the gods must be angry
May. 30th, 2012 08:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marycatelliThe gods have agendas of their own. And given that they are -- or should be -- the Powers that Be in the story, these agendas will be kinda important. Even if you put them off-stage entirely.
Even if you, as the author, know they are entirely imaginary within the world's framework. The characters don't know that. Pretty much by definition.
So religious duties are ones of consequence. Impiety is a public menace. The degree of enforcement will vary widely -- probably chiefly predicated on the frequency and scale of disasters -- and even the scoffers will probably be not atheists but just lax and so clean up their acts really fast -- even with personal disasters. "The Devil were sick, the Devil a monk would be." In good times, they might be slack; the term superstitious came from a Latin term "super-pious" because after all, a man ought not to concern himself obsessively with the gods and their augeries, even though you could be too slack, on the other hand.
On a larger scale -- well, the Pythogereans were vegetarians. Mostly. But even they would attend public sacrifices and accept the lot of meat that fell to them, and eat it. (One of the rites the Greeks tried to force in Maccabees. Then, they were trying to drive everyone in practices they considered pious. Regarding other tribes as equally people means that you start to care about their practices.)
I have heard that the Romans, hearing the Jews had stopped sacrifices in the Temple because of some defilement, had indignantly started to offer sacrifices themselves. I don't know if it's true, but it's certainly plausible.
It's amazing how few works have their characters think that their worship of gods is signficiant. No one ever wonders if the gods are angry with them.
Even if you, as the author, know they are entirely imaginary within the world's framework. The characters don't know that. Pretty much by definition.
So religious duties are ones of consequence. Impiety is a public menace. The degree of enforcement will vary widely -- probably chiefly predicated on the frequency and scale of disasters -- and even the scoffers will probably be not atheists but just lax and so clean up their acts really fast -- even with personal disasters. "The Devil were sick, the Devil a monk would be." In good times, they might be slack; the term superstitious came from a Latin term "super-pious" because after all, a man ought not to concern himself obsessively with the gods and their augeries, even though you could be too slack, on the other hand.
On a larger scale -- well, the Pythogereans were vegetarians. Mostly. But even they would attend public sacrifices and accept the lot of meat that fell to them, and eat it. (One of the rites the Greeks tried to force in Maccabees. Then, they were trying to drive everyone in practices they considered pious. Regarding other tribes as equally people means that you start to care about their practices.)
I have heard that the Romans, hearing the Jews had stopped sacrifices in the Temple because of some defilement, had indignantly started to offer sacrifices themselves. I don't know if it's true, but it's certainly plausible.
It's amazing how few works have their characters think that their worship of gods is signficiant. No one ever wonders if the gods are angry with them.
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Date: 2012-06-01 12:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-01 12:19 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-01 12:39 am (UTC)You know, for all the sociological goofiness to be found in AD&D 2E the racial gods provided a lot of insight into racial behavior.
no subject
Date: 2012-06-01 12:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-06-16 04:03 am (UTC)If you're talking about fantasy rooted in premodern settings, I don't find it that strange. Most of the most popular writers, I've found, and the most vocal readers, tend to come out of secular, middle-class upbringings--and in my own experience many aren't just unwilling to engage with matters of faith, but are unable to. It's become something outside their experience. Thus these strange pseudo-medieval/classical worlds where one of the most important elements of the medieval/classical worlds are almost entirely absent, as found in Patrick Rothfuss et al(and there are some who see any type of organized religion as evil and therefore unsuitable for their main characters to have faith, except the villains: see Robert J. Sawyer). It's pretty common to see secular humanists prancing around the Middle Ages in historical fiction, as well, and that's a great deal more absurd.
In a way...back in medieval Europe, it was impossible to be an atheist because there was no conceptual framework for such a thing; now, it's almost as if the opposite is true for some folks.
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Date: 2012-06-16 01:09 pm (UTC)No, it's strange, no matter how widespread the sloppiness is.