Superstition, Religion and...Architecture? Thai Spiritual Permanence with Dr. Andrew Johnson Part 2 [S6.E64]

This is Part 2 of Greg’s interview with Andrew Johnson, cultural anthropologist extraordinaire and investigator of the extremely niche topic of the relationship between Thai supernatural beliefs and local architecture. 

Greg and Andrew begin where they left off last week, discussing what it’s like as ‘rationalists’ to interact with relatively superstitious Thai people. Andrew relates a classic story of a Thai woman who encounters a ghost in a nearby field and who simply calls the police who end up shoo-ing the ghost away, an outcome completely unexpected in a western framework. He insists that the Thai word for ghost (‘phee’), encompasses a much broader range of unexplained phenomena than just the western idea of a disembodied ‘spirit.’

Next, the guys discuss Andrew’s book, “Ghosts of the New City,” a study of the interaction between urbanization, progress, and supernatural beliefs in Chiang Mai, Thailand. Andrew notes that Thais do not only believe older buildings contain spirits, but also that new constructions can as well. Hence, urban planning decisions can be particularly complex, because they cannot be reduced to simply trying to ‘preserve old stuff.’ 

Lastly, Greg and Andrew get into the psychological imprints that different locations leave in our minds, but also how the locations themselves carry imprints of past lives and previous ‘orders’ that have now fallen by the wayside. These emotional experiences, which are processed as non-magical in the west, are really not substantially different from what’s going in the minds of supernatural believers who are going through the same thing but using different words to describe it.

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