I was reading about animated characters and how the more they are made more human the more we can identify with them. The more it becomes real. This goes beyond mere personification.

So then this morning I read in another thread (crickets/quails) and bradley said, "It's a quality of life issue. A life needs a balance of subjective and objective truths." His comment was a response to my wish to leave "a god" out of things.

I watched Succession recently (against my will) and had to keep reminding myself it wasn't real as I was thinking about the people non stop by the end of it like they were real and not actors with scripts and lights and action. Part of my mind had decided they were real and wasn't listening to the other half. Their problems were real and that made the people real--against my will.



Made me think about the relationship between the word subjective and the word truth. I don't see how you can link those as bradley does but I see it is a common practice among almost everybody these days. Proof of this is summed up with the joke davetheathiest posted a while ago. Funny and not.
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F0W6CYaaAAEeMH4?format=webp&name=900x900


an·thro·po·mor·phize
/ˌanTHrəpəˈmôrˌfīz/
verb
attribute human characteristics or behavior to (a god, animal, or object).

As in . . ."people's tendency to anthropomorphize their dogs" among other things.

So I happen to be looking into Egyptian Gods because I needed some info for a project on the one with the human body and the ibis head, Thoth, and I thought about all the thousands of gods down through the ages and I realized why we have all finally settled on a very anthropomorphized god. It's the same as with the cartoons. The more they look like us the more real they become. But the problem is, the more they act like us, the more we find our gods to be relatable; to be "subjective truths". Is there anything more frightening than a god patterned on earthlings?

And this is why we don't have a Golden Calf today. And why we can find all other gods as silly. Snakes for hair. Blue elephants. Faunus with goat horns, Dagon--half man half fish as the Mesopotamians liked their gods, Jackal head, or a trickster coyote.

So, seems we have our god right where we want him, anthropomorphized to the nth degree. We finally have a "Keeper"--in both senses of the word.

Yes. Well stated. It's what humans do!

I anthropomorphize my dog sometimes, but at least I recognize when I'm doing it.

We make up gods that serve all kinds of purposes, including our need to anthropomorphize things.

PS. I slogged through Succession too. I wonder if shows like that are popular because they help us realize our own screwed up families aren't the only ones with flawed and damaged people.

Excellent post, terrible pun.

SMH

Sydney Morning Herald?

I'm just jealous that you thought of that pun before I could.

Sydney Damn Morning Herald

A better word, IMO, is "reify". They take their ideas of how the world ought to be and construct a humanoid that they can then promote as essential to the universe.