Where do ideas go to die?

[ciaan]

This past weekend, cos and I were talking about kinds of fiction, and then the idea of belief and gods subsisting on belief, so that they have to do/be whatever people think they do/are, and if their worshippers stop believing in them they shrivel up and die (or have to sneak off and survive in a fragment of belief somewhere). We were trying to think

Comments

[slinkling]

Interesting stuff. I feel certain I've read these sorts of scenarios (lack of belief --> the death of the the god) elsewhere, though off the top of my head I can't remember where. I'll keep thinking about it. But Gaiman's done the most with it, that I know of.

I'm also really intrigued by the flip-side of this concept, in which new upwellings of belief effectively bring about the birth of a new deity or suchlike. The cult-like devotion that gathers around certain dead celebrities, for example, which gradually leads to a general notion of that celebrity surviving somehow after death -- whether that's in the form of Elvis-sightings, or people praying to Princess Di for a miracle, etc. An awful lot of holy shrines, as I understand it, became famous and accrued their power as holy places because somebody allegedly saw or did something miraculous there, which led to a group of people telling the story of that miracle, which led to more and more people believing in that miracle, and sooner or later the place or person involved is imbued with a reputation for holiness/miraculousness, people make pilgrimages, and so forth...

Honestly I just find belief, in general, to be a wacky and fascinating thing.