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.


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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.