Good point. I blame therapy culture. As a screenwriter I'm finding the trauma story to be oppressively dominant right now, more so than at the beginning of my career. If your character is brave than they must, absolutely must, have some sort of trauma that they need to "face." Even if your protagonist is about to suffer a lot--survive a tsunami, fight a monster, go to war--they must also have some sort of past issue that comes to a head right when the current Big Bad is confronting them.
Also, the only way popular culture can portray functional families is as freaks. The Adams Family, the Coneheads (to give away my age). These are aliens and monsters so it's okay to show them being really nice, accepting and loving with each other.
I've seen the Collinses say this; the idea of a couple working together to a goal is a no-no. My best guess is a lot of the writers come from histories of divorce or were kicked out of their house for being gay or lesbian or trans or something so they get angry if you portray couples that work.
The two paragraphs of this post seem to be pointing at importantly different things.
1: People find (some) suffering deep.
2: We have less suffering today (or bad stuff more broadly) than in the past and this trend may/[is likely to] continue, so our descendants may view our modern difficulties like we view the past difficulties of our ancestors.
These two feel somewhat disconnected.
People find *some* suffering deep. We don't romanticize cities overflowing with excrement in 1100 AD. But we do romanticize tales of brave, virtuous, etc medieval knights (and many other archetypes). Why and how people find "meaning" in some kinds of suffering/difficulties but not others remains an open (empirical) question.
A modern equivalent of "shit everywhere" is something like "my car keeps malfunctioning and I can't fix it" or "I've tried various kinds of meds for my condition and none of them seem to be helping much". In some circumstances somebody might find them meaningful but in a majority of cases, these are reflectively undesirable difficulties.
I think this is an interesting and important question. I think it's related to the question of how effectively we can learn, improve, and evolve without pain, or the threat of pain, to motivate us. And I think our best theories about the most effective way to teach children is some evidence that the answer will be "very". We no longer think beatings are a necessary ingredient of effective learning. And it's not like we think it's a trade-off, like it would be more optimal to beat children but we give up that extra effectiveness out of compassion or kindness, we actually now think it is counter-productive. I think it's likely that we will eventually feel the same way about ourselves.
Good point. I blame therapy culture. As a screenwriter I'm finding the trauma story to be oppressively dominant right now, more so than at the beginning of my career. If your character is brave than they must, absolutely must, have some sort of trauma that they need to "face." Even if your protagonist is about to suffer a lot--survive a tsunami, fight a monster, go to war--they must also have some sort of past issue that comes to a head right when the current Big Bad is confronting them.
Also, the only way popular culture can portray functional families is as freaks. The Adams Family, the Coneheads (to give away my age). These are aliens and monsters so it's okay to show them being really nice, accepting and loving with each other.
Okay, rant over.
I've seen the Collinses say this; the idea of a couple working together to a goal is a no-no. My best guess is a lot of the writers come from histories of divorce or were kicked out of their house for being gay or lesbian or trans or something so they get angry if you portray couples that work.
Probably arises from Christianity originally, honestly.
The two paragraphs of this post seem to be pointing at importantly different things.
1: People find (some) suffering deep.
2: We have less suffering today (or bad stuff more broadly) than in the past and this trend may/[is likely to] continue, so our descendants may view our modern difficulties like we view the past difficulties of our ancestors.
These two feel somewhat disconnected.
People find *some* suffering deep. We don't romanticize cities overflowing with excrement in 1100 AD. But we do romanticize tales of brave, virtuous, etc medieval knights (and many other archetypes). Why and how people find "meaning" in some kinds of suffering/difficulties but not others remains an open (empirical) question.
A modern equivalent of "shit everywhere" is something like "my car keeps malfunctioning and I can't fix it" or "I've tried various kinds of meds for my condition and none of them seem to be helping much". In some circumstances somebody might find them meaningful but in a majority of cases, these are reflectively undesirable difficulties.
I think this is an interesting and important question. I think it's related to the question of how effectively we can learn, improve, and evolve without pain, or the threat of pain, to motivate us. And I think our best theories about the most effective way to teach children is some evidence that the answer will be "very". We no longer think beatings are a necessary ingredient of effective learning. And it's not like we think it's a trade-off, like it would be more optimal to beat children but we give up that extra effectiveness out of compassion or kindness, we actually now think it is counter-productive. I think it's likely that we will eventually feel the same way about ourselves.