A recent New Yorker article on fairy tales fascinated me (quotes below). Apparently the fairy tales once “told at rural firesides” were for adults, full of sex and violence, and cynical – they did not often affirm common ideals. This stands in sharp contrast to most fiction genres today, especially today’s fairy tales targeted at kids. Why were long ago stories so much more cynical? They remind me of some joke genres, like
Do you equate idealistic to mutual and respectful or simply to a hypocritical sugar coating of reality from official institution? Aka political correctness and idealism are sometimes ridicolous, but too often its criticists are biased in simply wanting their disrespect and prejudice or obnoxiousness to have a patent or aura of "alternative" and "cool.
For those interested in more on the fairy tale there is a book by Joseph Campbell called The Flight of the Wild Gander. Chapter one "The fairy tale" may be helpful.
Apparently the fairy tales once “told at rural firesides” were for adults, full of sex and violence, and cynical – they did not often affirm common ideals. This stands in sharp contrast to most fiction genres today, especially today’s fairy tales targeted at kids. Why were long ago stories so much more cynical?
Perhaps they were the equivalent of our modern urban legends, which are also usually violent and cynical.
Eliezer and Vlad, you offer interesting examples to consider. There are probably other reasons than the visibility I identify for our society telling more ideal stories, and holding more ideal standards. Simple wealth is one plausible theory.
Reminds me of this book: The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (http://www.amazon.com/Great.... It was more than just the fairy tales that were shocking.
This phenomenon that the article refers to in the Grimms' first edition is currently displayed in a lot of stand up comedy sets, forwarded e-mails, and blogs.
It seems generally the case that those in power would want to prevent the formation of close social groups. The PC term for that is "stamping out corruption", e.g. the existence of groups with mutual loyalties to one another rather than to the larger system. The constitution originally protected freedom of association for a reason.Another obvious cost of suppressing cynicism is locking in far-mode ideals as a guide for behavior when that's not the purpose they are there to serve. BTW, I think that there are probably several "modes" in the sense you refer to, not just two. Near and Far seem related to the classical "Hermetic" and "Apollonian" styles, suggesting a third "Dionysian" style
I agree that people behave in the manner you call "homo hypocritus", but it doesn't seem plausible to me that evolution had enough time to shape such behavior. My guess is that it's a consequence of some more basic design feature, though evolution might have accentuated or cultivated it. In general, self-deception doesn't seem to me to need an evolutionary explanation. Motivated cognition in general is clearly frequently maladaptive, and seems driven by reinforcement learning and a failure to distinguish internal models from external data. Likewise, we wouldn't expect, to have accurate self-knowledge by default, any more than a computer program knows about its features and hardware by default.
Do you equate idealistic to mutual and respectful or simply to a hypocritical sugar coating of reality from official institution? Aka political correctness and idealism are sometimes ridicolous, but too often its criticists are biased in simply wanting their disrespect and prejudice or obnoxiousness to have a patent or aura of "alternative" and "cool.
Hm, I'm struck by the similarity to Wikileaks' stated goal, to make conspiracies harder by forcing them to expend more effort on concealment.
For those interested in more on the fairy tale there is a book by Joseph Campbell called The Flight of the Wild Gander. Chapter one "The fairy tale" may be helpful.
Bingo on the prevention of close social groups by those in power. Governments create ideological camps.
Apparently the fairy tales once “told at rural firesides” were for adults, full of sex and violence, and cynical – they did not often affirm common ideals. This stands in sharp contrast to most fiction genres today, especially today’s fairy tales targeted at kids. Why were long ago stories so much more cynical?
Perhaps they were the equivalent of our modern urban legends, which are also usually violent and cynical.
Eliezer and Vlad, you offer interesting examples to consider. There are probably other reasons than the visibility I identify for our society telling more ideal stories, and holding more ideal standards. Simple wealth is one plausible theory.
Curious: Were they as bad as http://lesswrong.com/lw/yl/... ?
Reminds me of this book: The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (http://www.amazon.com/Great.... It was more than just the fairy tales that were shocking.
This phenomenon that the article refers to in the Grimms' first edition is currently displayed in a lot of stand up comedy sets, forwarded e-mails, and blogs.
It seems generally the case that those in power would want to prevent the formation of close social groups. The PC term for that is "stamping out corruption", e.g. the existence of groups with mutual loyalties to one another rather than to the larger system. The constitution originally protected freedom of association for a reason.Another obvious cost of suppressing cynicism is locking in far-mode ideals as a guide for behavior when that's not the purpose they are there to serve. BTW, I think that there are probably several "modes" in the sense you refer to, not just two. Near and Far seem related to the classical "Hermetic" and "Apollonian" styles, suggesting a third "Dionysian" style
I agree that people behave in the manner you call "homo hypocritus", but it doesn't seem plausible to me that evolution had enough time to shape such behavior. My guess is that it's a consequence of some more basic design feature, though evolution might have accentuated or cultivated it. In general, self-deception doesn't seem to me to need an evolutionary explanation. Motivated cognition in general is clearly frequently maladaptive, and seems driven by reinforcement learning and a failure to distinguish internal models from external data. Likewise, we wouldn't expect, to have accurate self-knowledge by default, any more than a computer program knows about its features and hardware by default.
I'm reminded of my attempts to read Grimm's Fairy Tales to my kids: http://stuartbuck.blogspot....http://stuartbuck.blogspot....