Originally posted by Endless Mike
So the New Gods have no physical substance and are just ideas?
Superman can punch ideas now
If its Platonic Meta Physics that Morison is using, he's implying that the underlying essence of everything is ideas, and that the material realm, Matter, energy, Substance, Primary secondary qualities are in fact, shadowy representations of these Ideas. I.e in the same way a shadow is a light representation of a body, the material universe is a shadowy of the True reality; the realms of Ideas or the Forms.
Material things like humans and Kryptonians, are combination's these shadowy representations.
The New Gods on the other hand originate from the Ideal realm, not the shadow realm. so In turn can basically do what they want with the material realm.
If u want a better comparison, Imagine that the material universe (The D.C. universe) is like a photograph, and the Ideal realm , is the thing, the photo was taken of. The New Gods, come from this Real world, I.e. the world the photo is representing. Their powers could be comparable to a photographer, using photo shop, I.e. they can basically do what they want with the representation, Including creating a representation of themselves in the photo. I could take a photo of some other place i had never been to, and then combine it with a photo of myself. that would then be considered a representation of myself.
To simplify, u can think of energy, I.e. the essence of everything material, as a shadowy representation of Ideas. So instead of matter giving rise to brains, which create Ideas, Ideas give rise to energy, which gives rise to matter, and then to brains. Plato believed that instead of brains creating Ideas, they became links to the Idea realm, I.e acting like a doorway to it. So instead of creating Ideas, we act as a "passport control" for them.
