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Aristotle's Poetics. Yes, it was published before 2021. A lot of writers try to set their own rules, but according to the best, you need limitations to be crea
by muzani 5y ago
Aristotle's Poetics. Yes, it was published before 2021.
A lot of writers try to set their own rules, but according to the best, you need limitations to be creative. Just like you would play sports with rules. That rulebook is Poetics.
It's the kind of book that's so information dense that you have to read it slowly. Summaries are often as long as the book itself.
There's some aging in there. Notably the concept of hamartia has changed from "mistake" to "sin" over a few hundred years. Good stories were all tragedy back then, where a noble person makes a mistake. And the audience is fearful because if this superior person can make mistakes, what about me?
Since Christianity, the philosophy has been that everyone makes mistakes, but repenting for it saves you from tragedy. And more popular now is a reversal. Some tries to slay a monster, but the monster is too perfect. But eventually the monster suffers from hamartia (missing the mark, making human sins) and the hero exploits that to win.
Besides drama, the book also covers actual poetry and music, both of which have their own limitations, but that part was all Greek to me.
- surajs 5y ago"you need limitations to be creative", who sold you that? this whole genre of "adversity builds character" type of advice is a backwards rationalisation at its purest. no, adversity does not build character but merely reveals it, just as limitations don't make you creative, rather creativity forces you to find newer ruts. also, you lost me at aristotle ;)
- fsloth 5y agoIt's not adversity. Merely constraining the dimensionality of the problem space a bit, hence making the problem of finding the good stuff easier. It's actually opposite to adversity, the constraint is supposed to _help_ the creative process.
- muzani 5y ago"who sold you that?" Specifically, David Mamet and Aaron Sorkin, who directly tells everyone to read Poetics. But also anyone who engages in poetry and lyrics; the whole idea of poetry is adding limits and seeing what you can do with it. Think of it like chords in music, or moves on a game. If you play tennis and anyone can just kick or throw the ball, that's not very fun.
- Strom 5y ago> "adversity builds character" type of advice is a backwards rationalisation at its purest. no, adversity does not build character but merely reveals it This seems like the classic fixed vs growth mindset situation. There are those who think that we are born with all our capability and then there are those who think that we can gain new capabilities through experience. If you're truly set on believing that everyone is static, then fine. However if you have some curiosity, then a pretty good gentle introduction to growth mindset can be seen in this short 10 minute summary of an RSA talk. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl9TVbAal5s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yl9TVbAal5s
- jeremiahbuckley 5y agoI have always seen greek tragedy as the precursor technology to the scientific method. If you didn’t know how the world worked you would advance confidently on a determined path, protected by the gods. If the gods turned their face from you…tragedy. But to me that’s another way of describing hypothesis and (failed) experiments. But before the scientific method was established, failure was related to the god’s scorn. Failures of Heroes are the most confusing and interesting, so they are retold. And, related, Christian forgiveness was critical technological advance to making scientific failures acceptable.
- interpenetrate 5y ago> And, related, Christian forgiveness was critical technological advance to making scientific failures acceptable. So did it just take 1,600 years for that critical advance to express itself, or something? I judge Greek technology (and all technology is the result of scientific failures) to be greater than Medieval technology. Maybe you mean a "Protestant forgiveness?"
- SuoDuanDao 5y agoI would think it took 1600 years between a small group of weirdos intuiting that forgiveness was an important, perhaps even a key, virtue and society being organised in such a way as to actually be capable of expressing it in the realm of technology.