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xtremeskiier114 wrote:
Robert, You say that "Only those Gods who resonate with perceived needs are remembered". Is Gaiman is trying to show that only the "modern, electronic technology Gods" are remembered by "modern era people"? While only the older Gods with connections to longstanding human needs are remembered by "older & wiser" people in the story?
Hi skiier, welcome to Booktalk. Your summary is close to the mark. A main theme of American Gods is that there is a gathering storm regarding the weakness and inadequacy of the new Gods. The good guys in the book are the old pagan Gods and their friends. Christianity is implicitly seen as responsible for humanity falling out of the sacred, and for setting the scene for modern era America where people have no idea of deep roots but are satisfied with a superficial understanding. It is not that the book features 'older and wiser' people, but that the Gods themselves are characters, preparing for battle against the modern world.
The modern perception is that old Gods are not needed. Gaiman seeks to depict the shallow emptiness that results from the modern effort to deny any relevance for ancient tales. He thinks that drawing from all the mythology of the world provides a connection to a deeper original reality than our modern science alone can see. He argues the modern technological perception is deluded, and needs to be set in an ancient context to achieve wisdom. There are strong echoes of the film The Matrix in this portrayal of the technosphere as somehow alive and perhaps even malevolent.
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Foreign gods
I thought Wednesday discription of "Lady Liberty" interesting.
Wednesday says:
Quote:
Like so many of the gods that Americans hold dear, a foreigner.
He continues:
Quote:
Liberty, is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.
Wednsday tells Shadow that he is quoting someone French, who would that be?
I think the gods Americans hold so dear are the ones fasioned into technology, we try very hard keeping up with Japan, we admire the technology of Japan. And if we do hold technology as god like, we through it away when the next model comes out. What do we hold sacred, the newest phone or computer? The newest phone or computer are out dated before it is bought, the next model is allready in production. America is such a consumer based country, do we see people who own the newest technology as god like? Then again, we often through people away too. We are such a disposable country, we only hold dear that which suits our purpose at the time.
_________________ I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth. --William Faulkner
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Re: Foreign gods
Suzanne wrote:
Quote:
Liberty, is a bitch who must be bedded on a mattress of corpses.
Wednsday tells Shadow that he is quoting someone French, who would that be?
I am not sure of course, but the only thing that it reminds me of is “The tree of liberty grows only when watered by the blood of tyrants” which was penned by Bertrand Barere (there should be an accent grave over the first "e" in Barere). Barere was appointed to the Committee of Public Safety and was in tight with Robspierre during the French Revolution.
_________________ I've always found it rather exciting to remember that there is a difference between what we experience and what we think it means.
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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.
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Robert Tulip wrote:
. . . 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
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American Gods
"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
_________________ I feel like a wet seed wild in the hot blind earth. --William Faulkner
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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?
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American gods
Interbane wrote:
Quote:
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.
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Interbane wrote:
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.
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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.
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