/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.15431273]

With how empathy is dead nowadays, would most of classical literature be laughed off if published today?

[Anonymous No.15431314]

what people think of as 'empathy' (basically 'sympathy with negative emotion and trauma') today didn't exist before the 1950s. empathy isn't dead; it's a basic human faculty. 'empathy' is dead; it's an unnatural forced meme.

[Anonymous No.15431354]

>>15431314
Wanna answer the question while you're are it, old fart?

[Anonymous No.15431377]

What a bizarrely idiotic question.

[Anonymous No.15431398]

Classical literature wouldn't break through the mold.
Knowledge, art, philosophy and anything else you have to think a great deal about is dead. Everything has already been written. Science is over.

The only thing people can really 'create' nowadays is self-help books and other entry-level existentialist trite.

Just read the classics of better times.
>just consume product and get excited for next product

[Anonymous No.15431410]

>>15431398

A similarly idiotic response.

[Anonymous No.15431425]

>>15431354
your premise is false, so your question is irrelevant

[Anonymous No.15431445]

>>15431410
Between higgs boson and 12 Rules of Life, I think it's fairly obvious that our 7 billion+ dead people civilisation has for now run out of creative juice.
World anno domini is pretty stagnant and you're fucking retarded if you think otherwise.
Whether you think of them as commie bastards or liberators, whether you think of them as terrorists or freedom fighters. Both friend and foe are concepts of the past.

[Anonymous No.15431458]

>>15431314
Empathy is basically understand where someone is coming from - it could either make you feel negative emotions or positive. It’s not sympathy with negative emotion and trauma.

[Anonymous No.15431462]

>>15431398

>Everything has already been written

Amazing. This is what non-creatives actually believe? What I wouldn't give to spend one day in your shoes. Simply astounding, bravo.

[Anonymous No.15431465]

>>15431425
The premise of a shift in social norms? It's pretty apparent.

[Anonymous No.15431508]

>>15431462
New age habitus has become intrinsically capitalist. All modern forms of creativity revolve purely around materialism or vaguely self-aware cynicism. Take skating for instance, while it started as a lower-income level hobby it has gradually completely overtaken them and been adopted by the very most rich.

Whenever I see someone waving the banner of the anti-establishment street-culture which is highly pervasive yet also really easy to enter, all I can think of is this seething complacency that makes these people think that their day-to-day lifestyle is worth a dime.

The naked emperor, except everyone is the emperor. Complacent narcissism.
The whole raison d'etre of 4chan is the hate for such hypocrisy.

Too bad that being on 4chan exposes one to sick fetishism and fringe politics, I wish I had encountered this website at a more mature juncture in my life. Young adolescents don't belong here.

[Anonymous No.15431516]

>>15431314
>what people think of as 'empathy' (basically 'sympathy with negative emotion and trauma') today didn't exist before the 1950s.
What the fuck are you on about you retard?

[Anonymous No.15431521]

Also, also ; can we stop shilling for 'creativity' so much?
It's a retarded word (what the fuck does that even mean, 'creativity' it's so fucking stupid, such a stupid fucking word) and it doesn't accomplish anything.

Creativity serves only to subdue the 'oppressive' industrious virtue while continuously 'creating' nothing but hot air.

What a surprise that those who dominate the 'creative' industry are nothing but bourgie niggers, faggots and women and that they all hold the most agreeably disagreeable political opinions.

[Anonymous No.15431547]

>>15431508
>Take skating for instance, while it started as a lower-income level hobby it has gradually completely overtaken them and been adopted by the very most rich.

W-w-what? Nigger go outside sometimes. See what people are actually doing.

[Anonymous No.15431557]

>>15431521
>he has never been kissed by the muses, he has never seen the court of Kubla Khan unfold before him in a single vision, he thinks he needs to investigate a sufficient amount of grains of sand to see the world reflected therein, he has never had the Theios Mania and ascended the ladder of Diotima in a flurry

Yeah, you need both creativity and industrious virtue, but god damn is it ironic that you are chastising bourgies in one breath and praising industrious virtue in the other.

[Anonymous No.15431600]

>>15431458
>>15431516
What is connoted by 'empathy'in modern discourse is disconnected from the actual definition of empathy as such is my only point. 'Empathy' is a mockingbird psyop disseminated via trash like readers digest and lifetime tv, and more recently through social media like tumblr and reddit. This is not real empathy. I can understand where you are coming from and still think you're a faggot/should be a target of legal state violence.
OP obviously means this fake 'empathy' in his question otherwise it makes no sense whatsoever.

