Because intentional inanity is its own kind of meaningful. I'm OKAY with that. But there are processes. There's a way to get good at things. There are ways to come to a productive understanding of things. I'm not saying that I know all the answers I'm just saying there are things that function ad answers even if they technically don't assign order to a chaotic universe.
People don't want to have this discussion but they go into elaborate ephemeral metaphysics of what constitutes meaning that serves ONLY to muddle the discussion because NO ONE wants to be told that writing might have a point.
It's like how my older brother thinks he's Charles fuckin' Bukowski because he's capable of writing words in the same language as him because "everything is subjective" even though humans are all operating with only .01 percent of genetic difference so there are GONNA BE some more or less universal constructs
shuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup, my gooooooooooooooooooooood
I don't know what class you took or what paper you read or whatever but for the last few weeks you are constantly acting like you know everything there possibly is to know about fiction and it is driving me up a wall. That would not be a problem in of itself if you didn't seem deadset on having this conversation and this conversation only to the exclusion of everything else.
Can we have a fuckin' normal talk about like literally anything that's not this.
Like I could easily fucking go into why everything is subjective and why that doesn't invalidate criticism in of itself and blah blah but not only did I do that the other day, I just don't fuckin want to.
No one fuckin' wants to. Stop.
Stop stop stop.
Talk about literally
any other thing.
the weather, how your day was, your thoughts on the 2016 presidental election, your fucking I don't know favorite non-major constellation
me, i'm annoyed because you started with "writing obviously has this specific well defined purpose" and nobody thought it was obvious so inane said writing doesn't have some particular purpose and this somehow spun off into arguments about nihilism i have previously read in 17th century religious debates which i'm pretty sure means something went seriously wrong with the original claim
molecule trajectories might technically be chaotic, but who cares, really
My point exactly. You can't give up on understanding stuff because randomness exists, you work to a point where you can understand and contain that randomness and work around it, or find productive ways to work with it.
anyway with regards to the DNA thing there's an interestinginteresting paper called 'the neural lyre' in which they identify the most common line length in poetry across all cultures, which regardless of syllables/stresses is almost the same when you measure it as the amount of time it takes to read aloud, and then match this to the exact time it takes for a single 'thing' to he absorbed and processed by your mind. biology influencing culture. its cool
i literally do not see anyone in this thread making the kind of statements you are accusing us of making
i, for one, am not talking about molecule trajectories or nihilism or whatever else
Just like I didn't say that writing has a super, gigantic, secret, massively specific only attainable through one method purpose. I gave, what I thought was the broadest possible general goal and people found it to be reductive or overly prescriptive because for some reason any attempt to define good writing is reductive or overly prescriptive.
Like for fuck's sake can we try to attempt understanding what I mean before immediately arguing because I know I'm not doing that but I'm not in the mental state for that right now
Kex, it's not that we don't understand, it's that your statements about the purpose of fiction, no matter how general, are statements about the purpose of fiction
it's got nothing whatsoever to do with whether there are techniques for good writing or whatever else, you don't need a broad, all encompassing definition of whatever to learn to write
You are the end result of a “would you push the button” prompt where the prompt was “you have unlimited godlike powers but you appear to all and sundry to be an impetuous child” – Zero, 2022
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People don't want to have this discussion but they go into elaborate ephemeral metaphysics of what constitutes meaning that serves ONLY to muddle the discussion because NO ONE wants to be told that writing might have a point.
It's like how my older brother thinks he's Charles fuckin' Bukowski because he's capable of writing words in the same language as him because "everything is subjective" even though humans are all operating with only .01 percent of genetic difference so there are GONNA BE some more or less universal constructs
Well yes "it's all subjective" is rather lazy as the ways we respond to and evaluate fiction involve many separate categories and ways of understanding things, as well as many inter-subjectively communicable things. You can't shut an aesthetic debate down the way you might be able to shut a mathematical or scientific debate down, but the scientific and mathematical modes of discourse are not the only games in town.
But I think allowing a degree of freedom in artistic expression and response can only be good.
Kex, it's not that we don't understand, it's that your statements about the purpose of fiction, no matter how general, are statements about the purpose of fiction
it's got nothing whatsoever to do with whether there are techniques for good writing or whatever else, you don't need a broad, all encompassing definition of whatever to learn to write
Every writer I've ever talked to has emphasized the importance of working definitions and atandards, even flexible ones.
Because people decide what each other have said and work from that rather than trying to actually understand. I understand that I'm doing this just as bad as everyone else but for fuck's sake I'm losing it right now over this so can we all attempt to understand what I'm saying a bit more so I don't give up on writing entirely because clearly my process is fucked at a very fundamental level
i think it's probably true, and i am sceptical about whether it is trumped by theories about some kind of underlying collective unconscious or evolutionary theory
however
i'm unconvinced it has any particular relevance to the original disagreement here
and i don't think it's a helpful thing to say wrt the aspirations of a writer
Because people decide what each other have said and work from that rather than trying to actually understand. I understand that I'm doing this just as bad as everyone else but for fuck's sake I'm losing it right now over this so can we all attempt to understand what I'm saying a bit more so I don't give up on writing entirely because clearly my process is fucked at a very fundamental level
Nobody was saying that your writing was meaningless.
