Small Gods

Plato developed the idea of Forms and as I understand it, it is the nature of things which is separate from the thing itself. For example Happy or Happiness is a real thing. No one would deny that it exists but not in material form, you can’t bring me a jar of happy. That doesn’t mean there is no such thing as happy and making someone sad, or indeed everyone sad wouldn’t make happy go away. Happy would still be a real thing we just wouldn’t be able to see it in a world where everyone was sad. So happy is a Form, a thing that while not real is fundamental and everlasting and which can be a part of a real thing. Eg some people are made happy by chocolate, so happy is part of the chocolate for them but it isn’t “the chocolate”, when the chocolate is gone happy continues. As a practical example you may stay happy for sometime after the chocolate is gone.


So I think gods work the same way in that they are brought into being by an acceptance of their existence and they never die but their influence declines. For example Ra the sun god was worshiped by the ancient Egyptians and was no doubt quite powerful at that time, no one would probably have denied the existence of Ra. He was especially problematic among bulls who used to be sacrificed to Ra I am sure that they would have agreed he was a real force at that time. Well not so many people worship Ra and invoking his aid in a crisis probably won’t help much as his (or hers I am not sure) power has been eroded by a lack of followers. On the other hand he hasn’t died entirely as I (for one) still know who he was. Therefore I think Ra has gone from Large god to small god, less people care about Ra and his power has waned.

In NZ we used to have a large and powerful god who is shrinking before our very eyes, our god was called Rugby and high priests were the NZRFU. Now while you can go and see a game of Rugby just like happy you rugby exists as a form it is imbued in the way some people behave and to some degree the way they think.

There is an old joke about turning props around at half time so that they knew which way to run (I used to be a prop so I can say that), the trouble is I have a suspicion that the NZRFU is mostly staffed by ex props or at least folk that think like props. For many years the fans have been shouting at them that it is time to turn around, stop going in this direction but they aren’t listening and so the large powerful god of Rugby is shrinking and getting smaller all the time.

Take the upcoming test in Dunedin with the mighty All Blacks playing the likely to be highly entertaining Fijians. This should be a fun match to go to with a pretty much guaranteed win to the AB’s mixed with a bit of open running rugby from the Fijians. So with 5 days out from the game only 10,000 of appox 30,000 seats have been sold. Imagine a test match (no matter who against) not being sold out (or mostly) at this point. What has happened?

Well I think the NZRFU ignored the golden rule “the customer is always right” and so their god is shrinking and while rugby will never disappear it may end up like the cult of Ra. On the upside the bulls are safer these days.