Real World Connection 2 - American Gods

--- American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, is so awesome, the title of this post doesn't get a reference or a pun. ---

--- It stands on it's own. ---

I'm not quite sure what philosophy we covered that American Gods relates to, but this morning I remembered how awesome the story was, so I felt the need to share. The basic idea is that all gods and mythological creatures exist, because people believe they do¹. Their survival comes from people continuing to believe in them². Even if some one kills a God, they come back as long as there is some belief in them (they just sort of show up again).

I feel like this loosely ties with the ideas Plato's Form Theory, and the idea that without observers, the universe would cease to be.

The connection to Plato is that, in the epilogue, the main character is in Iceland, and runs into Odin. Except, it wasn't the Odin he had met in America. They're the same basic thing (old man, intelligent, one eye), but they are still very easy to tell apart (American one was bitter and angry, Icelandic one was kind and had a sense of humor). It was sort of like the Norse mythos had an Ideal Odin, and that all the Odins we saw were just shadows of him. They all had aspects from the Ideal form, but weren't quite there. Meeting those two gave an idea of what the "real" Odin would be like. Much like how, according to Plato, seeing a bunch of horses gives you an impression of what an Ideal horse would be like.


As for the observation dependent existence, it's more that without observation, the Gods wither, and that as they wither they can't be as noticeable. As they become less noticeable, they are observed less, and thus wither more. At one point the main character is in the spirit world³, going through a room filled with statues of things so old, not a single person remembers them anymore. Basically, dead gods. Completely dead, because there are no writings about them, or stories passed on. No old monuments. All evidence that people believed in them is gone.

Then, there are the things older than that. Even their statues, which only seem to exist because at one point the thing they represent existed, are crumbling and unrecognizable. It's explained that they were the first concepts humans had as they evolved thought. They were what the earliest people thought were the causes behind fire and thunder. But as people went on to evolve more, and think of more complex stories, those ideas were left behind, and have just completely faded away.

It gives the impression that as fewer and fewer people know something, it sort of just fades away, waiting to be rediscovered, to be brought back. But that if something is gone too long, it can't be brought back. It goes without observation for too big a stretch. It becomes so obscure, it just stops existing. It breaks down. It's a tree that fell in a forest, where no animals heard, saw, or felt it, and there were no other plants to be affected by the change. It was so out there, it simply did not matter anymore.


I can't do this book justice, and I really wish I'd been thinking of stuff like this when I read it. I think I should reread it, just to see what this class adds to it.


---
1 The title comes from the fact that the book is set in America, and as a result, all the gods are based off American belief in them. As a result, Mother Earth is a hippie, and there is a god of News Casting. There are also shady MiBs, because apparently, everyone knows people like that have to be out there.
2 Unless they're a New God. Then people just wanting their internet to work, or wanting the weatherman to be right counts as prayer. I think the book has a bit of a negative view on what people consider important now-a-days.
3 Or something like that. There are parts in this book were you can't tell if he's having a vision, hallucinating, being tricked, in another dimension, or in some kind of middle ground between those options. I guess that works as a metaphor for the Cave. In fact, every little plot in this book works as an example of the Cave. I'd go into more detail on that, in the main post, except I wouldn't be able to explain that without spoiling every important detail of the book. I respect Neil Gaiman too much to pull that kind of stunt.

Sophie's World 2: The Quickening

Since my last post about Sophie's World, much has chanced. Sophie has changed from a confused girl with a crappy friend to a confused girl with a crappy friend who breaks into old cabins, steals mail, leaves, and then comes back with friends to steal more mail and a [magic] mirror.

There are also hints that a UN officer in Lebanon is controlling Sophie's life and is chasing her philosophy teacher around the barren winterlands of Norway.

Regardless of this suddenly¹ darker plot, Sophie has continued to get philosophy work from the Philosopher (who is now the Hermit Formerly Known as Philosopher. Or Alberto, as his dog calls him). She has learned about cynics and saints, stoics and fallen empires, Jews and Buddhists. Summer and frost-giants². She also learned that sneaking off at 6:45 in the morning to walk to an abandoned church, miles away, is a good idea.

Based on the facts that this class has done nothing but freak out Sophie, piss off and/or worry her mother, alienate Sophie from her friend³, and cause to Sophie to sneak out of her house/randomly break into buildings, I really need to question how good an idea it was for Sophie to get tangled in this course/world domination conflict. Her teacher just seems kind of off. In one letter, he scolds her looking out her window to see who has been leaving her anonymous letters (I'd say it's pretty normal to try and quickly solve that mystery) and says she must never disobey him,⁴ and later, on the phone says they suddenly have to meet in person. Now, I doubt he's gonna be some crazy kidnapper (that would completely destroy the atmosphere built in this book, and cause such a mood whiplash that the book might just end), but I have to wonder why Sophie doesn't get even slightly worried.⁵

Also, I was skimming through the book, trying to find my page, and found a page where Hermit is giving her drinks, and then there is mention of her vision changing. I don't have the context for that passage, but seriously. Why. Does. Sophie. Trust. Him? Unless this is some proto-Matrix red-pill/blue-pill kind of metaphor, I'm gonna be freaked out when I get to that part of the book.

