Both magic and nostalgia are common, arise more when we feel threatened, and comfort us in such situations. … Both … rely especially heavily on wishful thinking – magic presumes we are especially able to influence events important to us, while nostalgia presumes that our previous social orders were especially functional, moral, good to people like us, etc. The fact that fantasy tends to combine both magic and nostalgia suggests that some readers have an especially strong tolerance for wishful thinking, and/or demand for comfort, and fantasy targets that audience. (
Sorry, I don't think I was being clear. I was responding to this:
My prediction is that in that vast stable future, when they tell nostalgic stories about other eras, they’ll tell more stories set in industry worlds than in farming or forager worlds.
I think stories set in the past will continue to mostly be set in farming worlds.
Interestingly, very few stories are told about forager worlds ever seem to get told at all. Golding's The Inheritors, a handful of ok-ish fiction movies, a "documentary" like Nanook of the North are all I can think of.
"For a cosmologically brief time, everything changed rapidly, anything seemed possible, and its mostly rich residents indulged in a great many real-life fantasies."
That sounds awfully like a description of the time when Wright's "Golden Age" trilogy takes place. I can't believe that a man who would write such a detailed, insightful portrait of posthumanity many millennia hence would be so blind to the wonders of the present age. Granted, much or all of that trilogy were written before or during the author's conversion to Christianity (by his own timeline), but I look at the work as a greatness in itself, free of religious or sociopolitical baggage. It still stands with me as one of the most believable and well-thought-out depictions of humankind tens of thousands of years in the future, along with the Dune series. I think anyone in search of serious far-future hard SF would be well served by reading the "Golden Age" trilogy. His subsequent short pieces in the same universe aren't so shabby, either.
Anyone who would think that New York’s philosophers are spewing PC relativism shouldn’t be expressing themselves on the subject because they are talking out of their ass.It probably won't improve your view of Wright, but, in fairness to him, I should also say that he is probably also restricting his attention to philosophers who have had some noticeable impact on popular intellectual culture. That's the kind of "fame" that he means, a fame that could conceivably inspire people who read fantasy novels.
So, for example, Thomas Nagel or John Rawls might qualify. But they co-wrote a legal brief arguing that states shouldn't be able to criminalize assisted suicide. In Wright's view, assisted suicide is deeply evil (Wright is Catholic).
We have plenty of modern stories about magic and magicians. We just call it science and scientists. They substitute for priests (who often did know a few things like astronomy). The work of engineers is just as understandable to the average person as the tricks and simple machines used by the ancient priests. I suspect the average engineer is just as respected as the average cleric was in the day. I would further suggest that the chairman of the FED is the modern day high priest considering the amount of attention paid to his every intentionally obtuse utterance and prognostication.
Joyce wrote about a modern world where everything is alive with personality. Some others have too, though possibly less well.
It's much harder to do authority, ingroup and purity well for a modern person, but plenty of movies and stories do it well in the modern world. Think of I Am Legend, for example, or Margaret Atwood's stuff.
To clarify for David etc, I certainly don't think that NYU Philosophy professors are spewing PC relativism, but I don't think that most of them are all that good at philosophy, or at all good at lived philosophy, even if they have much higher IQs than the Greeks, which they surely do. I also think that it's important to note that they are bad at philosophy, IMHO, because they are adhering to a method that is basically known not to work, while the Greeks were just trying anything that seemed (usually falsely) like it might work. There is, as I noted, plenty of real philosophy going on, IMHO, just not, for the most part, in 'philosophy' departments, but as Pirsig observed, there almost never has been much real philosophy there, just as few great novels have been written in English Literature departments (though surely a few have been).
Yeah, fair point. I should have re-written that first sentence. On a more careful reading, it really seems to me that Wright is just describing prejudices that people have,and how these feed into nostalgia. I do still have the impression that the New York prejudice is something he was *endorsing*, but apart from his not calling attention to its falsity, I don't have clear evidence in the text that he does endorse it. If I wrote about nostalgia, I would think it's important to distinguish between nostalgia that's grounded in history versus nostalgia based on false preconceptions, or "nostalgia for an age that never existed" (an expression of Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon). The latter should probably not be considered a species of nostalgia at all.
I would have to disagree. Nostalgia for the pre-modern world there just because these things happened a long time ago. There really is a divide between the pre- and post-modern worlds and stories set in the pre-modern era are popular because they feature the following:
1. A world where everything is alive with personality. Dryads, gods, ghosts etc.2. A world where moral values are based on authority, ingroup, and purity.
Because stories set in our era can't plausibly feature those things, there will not be a general nostalgia for our era.
You mean they don't exist already?