[Anonymous No.15431629]

>>15431600
Take your pills

[Anonymous No.15431643]

>>15431547
Supreme and all the other high-end skating shops.
I go outside all the time to the point where I no longer feel guilty by indulging at home for a day doing jack shit.

I go outside and what do I see? A technocratic society of people from well-off backgrounds who could afford an academic upbringing and are obsessing over this or that theory and apply it to the most agreeable subjects as anything else would contrast against their own worldview.
Every once in a while they safely express themselves in an authentic manner but mostly they're social hermits, retreated into their little social circles and never shuffling outward while their intellectual forefathers were at the very forefront of political change.
Twitter has become their battleground.

What else do I see outside? People who recognise in this silence a justification to do whatever they please and pleasure it is. The entire market is pleasure-based.

I see poor people struggling to make head or tails of this entire facade and I see a generation coping with radicalism and another, larger part completely corrupted by the nihilism.

What do I see? Let me paint you a picture:
Jackie is a 22-year old girl who struggled at school as she struggled with her identity. She likes to smoke weed, watch Netflix and she likes to cuddle with her cat.
She grew up watching kids cartoons which were consistently affirming the status quo, as she grew up she watched adults' cartoons that broke down some aspects of the status quo in favour of a larger, foreign one.

Nowadays Jackie is mostly occupied with self-expression through the use of theatre, hair colouring and other cosmetics. She has a healthy social life and maintains a social media account. She regularly watches porn or otherwise has casual sex. Jackie has an awkward relationship with her parents, but it's not in terrible shape though she doesn't get along very well with the male members of her family either because one of them tried to fuck her as a pubescent or because she can't fuck them. Silly paradox to wrap your head around.

Jackie tried exploring more refined culture, but she mostly got bogged down in pseud trash from Netflix. She once visited a nearby philosophy event with her three week old boyfriend where she paid to sit in on the lecture how netflix educates people in philosophy.

Vaguely, viscerally she knows that this ostensibly 'good' system has some major failings but since she's read at most a few books and learned about philosophy one way or another in very broad terms, she can't articulate her feelings.

Jackie doesn't have many opinions of her own. Jackie doesn't have a defined stance on whether she wants to have children.
Jackie thinks in terms of how they make her feel and what the tone is.
Jackie polices your tone and language.

Jackie ends up getting a well-paying job after completing a bachelors and now lives with her partner/spouse in a gentrifying neighbourhood and passes her time, her life. Day-to-day.

[Anonymous No.15431691]

>>15431557
Industry and wisdom are great tools that must be used to shape a better world.
As for now, the industry is poised too much on creating luxury goods rather than a balanced, liveable world.

I would like to see industry go into statecraft, infrastructure (beyond civic works like bridges and roads), effective humanitarian purposes and other ways to decrease population density and make sure that everyone is where they belong.

If manpower was in service of repealing the housing crisis, firmly establishing a progressive and effective education system and keeping climate change within boundaries. If people didn't dismiss the wretched as 'immoral' while refusing to halt the ever-increasing porn literacy and political extremism under the guise of acting liberally.

Perhaps then we'd see a good world where everyone would share similarly equal outcomes.

[Anonymous No.15432430]

>>15431643
>but since she's read at most a few books and learned about philosophy one way or another in very broad terms, she can't articulate her feelings.
iktf. I never stopped reading since I was a kid, but my communication iq must be in the gutter. War & Peace might move me in all sorts of ways, but how do you articulate what you feel in your gut? I think its amazing Tolstoy could write something like that, but the best I can muster might as well jus be >iktf

[Anonymous No.15432537]

>>15431643
>three week old boyfriend
Damn, that's way too young for a 22 year old. Also great job trashing that straw-woman, really showed that bitch

[Anonymous No.15433179]

>>15431273
>With how empathy is dead
I think you mean intelligence, curiosity, and a desire to expand your horizons
>Would most of classical literature be laughed off if published today.
Fuck yes. Hell, I just picked up The Apology/Phaedo/Crito of Plato, The Golden Sayings of Epictetus, and The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius for a whopping $0.50. I got my hands on a copy of The Prince for $0.26. None of my philosophical (or even remotely deep) books were more than $5.30, and none of my pleasure reading novels were more than $5, yet no-name YA garbage is being pumped out for $12-20 a pop.