Babel Clash

There’s a different concept going on here with Roman and Greek style gods.   Those gods are an extension of the old pagan-style nature worship.   So a pagan culture might worship natural forces, like lightning, wind, the ocean, etc.   The role of these gods is to personify those forces, and to give each god a personality that symbolises the natural force that they represent — so Thor god of thunder is violent and temperamental, and Poseidon god of the ocean is, well, violent and temperamental…. see a pattern here?

Given that those natural forces can be destructive and compassionless, no wonder the gods have those personalities also.   So the concept of worship in those societies is very different to in ours — a pagan society sees itself surrounded by self-interested and selfish forces who need to be placated least they kill everyone for sheer spite.   Though probably the European Christian concept of god wasn’t so different five hundred years ago, and a lot of Christians still say he’ll burn you in hell forever if you don’t believe in him, which sounds pretty nasty and self important to me.

And I reckon we haven’t lost this love of wild and powerful forces, and the idea of heroes who are empowered by those forces.   These days we call them superheroes, and once a year people gather to worship them at ComicCon, and other such religious festivals.   Quite seriously, I think the pantheon of superheroes is the closest thing we still have to the old pagan god worship still around.   Maybe that’s why superhero movies are some of the highest-grossing movies in India, as the tales of Spiderman and company don’t seem so different to a lot of Indian viewers from tales of Hanuman and Ganesha.

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