Agency

To be human is to see agency everywhere.

It's what we do.

In fact it appears to be completely unnatural, and extremely difficult mentally, to not do it.

It is one of the things that makes scientific thinking so difficult for us. We seem to be hard wired to jump instantaneously to a post hoc, ergo propter hoc (and hoc is always intentional) explanation in every situation. This may make for good narrative, but rarely for a good, or true, explanation.

(Any of you who have taken a stats class should remember having "correlation does not imply causality", pounded into your heads. Followed by any number of examples of correlation 1.0 events that have nothing whatsoever to do with each other. i.e. even though fingernails grow at about the same rate as new oceanic crust is created at the mid ocean ridges, one should not assume the correlation means that fingernail growth causes oceanic crustal spreading, or vice versa.)

Seriously.

Still, anyone who has ever spent time with children, (or Christians, or New Agers, or anyone of any religious bent), has seen this type of magical thinking in action.

I remember very clearly thinking that way as a child. (Hell, I thought that way until my early twenties in most situations. In fact I'm still working on not doing it. It has been a very hard habit to break.)

If snow fell off a tree branch and onto my head, there was nothing random about it, either the tree, or the snow, or possibly both, had done that act on purpose. Which, of course, led inevitably to the question of why the tree, (and/or the snow), wanted to do that. Were they trying to tell me something? (like "take a bath!") Leading me next to the thought, "What can I do to make that not happen in the future?", "Is the tree unhappy with me?", "Was it a joke?", "What does the tree want?" and "Do I really have to take a bath?"

Ritual purity, it's not just a good idea, it's the law!

I wanted things. So I did stuff to make things happen to achieve my ends. I also knew (not believed, knew), that the world was full of other agents whose sole purpose (desire) seemed to be to thwart my end!

Both figuratively and literally!

(They were usually called Mom and Dad, though there were also many other adult authority figures, (teachers especially!), who seemed to be in on my parents schemes!)

They WERE all out to get me! (Conspiracy thinking starts early too!) So therefore, trees, and rocks, and the weather, and traffic lights, (especially traffic lights!) must also want things, and therefore, do things, on purpose, to achieve their ends.

Or to frustrate mine.

The world is very personal to a child, (or anyone of any age), engaged in magical or wish thinking.