His subsequent short pieces in the same universe aren’t so shabby, either.I didn't know about the subsequent short stories. Where can I find them :) ?
Sorry, I don't think I was being clear. I was responding to this:
My prediction is that in that vast stable future, when they tell nostalgic stories about other eras, they’ll tell more stories set in industry worlds than in farming or forager worlds.
I think stories set in the past will continue to mostly be set in farming worlds.
Interestingly, very few stories are told about forager worlds ever seem to get told at all. Golding's The Inheritors, a handful of ok-ish fiction movies, a "documentary" like Nanook of the North are all I can think of.
At a very low level. Know a lot of pure maidens or a lot of people who celebrate them?
"authority, ingroup, and purity"?
These three values are quite common in today's society.
"For a cosmologically brief time, everything changed rapidly, anything seemed possible, and its mostly rich residents indulged in a great many real-life fantasies."
That sounds awfully like a description of the time when Wright's "Golden Age" trilogy takes place. I can't believe that a man who would write such a detailed, insightful portrait of posthumanity many millennia hence would be so blind to the wonders of the present age. Granted, much or all of that trilogy were written before or during the author's conversion to Christianity (by his own timeline), but I look at the work as a greatness in itself, free of religious or sociopolitical baggage. It still stands with me as one of the most believable and well-thought-out depictions of humankind tens of thousands of years in the future, along with the Dune series. I think anyone in search of serious far-future hard SF would be well served by reading the "Golden Age" trilogy. His subsequent short pieces in the same universe aren't so shabby, either.
That's a pretty reasonable point.
There's also lots of overt fantasy these days set in the modern world.
[Citation Needed]
Got anything that doesn't scream of armchair psychology, Thursday?
@David
Anyone who would think that New York’s philosophers are spewing PC relativism shouldn’t be expressing themselves on the subject because they are talking out of their ass.It probably won't improve your view of Wright, but, in fairness to him, I should also say that he is probably also restricting his attention to philosophers who have had some noticeable impact on popular intellectual culture. That's the kind of "fame" that he means, a fame that could conceivably inspire people who read fantasy novels.
So, for example, Thomas Nagel or John Rawls might qualify. But they co-wrote a legal brief arguing that states shouldn't be able to criminalize assisted suicide. In Wright's view, assisted suicide is deeply evil (Wright is Catholic).
We have plenty of modern stories about magic and magicians. We just call it science and scientists. They substitute for priests (who often did know a few things like astronomy). The work of engineers is just as understandable to the average person as the tricks and simple machines used by the ancient priests. I suspect the average engineer is just as respected as the average cleric was in the day. I would further suggest that the chairman of the FED is the modern day high priest considering the amount of attention paid to his every intentionally obtuse utterance and prognostication.
So do you disagree with my prediction about distant future fiction?
Joyce wrote about a modern world where everything is alive with personality. Some others have too, though possibly less well.
It's much harder to do authority, ingroup and purity well for a modern person, but plenty of movies and stories do it well in the modern world. Think of I Am Legend, for example, or Margaret Atwood's stuff.
To clarify for David etc, I certainly don't think that NYU Philosophy professors are spewing PC relativism, but I don't think that most of them are all that good at philosophy, or at all good at lived philosophy, even if they have much higher IQs than the Greeks, which they surely do. I also think that it's important to note that they are bad at philosophy, IMHO, because they are adhering to a method that is basically known not to work, while the Greeks were just trying anything that seemed (usually falsely) like it might work. There is, as I noted, plenty of real philosophy going on, IMHO, just not, for the most part, in 'philosophy' departments, but as Pirsig observed, there almost never has been much real philosophy there, just as few great novels have been written in English Literature departments (though surely a few have been).
Yeah, fair point. I should have re-written that first sentence. On a more careful reading, it really seems to me that Wright is just describing prejudices that people have,and how these feed into nostalgia. I do still have the impression that the New York prejudice is something he was *endorsing*, but apart from his not calling attention to its falsity, I don't have clear evidence in the text that he does endorse it. If I wrote about nostalgia, I would think it's important to distinguish between nostalgia that's grounded in history versus nostalgia based on false preconceptions, or "nostalgia for an age that never existed" (an expression of Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon). The latter should probably not be considered a species of nostalgia at all.
"Nostalgia for the pre-modern world isn't there just because these things happened a long time ago."
I would have to disagree. Nostalgia for the pre-modern world there just because these things happened a long time ago. There really is a divide between the pre- and post-modern worlds and stories set in the pre-modern era are popular because they feature the following:
1. A world where everything is alive with personality. Dryads, gods, ghosts etc.2. A world where moral values are based on authority, ingroup, and purity.
Because stories set in our era can't plausibly feature those things, there will not be a general nostalgia for our era.