Smells and Bells

  Sacred Clicks: From Relics to Fidget Cubes (Classen and The Deepest Sense ) By Calliope Mills ( source ) Picture this: You’re in a meeting, your camera off, half-listening while absentmindedly clicking a fidget cube or spinning a little gadget in your hand. It’s become so common that it barely raises an eyebrow anymore. But why do so many of us reach for fidget toys in moments of stillness or stress?  To understand the rise of fidget toys, we need to zoom out to the bigger picture—one that cultural historian Constance Classen lays out in The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch . Among a variety of other topics, Classen explores how the modern world has reshaped our relationship with touch, often limiting and regulating it. Fidget toys, in this light, are more than distractions. They’re symptoms of a tactile hunger in a visually saturated, touch-deprived society. ( source )      As Classen describes throughout her work, touch has been increasingly manage...

Genesis Lantigua Touch: Comfort or Pain Hair shirts and metal cilice at the Can Papiol Romanticism Museum. Religion has been alive for ages, probably as long as the five senses have been working in and with humans. Some of the five senses are obviously central in major religions: taste in the eucharist and Jewish Sabbath celebrations, the sound of Quran recitals and of modern instruments at a local megachurch, the beauty seen in Hindu and Roman Catholic temples, even the olfactory organs are stimulated with incense in religious ceremonies. But historically speaking, where does the sense of touch interfere with religion? Let’s dive into it. The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch by Constance Classen is an overwhelmingly informational resource for understanding the historical and religious influence of somatosensory, or the sense of touch, the sense that allows us to feel pain, heat, cold, texture, etc. Classen argues that there is one aspect of touch that cannot be tampered by t...

Artwork by @virentuli on Instagram      Touch is one of the most unconscious senses. Whenever you smell, taste, or see something, you usually have some sense of awareness or conscious interference with that process, but with touch, we do it all the time, every day, 24/7, and mainly subconsciously. We don't catch ourselves thinking about the things we are always touching, from the clothes touching our skin to the keyboard keys we hit with our fingers. We categorize touches by texture much like we do with taste and flavors, but unlike everything you put in your mouth, sometimes you don't think about how you're experiencing touch. I also thought that the difference between "feminine" and "masculine" touch and the different associations Classen discusses in  The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch was fascinating.    For example, within her section w omen's Touch in chapter four, Classen describes how touch is considered a lower sense and therefo...