3 ms·

Weird take - how exactly could literature improve "in depth and characterization"? What new "technology" has been made available to authors that enables them to

Weird take - how exactly could literature improve "in depth and characterization"? What new "technology" has been made available to authors that enables them to create deeper characters?

voisin 1y ago
Not OP, but breadth and depth of understanding about psychology have improved dramatically and exposure to diverse viewpoints thanks to hyper connectedness likely make it possible to go deeper.
- bowsamic 1y ago
  In my opinion, all the best art expresses the "unknown knowns" of the human, i.e., the unconscious that has not been brought to light. Art is an expression of what is really true but not known. Knowing about it doesn't make it easier to express. To bring up the old trope, the curtains are never just blue, not in the sense that the artist is always putting in some conscious meaning, but that the choice of blue says something about the artist's human feeling even if they didn't intend it
- zabzonk 1y ago
  > breadth and depth of understanding about psychology have improved dramatically Provide one tiny bit of evidence for this. Do you seriously think that Shakespeare (for e.g.) did not have a profound understanding of human psychology?
  - KaoruAoiShiho 1y ago
    If he did it's not shown in his writing, or really any pre-20th century writers really.
    - daseiner1 1y ago
      this is bait
    - zabzonk 1y ago
      have you read any pre-20th C writers? Or any novels or plays at all?
      - KaoruAoiShiho 1y ago
        The conflicts in his plays just aren't that profound, you know? Compared to modern "psychological turmoil" it's relatively simplistic, something like Macbeth's "ambition vs morality". Modern writers pull in more layers of depth, explain the ebbs and flows of motivations and identities through social forces and work more with complex ideas like self-deception and rationalization. Shakespeare's characters are generally reliable narrators in a way that later lit tends not to be.
  - daseiner1 1y ago
    there's a reason Harold Bloom titled his book about Shakespeare The Invention of the Human
  - altruios 1y ago
    not who you are replying to - but: Shakespeare was limited by the number of interactions he had with humans. He did not have the internet. We also have neurology as a science now. So that's one bit of evidence for the claim. Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time by many humans working together. Two things can be true.
    - kstrauser 1y ago
      Hard disagree. I made an analogy in another reply to Monet not knowing quantum physics. Lacking that information didn’t deter his famous explorations of light effects. Humans are great at figuring out how things behave before we have a great model of why they do it. And by Shakespeare’s time, we had a pretty good grasp on practical human psychology, even if we had less understanding of the mechanisms behind it.
      - altruios 1y ago
        We are excellent at figuring things out. We get better at it over time, as we grow our collective knowledge base. I agree that we are great at figuring out things before we have a model of why things work. And we have a mountain of context to work from already. Shakespeare wasn't an idiot, and he wasn't in a vacuum but his 'context window' was 'smaller' than a lot of people today(quotes because dubious terminology). Art is improving. Science is improving. human understanding, and communication of that understanding is improving too. That is my point.
        kstrauser 1y ago
        I won't argue against that at all. Someday we're going to have someone with Shakespeare's brilliance and modern foundations, and I can't wait to see what that looks like. (And maybe we already do have that person. I'm shamefully out of date with modern literature.)
    - KineticLensman 1y ago
- internet_points 1y ago
  or maybe hyper connectedness is just making writers more distracted, making it harder to see deeply into human relations, feelings and thoughts

Weird take - how exactly could literature improve "in depth and characterization"? What new "technology" has been made available to authors that enables them to create deeper characters?

voisin 1y ago

Not OP, but breadth and depth of understanding about psychology have improved dramatically and exposure to diverse viewpoints thanks to hyper connectedness likely make it possible to go deeper.

bowsamic 1y ago
In my opinion, all the best art expresses the "unknown knowns" of the human, i.e., the unconscious that has not been brought to light. Art is an expression of what is really true but not known. Knowing about it doesn't make it easier to express. To bring up the old trope, the curtains are never just blue, not in the sense that the artist is always putting in some conscious meaning, but that the choice of blue says something about the artist's human feeling even if they didn't intend it
zabzonk 1y ago
> breadth and depth of understanding about psychology have improved dramatically Provide one tiny bit of evidence for this. Do you seriously think that Shakespeare (for e.g.) did not have a profound understanding of human psychology?
- KaoruAoiShiho 1y ago
  If he did it's not shown in his writing, or really any pre-20th century writers really.
  - daseiner1 1y ago
    this is bait
  - zabzonk 1y ago
    have you read any pre-20th C writers? Or any novels or plays at all?
    - KaoruAoiShiho 1y ago
      The conflicts in his plays just aren't that profound, you know? Compared to modern "psychological turmoil" it's relatively simplistic, something like Macbeth's "ambition vs morality". Modern writers pull in more layers of depth, explain the ebbs and flows of motivations and identities through social forces and work more with complex ideas like self-deception and rationalization. Shakespeare's characters are generally reliable narrators in a way that later lit tends not to be.
- daseiner1 1y ago
  there's a reason Harold Bloom titled his book about Shakespeare The Invention of the Human
- altruios 1y ago
  not who you are replying to - but: Shakespeare was limited by the number of interactions he had with humans. He did not have the internet. We also have neurology as a science now. So that's one bit of evidence for the claim. Of course Shakespeare had a profound understanding of human nature. And of course he did not have the working vocabulary and knowledge base of modern psychology which has been built up over time by many humans working together. Two things can be true.
  - kstrauser 1y ago
    Hard disagree. I made an analogy in another reply to Monet not knowing quantum physics. Lacking that information didn’t deter his famous explorations of light effects. Humans are great at figuring out how things behave before we have a great model of why they do it. And by Shakespeare’s time, we had a pretty good grasp on practical human psychology, even if we had less understanding of the mechanisms behind it.
    - altruios 1y ago
      We are excellent at figuring things out. We get better at it over time, as we grow our collective knowledge base. I agree that we are great at figuring out things before we have a model of why things work. And we have a mountain of context to work from already. Shakespeare wasn't an idiot, and he wasn't in a vacuum but his 'context window' was 'smaller' than a lot of people today(quotes because dubious terminology). Art is improving. Science is improving. human understanding, and communication of that understanding is improving too. That is my point.
      - kstrauser 1y ago
        I won't argue against that at all. Someday we're going to have someone with Shakespeare's brilliance and modern foundations, and I can't wait to see what that looks like. (And maybe we already do have that person. I'm shamefully out of date with modern literature.)
  - KineticLensman 1y ago
internet_points 1y ago
or maybe hyper connectedness is just making writers more distracted, making it harder to see deeply into human relations, feelings and thoughts