Creativity is a beautiful thing and anyone who tells you that your writing is fundamentally meaningless is just a crank who shouldn't be listened to.
All I wanted to do was come up with a helpful jumping off point from universal subjectivity. I fucked it up and everyone already knew that anyway. And now I'm the idiot
There was a cute story about one of Edison's sons.
He found five baby alligators, and decided to bring them home. The next day, his mother had a lunch party with a bunch of female friends. The son, who was six, decided that the ladies would like to see what he had found.
Then he couldn't keep a hold on all of them, and dropped them under the table.
You said it for yourself that everything is subjective but that that's not helpful for writers
That's the pretense I've been operating under this entire time, hence my original statement, "Writing should try to make the world better,"which I hoped was the most flexible possible thing I could say without being completely unhelpful but I'm wrong and a fucking mistake in general
You said it for yourself that everything is subjective but that that's not helpful for writers
That's the pretense I've been operating under this entire time, hence my original statement, "Writing should try to make the world better,"which I hoped was the most flexible possible thing I could say without being completely unhelpful but I'm wrong and a fucking mistake in general
Please stop beating yourself up so much over a forum disagreement.
i just don't think 'writing should do x' is necessarily a helpful thing to say. if you find it helpful, well, go for it.
but please understand that when i say this i am *not* saying 'so throw out all advice and btw nothing has value because value itself is bull and everything is equally meaningless'
eh, it's possible they had a lousy lit teacher, isn't it?
i mean OP obviously doesn't understand postmodernism, and i'm not sure of the relevance of Freud (perhaps the professor was hinting at a Freudian reading?)
but asking the author what they meant is kind of missing the point of the exercise
eh, it's possible they had a lousy lit teacher, isn't it?
i mean OP obviously doesn't understand postmodernism, and i'm not sure of the relevance of Freud (perhaps the professor was hinting at a Freudian reading?)
but asking the author what they meant is kind of missing the point of the exercise
He got a B.
He was so angry at getting a B on a paper that he quit his major.
in the alternate universe where any of this happened, mind you
Comments
Because intentional inanity is its own kind of meaningful. I'm OKAY with that. But there are processes. There's a way to get good at things. There are ways to come to a productive understanding of things. I'm not saying that I know all the answers I'm just saying there are things that function ad answers even if they technically don't assign order to a chaotic universe.
you pick osme patch of hydrogen and it's probably still going to be a ptch of hydrogen in thirty billion years
molecule trajectories might technically be chaotic, but who cares, really
...i wonder if something like xia's hellgun mechanism could be responsible for EECRs
Talk about literally
THAT'S ALL. THAT I AM TRYING. TO SAY.
anyway with regards to the DNA thing there's an interestinginteresting paper called 'the neural lyre' in which they identify the most common line length in poetry across all cultures, which regardless of syllables/stresses is almost the same when you measure it as the amount of time it takes to read aloud, and then match this to the exact time it takes for a single 'thing' to he absorbed and processed by your mind. biology influencing culture. its cool
i, for one, am not talking about molecule trajectories or nihilism or whatever else
this thread :(
Some people have different criteria for quality than you do. That's all.
it's got nothing whatsoever to do with whether there are techniques for good writing or whatever else, you don't need a broad, all encompassing definition of whatever to learn to write
why does this keep happening
i think it's probably true, and i am sceptical about whether it is trumped by theories about some kind of underlying collective unconscious or evolutionary theory
however
i'm unconvinced it has any particular relevance to the original disagreement here
and i don't think it's a helpful thing to say wrt the aspirations of a writer
Creativity is a beautiful thing and anyone who tells you that your writing is fundamentally meaningless is just a crank who shouldn't be listened to.
this is starting to feel like a regular occurrence
You can imagine what happened next.
That's the pretense I've been operating under this entire time, hence my original statement, "Writing should try to make the world better,"which I hoped was the most flexible possible thing I could say without being completely unhelpful but I'm wrong and a fucking mistake in general
i just don't think 'writing should do x' is necessarily a helpful thing to say. if you find it helpful, well, go for it.
but please understand that when i say this i am *not* saying 'so throw out all advice and btw nothing has value because value itself is bull and everything is equally meaningless'
Then I flew off to Nicaragua to save the President's daughter
i mean OP obviously doesn't understand postmodernism, and i'm not sure of the relevance of Freud (perhaps the professor was hinting at a Freudian reading?)
but asking the author what they meant is kind of missing the point of the exercise
yeah, probably didn't happen
He was so angry at getting a B on a paper that he quit his major.
in the alternate universe where any of this happened, mind you