IS NOTHING SACRED?

[Thomas Hood]

(there should be an accent grave over the first "e" in Barere)

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Barère

[MaryLupin]

Merci Monsieur Hood. À bientôt.

[Interbane]

RT: "His argument is that the Gods live in people's hearts and die after people forget them. However, this does not make Gods merely subjective, because only those Gods who resonate with perceived needs are remembered."

This fits well within the perspective of viewing religion and belief in god(s) as memetically evolving beliefs. Whatever is most "believable", evolutionarily speaking, is what will be believed. This has no bearing on the truth, but rather the "stickiness" of the information in question. In the past, the naturalness and perhaps simplicity of how people define their personal gods was simply what was most believable at that time, since none of the magic of modern technology was present.

[Thomas Hood]

Merci Monsieur Hood. À bientôt.

Il n'y ai pas de quoi, MarieLupin.

[Thomas Hood]

. . . regards nothing as sacred, hence Gaiman's sense of a gathering storm. Turning this popular view around, Gaiman almost makes nothing into something - by regarding the myths which formerly provided meaning as something real. . .

If conventional religion has lost its force, is a return to paganism a return to the sacred? Adds piquancy to

Give me that old time religion
Give me that....old time religion
O give me that old time religion
It's good enough for me

[Suzanne]

"American Gods" has certainly turned out to be very entertaining, and time consuming. I have identified numerous gods, was wondering where people are in the book, and what you have figured out. It certainly is a puzzle.

What I find most fasinating is Gaiman's name choices and the tiny little crumb clues he leaves. I have accostomed myself to his writing style and am now able to pick those crumbs up and am starting to piece them together.

Iceman from the first chapter refers to his distaste for the Greeks, no Greek gods detected so far.

The storm is a comin!

Suzanne

[Interbane]

Not yet having the book, I'm a little confused. Why is the word 'gods' used? Is this a generic simple usage to summarize what we entertain as our current ultimate concerns? Or is he referring in a way to an actual sentient or super sentient being or force?

[Suzanne]

Interbane wrote:

Is this a generic simple usage to summarize what we entertain as our current ultimate concerns? Or is he referring in a way to an actual sentient or super sentient being or force?

The author uses dieties, or "gods" stemming from legends as characters. For example, he uses Odin, (from Norse paganism) Coatlicue, (from Aztec mthyology) and Czernobog, (a slavic diety). Often times these characters are cloaked to be discovered by the reader and there are many of them.

The author uses these characters to make the statement that there are no American "gods". The mythological dieties from around the world have been forgotten in America, along with the culture and customs of those countries. America is a melting pot, and over the generations, these "gods" from legands and folklore are in danger of disapearing forever.

[MaryLupin]

Not yet having the book, I'm a little confused. Why is the word 'gods' used? Is this a generic simple usage to summarize what we entertain as our current ultimate concerns? Or is he referring in a way to an actual sentient or super sentient being or force?

I'm about 20% into the book; I am starting to think of these gods as emergent phenomena. That is, they originate from the mind of man but once present, they function as independent entities with a will of their own and powers not present in that from which they emerged. Still like any emergent entity, their continued existence depends upon the continued existence of its substrates. For example, salt can be thought of as an emergent form of sodium and chlorine. Salt has properties that are in no way related to the properties of sodium and chlorine and salt acts in ways independent of co-extant sodium and chlorine and yet if sodium and chlorine cease to exist so does salt.

[Interbane]

That is, they originate from the mind of man but once present, they function as independent entities with a will of their own and powers not present in that from which they emerged.

Mary, that's interesting. I think again, the idea this plays at is perhaps the way memes work. For example, viral emails that were popular a few years back were created by someone, but with the way there were constructed, they appealed to people in such a way that they were propagated and spread. I only use this comparison to question whether some of the constituents of these emergent phenomena are memetic. I'll have the book soon, so my questions will be better answered.