The System of the World and Shinto

This week I finished The System of the World by Neal Stephenson. In an episode of Family Guy Peter turns down a boat for a mystery box then about 2 minutes later he turns to Lois and says, "hey remember the time I turned down the boat for the mystery box?". This book has a few lines like that, but they are referring to the first book in the series, which I read over a year ago so it actually made sense. I was going to write about how it seemed weird reading the series over the course of a year, but I realized that it is nothing to compared to what all the Harry Potter fans have been going through.

Anyway, Neal did pull a bit of his classic style of starting crazy and then ending super crazy, but it was a bit more muted since the starting point was real history and the end point had to fit into history. I give Neal credit for doing something different, but I do hope he gets back to futuristic novels. The series talks a lot about alchemy and at work we had sorted some parts into piles we called gold and silver then we found a way to make silvers into golds so I started calling it alchemy and it caught on. So now a few people at work refer to the group that figured it out as alchemists.

And apparently Randall Munroe is also spying on me (yeah I know the alt-text is about Cryptonomicron, but close enough).

I also read Shinto by Scott Littleton. Those who know far more about Shinto feel free to correct me. It's odd, other than Jess talking about it, I don't think I had heard of Shinto before, but apparently it is the major religion in Japan. One of the main things I got from the book is that in Japan they are much more willing to mix religions. Both taking parts of others and incorporating them and being both Shinto and Buddhist and picking which parts of each to celebrate. Such as, most marriages are the Shinto custom and most funerals are the Buddhist tradition (in general Shinto is more about what happens when alive and Buddhism is more about after death).

Shinto has a huge number of spirits of varying types and ranks. To me it is interesting since Judaism prides itself so much on being the first monotheistic religion that growing up Jewish it gave me a sense that monotheism is in some way more advanced, but really there's no reason that's true. Also having tons of gods and spirits seems way more interesting. It also seems to allow for better stories since the gods are not all powerful and interact rather than just having this unknowable all powerful force.