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2023-11: Warosu is now out of extended maintenance.

/lit/ - Literature

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12213185 No.12213185 [Reply] [Original]

Why cant' /lit/ accept the insane chasm of intellectual strength that separates post- and pre-Internet humans? Virtually everything written before the invention of World Wide Web is written by brainlets who didn't have all of the world's knowledge at their fingertips. It's hilarious to imagine how underdeveloped, underread, and unerudite these people were compared to the average Modern Man. Plato probably read less in his lifetime than average /lit/ poster reads in a year. Not just literature, discussions, articles, exposure to the billions of varied opinions and perspectives, ancients (which is to say anyone born before 1980s) do not even begin to compete. And yet, /lit/ persists in this delusion that the grass was greener centuries ago, it's laughable.

>> No.12213211

Restrictions are valuable.
How many people alive today will never reach their true potential because they can just google the answer to the immediate problem? How much do we read but fail to retain?
Besides, there isn't a chasm of intellectual strength. There is a chasm of knowledge. Intelligence is part genetic, part environment, and genes don't travel in a straight line. For all we know, Plato had twice the intellect of anyone alive today.

>> No.12213248

I've studied now Philosophy
And Jurisprudence, Medicine,--
And even, alas! Theology,--
From end to end, with labor keen;
And here, poor fool! with all my lore
I stand, no wiser than before!

>> No.12213570

>>12213185
They had experience in the actual world which everyone on /lit/ lacks. Also sensory overload means you have a higher chance of finding shitty books than aiming for the old masters.