Nina Paley

Transcribed (and edited) from a voice memo I recorded on a ride September 22 2026.

I am riding east to say goodbye to the Summer sunrise.

The sun will rise regardless. The sun does not need me, but I find it meaningful to say hello and goodbye. That’s because I’m anthropomorphizing the sun, because I am a human being and that’s what human beings do. We’re anthropomorphizers.

Cats think we’re cats; we think the sun to some extent is a person. Also we think cats are people. We think it’s funny that our cats do it too – they felinomorphize us as we anthropomorphize them.

God is anthropomorphized Reality.

Reality exists whether I believe in it or not. But attributing character to this incomprehensible abstraction is the only way I can have what’s called a “spiritual connection.” I could keep Reality remote and abstract and not have that connection. But the human brain is set up for human relationships, and if I close that door I’m closing my mind.

If Robin Dunbar is to be believed, most of the human brain is devoted to navigating complex relationships with other humans. I might as well allow that architecture to help me navigate the rest of the world too. Instead of fighting my human nature, I can just let my anthropomorphizing brain do its thing.

Humans are optimized for religion. Whether we’re aware of it or not, we think religiously.

Most people who use the word God probably do not conceive of God the way I do. Others hate the G-word and the whole anthropomorphic project. If I say “God wants ____” I just imagine all the atheists inside of my head rolling their eyes saying, “Nina’s in a cult!”

But I need to refer to Reality as something with agency and pronouns. “God” is a convenient shorthand for otherwise over-wordy concepts. It’s also a way to access human culture, accumulated millennia of religious thought. Increasingly, it is the most honest way for me to speak of my own experience.

I still feel a need to distinguish myself from those that use the G-word as though they are talking about a Man In The Sky. I am not talking about a Man In The Sky. But it sounds like I’m talking about a Man In The Sky because I necessarily have to anthropomorphize.

Speaking of things in the sky, I can see traces of sunrise ahead of me. The sun is not up yet but will be soon. And when it rises — if I can see it through all these clouds, there’s just a little tiny crack of light behind them — it will be Due East, where this road hits the horizon. Because today is the equinox. I will say goodbye to my beloved Summer Sun, and hello to the Winter Sun, with whom I have a somewhat different relationship. A relationship I can only understand in anthropomorphic terms, because God made me that way.