So yeah, the book has actually drawn me in with those oddities. Despite the fact that the book has kind of turned into 20% novel, 80% condensed philosophy textbook, I'm still engaged, and hope the rest of the book is this interesting.⁶


---
1 Well, not suddenly. This happened over about a quarter of the book. As opposed to the previous post, which covered two chapters. I guess this actually a decent pace for the plot.
2 The fact that those last 2 sentences are true makes me love this book even more.
3 You might have noticed that I'm keeping that singular. I'm doing that because it has only been implied she has other friends. So far, the only people shown to exist are Sophie, Sophie's Mom, Joanna, a dog, a beret wearing hermit, and one of Sophie's school teachers. Norway seems like a very lonely place.
4 He criticizes her for being curious. He then goes on to talk about how living without exploring your world is a horrible way to live, and says she must be curious. I'm getting some very mixed messages from this guy...
5 I don't know when the term "stranger danger" first popped up, but even without mnemonics, it should be easy to tell that his guy could be trouble.
6 That statement is true, but also shows about a fifth the kind of mood whiplash I'd expect from this turning into a kidnapping story.

Real World Connection 1: Lego Democritus: The Video Game

So a few days ago, when trying to see if the Aperture Science Facebook page had stolen a quote^*, I found this gem:

"And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance."^**

Bruce Frederick Cummings, under the nom de plumes "Wilhelm Nero Pilate Barbellion,^***" said that in his diary/book The Journal of a Disappointed Man. After being rejected from the army, Cummings found out he had multiple sclerosis, and five years to live. His response was to think, philosophize, and write. I think the above quote, where he says that no matter what happens, the things that [literally] make him will keep going, that his death just gives matter to make new things, has Democritus' atom theory neatly interwoven. Democritus deduced that all things were made up of small, indestructable blocks called 'atoms' (the un-cuttable), and that these blocks linked together in infinite variety, to build the world around us. When something died, the atoms would separate, and join with other atoms to build new things. Cummings is saying that once he dies, his atoms will do just that: separate, and build new things!

The other connection I noticed was that Cummings mentions that he doesn't care what happens to his Soul. Democritus taught that the Soul was made of special atoms, which could only link with other Soul atoms. When the body carrying a Soul died, the Soul too would break apart, the atoms then wandering through the universe to build new Souls. Cummings didn't care what happened to his Soul, because regardless of what religion was right about what happens after death (Heaven, Hell, reincarnation, The Void) his molecules would keep going, and that in a way, he'd always have a presence.

He took solace in the fact that even when he was gone, his parts would carry on. Mauling this over, I was reminded of two things:

1. An xkcd comic, where a man and his daughter are playing with Lego bricks, when the man stops and wonders 'what happens to what we build when we take it apart.' His daughter points out that the Lego bricks just go back in the bin (return to the universe, to be reused), but he counters by explaining that what was built isn't bound to those pieces; they can go on to build trucks, buildings, spacecraft, anything. The comic then shows the daughter, later in life, deciding to be an organ donor, working on the logic that just because our organs make us up, it doesn't mean they're bound to us. Once we die, they can be used to help others. Basically the recycled atom idea, but on a more visible scale.
   
                       
   
   
2. A Carl Sagan quote
   

   "And we who embody the local eyes and ears and thoughts and feelings of the cosmos we've begun, at last, to wonder about our origins. Star stuff, contemplating the stars organized collections of 10 billion-billion-billion atoms contemplating the evolution of matter tracing that long path by which it arrived at consciousness here on the planet Earth and perhaps, throughout the cosmos."

   What he was saying was that life was made of the molecules of broken down stars, and that over the eons, those old, recycled molecules found their way into making sentient beings, which then started wondering how they came to be. The star-stuff began wondering about the stars. The universe has, in a way, become self-aware^****. The recycled atoms have looked around, and started trying to learn about how they happened.

I think this is a good way to look at life. Even when we as we understand ourselves are gone, the things that made us carry on. They build new things, which in turn pass, giving their atoms back to build more. Even if we're gone, we make a contribution that carries on for eternity. I think that's an idea that is just ridiculously inspiring. "Nothing really dies. It just comes back in a new form."

