"American Gods" [book by British writer Neil Gaiman] has been released for one or two seasons (a total of 16 episodes), maintaining the consistent style of American dramas, very yellow and violent, and it is also a rare philosophical + fantasy class that explores the war between gods and gods between religions, ancient gods, witch gods, gods of various regions, and modern gods.
Answer two questions before watching the show:
1. The birth of God
2. The death of God
First answer the first question, the birth of God, God is roughly divided into two categories: the first god and the latter god, the god of the first god in the ancient culture is usually born in the nothing, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient, is the collection of all human imagination and the unknown, in the process of development of personification, idolization, human beings endowed with a variety of supernatural abilities, in various mythological systems The status of gods is also different, but depending on the situation, the monistic god in Christianity and Islam has an essential difference from other pluralistic gods. In the grand system of god in the three Chinese religions, there are obvious bosses and invisible bosses, and there are also irreconcilable wars between each other, and wars that also exist in the same faction.
The gods of the later heavens usually evolved from folklore into gods, and after the government canonized the gods and given a certain position of gods, this kind of god is more complicated, part of it becomes a god through specific practice, such as Tao, Buddha, Confucianism, and some are named gods by the needs of the people, such as Guan Gong, and non-human beings have become gods through natural devastation, and the gray, white, yellow, blue, black and so on. There are also heroic gods after death in war, which is mostly found in European mythology.
The question is, is there a new God in modern society? The author gives a hypothesis: yes, and will produce all kinds of gods: the god of war, the god of technology, the god of credit cards, the god of television, the son of the United States (the will of the country), etc., the god of technology is a blonde boy with a white tights flashing electric light, smoking electronic cigarettes, the god of television (also known as the god of media) is the sexy goddess Madonna, and the god who leads all this (the boss) is a gentleman dressed, gloomy face of the Son of the United States, Implied as the national will for the American Dream (not the consciousness of the whole people but the embodiment of the consciousness of the ruling party or the interest faction). When human beings became more and more dependent on modern life and technology, the ancient gods had a crisis of survival, why was there an existential crisis? Isn't God equal to eternity? In fact, no, the root of God's survival is faith, if there is no believer, like a person without food will also die slowly, the more ancient the god is more difficult to maintain the number of believers, especially the ancient gods limited by the region, when the human living environment migrates, the gods will also be followed, rooted in the new land to survive, occasionally there is an interesting shot: God (Christianity) with the believers are different, the appearance also has different appearance characteristics, such as Asia is black hair, yellow skin, Europe's white skin blonde blue eyes , African curly hair, dark skin... God is no longer the only standard image, and as the aesthetic needs of the human community change their appearance, God will eventually please the faith. When God looks down on all beings from above, the beings provide the cornerstone for building the altar, and if believers have no faith, like an altar without a cornerstone, it will collapse. Gods fall into the human world, like ordinary people, rely on a skill to survive, such as the god of violence is a butcher, the god of death is a funeral parlor worker, the god of fire is driving a taxi....
Wednesday (Odin, the nordic god) incarnates as the human being and hires shadows to travel through the United States in search of ancient gods fighting a war with modern gods. The fascinating place of the American drama is not only the choice of the protagonist, the portrayal of the characters, but also the exquisite props, sets, framing, fascinating storyline, interspersed with all kinds of interesting small passages, such as folklore, deception, exotic style architecture, sexual encounters, the most important thing is to bring the thinking of religious belief, away from the depth of blind faith for the thinking of faith, God established religion, brilliant from prehistory to nearly ten centuries AD, God is far away from us, but also very close to us, China's god is a utilitarian god, What is the God of the West? The roots can be found and proven from this play. Thanks to this kind of subject matter for providing us with a perspective to think about. In the process of civilization, we are too young for human civilization!