ty, and atten­dant rights, and the ‘deep val­ue’ of nature.”

These con­clu­sions should inter­est non-believ­ers and believ­ers alike in the six coun­tries sur­veyed, but the most sen­sa­tion­al research find­ing states that “despite reject­ing or at least ques­tion­ing the notion of gods, unbe­liev­ers aren’t whol­ly divorced from super­sti­tious belief,” writes Hen­dricks. The study’s authors put things in a more mea­sured way: “only minori­ties of athe­ists or agnos­tics in each of our coun­tries appear to be thor­ough­go­ing nat­u­ral­ists,” rul­ing out the super­nat­ur­al entire­ly.

Hen­dricks lists some exam­ples:

Up to third of self-declared athe­ists in Chi­na believe in astrol­o­gy. A quar­ter of Brazil­ian athe­ists believe in rein­car­na­tion, and a sim­i­lar num­ber of their Dan­ish coun­ter­parts think some peo­ple have mag­i­cal pow­ers.

These find­ings might be con­sis­tent with the study’s method­ol­o­gy, which sur­veyed peo­ple who agreed with either 1. I don’t believe in God [or oth­er divin­i­ty or spir­it] or 2. I don’t know whether there is a God, and I don’t believe there is any way to find out. Nei­ther of these mutu­al­ly excludes the à la carte spir­i­tu­al­ism of astrol­o­gy, rein­car­na­tion, or mag­ic, a fact that many reli­gious believ­ers can­not wrap their heads around.

In the 19th and ear­ly 20th cen­turies, for exam­ple, belief in seances, tarot, mes­merism, and oth­er seem­ing­ly super­nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na flour­ished, quite often inde­pen­dent­ly of par­tic­u­lar reli­gious belief sys­tems. One of the most ratio­nal minds of the time, or the cre­ator of the most ratio­nal mind of the time, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, believed in fairies. Pierre Curie “was an athe­ist who had an endur­ing, some­what sci­en­tif­ic, inter­est in spir­i­tu­al­ism.”

The study’s find­ings are “in line,” Hen­dricks points out, “with pre­vi­ous stud­ies that show non-believ­ers are just as prone to irra­tional think­ing as their reli­gious coun­ter­parts.” Sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­ages of athe­ists and agnos­tics express some belief in astrol­o­gy, kar­ma, “a uni­ver­sal spir­it or life force,” and oth­er super­nat­ur­al phe­nom­e­na. Hen­dricks quotes Michio Kaku’s sug­ges­tion that there may be “a gene for super­sti­tion, a gene for hearsay, a gene for mag­ic.” I don’t believe geneti­cists have found such a thing. But cul­ture, at any rate, is not reducible to biol­o­gy.

The fact that humans see, hear, feel, and believe things that may not actu­al­ly exist seems to be an evo­lu­tion­ary trait. What may be equal­ly, if not more, inter­est­ing is the way those super­nat­ur­al things, what­ev­er they are, both resem­ble and vast­ly dif­fer from each oth­er, their cul­tur­al speci­fici­ties woven inex­tri­ca­bly into the tex­ture of lan­guage and cus­tom. What and how we think can­not be ful­ly sep­a­rat­ed either from our genes or from the con­cep­tu­al appa­ra­tus we inher­it, and that forms our pic­ture of the world. Read the full Under­stand­ing Unbe­lief study here.

via Big­Think

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Visu­al Map of the World’s Major Reli­gions (and Non-Reli­gions)

An Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to the World’s Five Major Reli­gions: Hin­duism, Judaism, Bud­dhism, Chris­tian­i­ty & Islam

Chris­tian­i­ty Through Its Scrip­tures: A Free Course from Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty 

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

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