---
On the advice of one of my friends, I'm going to try putting my longer parenthesis'd rambling down here with general notes about stuff. If I like this format, I'll stick with it.

*something about saying that "the sky is the limit" is stupid, cause we've gone past the sky, to the moon. It was pretty inspirational, and I might use it if I make a post about humanism
**Full text: "To me the honour is sufficient of belonging to the universe — such a great universe, and so grand a scheme of things. Not even Death can rob me of that honour. For nothing can alter the fact that I have lived; I have been I, if for ever so short a time. And when I am dead, the matter which composes my body is indestructible—and eternal, so that come what may to my 'Soul,' my dust will always be going on, each separate atom of me playing its separate part — I shall still have some sort of a finger in the pie. When I am dead, you can boil me, burn me, drown me, scatter me — but you cannot destroy me: my little atoms would merely deride such heavy vengeance. Death can do no more than kill you."
***While I'm not a fan of nom de plumes, I do think he chose a pretty rad pen name.
****At least, that's how I've always read that quote. The universe getting to the point were a part of itself looks down, and wonders, "were did all this come from?"

Sophie's World 1: The Phantom Menace's Birthday Card

M'kay, so the first chapter of Sophie's World (In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. Or it might have been The Garden of Eden. I don't really remember the name. From now on, I'll just try to be close to the chapter names) raised two questions: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" It also introduced the Hilde arc (a mismailed birthday card! BIGGEST MYSTERY EVAR!), which will hopefully get explored later in the book. Otherwise it's just a dangling plot thread, and I'm wrong in calling it an arc. It would also mean this could be a book of Kudzu plots, which would suck.

The point of these questions is to launch Sophie into a philosophical spiral (she starts wondering if she'd been given a different name, would she have become a different person, and if everything must come from something, then the question of how everything came to be is a question that keeps looping back, because God wouldn't be able to create himself before he existed). That spiral then sends her into a loop of thinking about how great life is, which makes her think about how much death sucks, which made her think about how great life is, which makes her think about how much death sucks, repeat ad infinitum...

Once she snaps out of that endless thought train (okay, so she didn't quite repeated to infinity), she then figures that she has three problems to solve:

1. Who sent her the letters?
2. What are the answers to the questions on her mind?
3. Who is Hilde*?

The next day (in Chapter 2, Rise of the Planet of the Top Hats), Sophie's friend Joanna gets actual dialog, which I think is a real shame. Apparently, Black Jack and badminton are just the bee's knees, and when Sophie disagrees, Joanna responds by getting angry and storming off to her house, leaving Sophie to wander home in the dangerous roads of Norway (according to the Pirate Bay, polar bears roam the streets of Sweden, attacking people. Norway borders on Sweden, so I assume there's some spill over. Unless the Norwegians have some awesome military unit that patrols the streets, killing any murderous polar bears. But I've never heard of such a unit, so I have to assume there is no such unit), all by herself. Despite the wishes of Joanna, the worst friend a person could ask for, Sophie makes it home safe, and finds another letter. This letter (which basically serves as an introduction to Philosophy) somehow knew that Sophie's philosophical spiral involved the existence of God and whether or not there was life after death, and declares that philosophers climb rabbit hair (so they might stare into the face of God) for a hobby. After reading this (and forgetting to breathe for a little while), she goes to check her mail box again. She finds another letter, which declares that housewives consider indoor flight to be quite improper, but don't mind the idea of men climbing rabbit hair so they might stare into the face of God whilst shouting that we're floating in space (which I'm sure could be tied to the idea that we're all just dust in the wind).

It turns out that this is a metaphor, and the whole of reality is not just some rabbit being pulled from a celestial top hat (anyone who has read some of Terry Pratchett's work knows that the Universe is actually just the contents of a leather bag carried by an old man as he journeys through space** ***). The idea of the metaphor is that when we're born, we're at the tip of the hairs, and everything is vast and new and wonderful. As we age, we climb down the hairs, nestling in the mess of hairs, getting comfy and complacent. Unless you're a philosopher! Then at some point you drag yourself out of that boring, humdrum life and reclimb the hairs, to stare a new at the vast and wonderful world [of stage magic].

So, through the ancient practices of reading and not breathing, Sophie learns how to piss off her mother, and thus realizes she has been saved from a comfy, complacent life.

:BLACKOUT:


---

*Sophie's logic is that if one weird thing happened around the same time as another weird thing, the two events must be related. Horrible logic, but it sets the plot ball in motion, so whatever.
**there is debate as to whether or not the leather bag and the old man are also inside the leather bag that carries the universe.
***also worth note that the world is carried on the backs of four elephants, who are standing on the back of a giant space turtle that journeys through space.