Writer Wander 030 - You Will be Forgotten

Wander confronts the sad reality that 99% of ancient literature is lost forever

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:24

Rider Wander, Episode Thirty. We are on to thirty episodes. I am very proud of myself and the minuscule amount of people that follow this audience. You're all cherished and loved. Many thanks to all the friends that have kept up with me and giving me much appreciated feedback. It certainly gives spirit to the purpose behind this uh podcast, to creating this space where I can share my thoughts, and it always helps to know that there are people that you know are willing to opine and to share their thoughts on on the things that that I'm producing, regardless of how how small they may be. But today's topic is if everything is everything worth preserving. And what got me thinking about this was that um recently I follow a YouTuber and he does a lot of reviews about books and stuff. He's also an author, and he made a video recently asking a very interesting question. And the question that he that he asked was are mobile games worth preserving? And I think that the topic came up in particular because there was um this spin-off of the Elder Scrolls games. If you guys have played those, which are it's like the series of like open world RPGs, and for a while there was a spin-off of the Elder Scrolls games on the phone called Elder Scrolls Blades, and you know, long story short, the game was not particularly good, it was kind of ass. And you know, the question that the guy was posing, right, was that you know, this was a game that obviously relied upon continual support of the developers, and since the developers pulled away that support, effectively that game was going to disappear from the app stores, um, from uh it's going to stop functioning as a game, right? And obviously that poses the broader question of whether some art is not worth preserving, or the question of whether art is worth preserving at all, and I think it's a very interesting philosophical question, and I also think it's very interesting, especially for authors, because I think that in terms of the sheer production of content, objectively speaking, the written work, works of literature are the most oversaturated medium out of them all, and there's a very simple reason for this, right? Literature, literature's greatest advantage is also its greatest disadvantage. The fact that anyone can start writing a novel or or a book, because the barrier to entry is quite literally yourself. This day and age, most people know how to write, and most people know how to manage a computer, and if you write a if you write long enough, and if you manage a computer for enough days, you will eventually come out with a novel. That is not so much the case with video games or movies, which are media forms that require multiple different skill sets that are often hard to master. With video games, you need to learn how to program, you need to learn how to do art, you need to learn how to do any number of things before you can make a you know a video game that you wouldn't be embarrassed putting out into the world. Even a shitty game, dare I say, dare I say, even a crappy video game can take more effort than say a mid-a mid-novel, right? And obviously for movies, this is also the case. We're talking about works of fiction that require multiple different skill sets, oftentimes requiring the cooperation of multiple different people simultaneously to bring about a certain cohesive vision. And we sort of talked about this in the episode where I mentioned my enamorment with extended universe, especially extended universe um novels, and what I really liked about novels as an art form was that it was an art form in which you could get the unadulterated vision of a single person. But it goes without saying that the novel can also easily lend itself to a bunch of crap being released because of the low bar to entry, and this is also to a certain extent uh similar with art, though I think that the barrier to entry in art is a little higher because I feel that people are more willing to laugh at a piece of art that looks bad because they can they can process that in a few seconds, you know. You can tell in a few seconds if a piece of art is aesthetically unappealing. Whereas if you know, if somebody publishes like a werewolf smut novel, well, I guess that's not a good example because you could look at the cover of that, but you know, a lot of people like werewolf smut novels, and you know, in order to determine if a werewolf smut novel is bad, um, you'd probably have to read it for like like 30 pages or something. It takes a while for you to determine that a book is is bad, so that sort of helps to masquerade the lack of quality that is present in most literary production. And in fact, this is part probably why there's like this huge, you know, you hear this a lot from like older people where it's like they they assume that because of the fact that you read you must be insightful and smart. Whereas, like, you know, okay, maybe you read, but you know, if you're reading like 50 Shades of Grey or a bunch of like uh werewolf or vampire smut novels, I don't think that necessarily contributes to your betterment as a human being. Just my opinion, right? But there's a truth to that. There's a truth that the novel, due to its oversaturation, is wont to lead to a lot of works of fiction. I dare I say that 99% of the written work that is currently present, that is currently available to the average person, is complete garbage and not worth anyone's time, and this is only going to get worse with the prevalence of the increasing prevalence of AI novels and whatnot, you know, the the slop epidemic as it is often called. And there's a reality to the fact that you know most of these works of fiction are digital, and um, you know, anything could happen to the internet, and there is just such a sheer volume of stuff that is floating around it that if something happens to it, if the service is interrupted, then the reality is that most of that slop, and probably a lot of good stuff too, is gonna be lost forever. And considering that reality, it sort of poses a question of is everything worth preserving? And I I guess that from a purely you know, just from a purely philosophical angle, I would lean, much much like my the YouTuber I was talking about, I would lean toward the position that in theory, yes, everything is worth preserving because everything, you know, all of these artistic works are a product of of humans, and they you know they have to say something about the human experience, you know. Werewolf smut says something about the human experience, believe believe it or not, and you know, think about it this way you remove something far enough from its context, and it can become a valuable historical clue. You know, who knows? Like, if if if like all of Earth was annihilated and werewolf smut, like a werewolf smut novel was like the only thing left on the entire earth, and aliens came by here and they were trying to piece together evidence of our existence. Um, reading the werewolf smut novel, they probably wouldn't have that good of an idea of what humans actually were, but they would know something, right? You know, they would know that you know there was this thing called love or or lust that's very important to us, and you know, is kind of it is something that we often obsess over, even if it's directed towards strange things, like werewolves in the werewolf smut novel. But but again, it it's it's one of those things where realistically speaking, as human society keeps moving, as the ages pass, we will not be able to preserve everything. And the act of preservation itself takes a lot of effort, it takes dedicated archivists, it takes people who go out of their way to preserve things that are often obscure and oftentimes might not have their target audience until far in the future. And obviously, that is often volunteer labor, unpaid labor. Um, you know, I'm thinking of like the internet archive, which subsists off of donations um for people, or something like Wikipedia, which is very impressive when you really think about it. The fact that you would have volunteers that are dedicating themselves to you know to maintaining like this this massive online encyclopedia. It it really it really is something, it's really something impressive. But for all of those efforts, they can't catch everything because they're human, their capacities, their resources, all of them are finite. And because of the fact that they are finite, they there will be many things, possibly most things, that slip through the cracks. So while in theory it is necessary to preserve all works of literature, all works of art, we simply cannot do so. And we probably never will be able to do so. So, what does this mean? This means that as time goes on, in theory, I think that the things that matter most to the human experience are those that are those that remain. And you could read this in a couple ways, right? Um, I read it in a providential way because I come come at this from a religious background. I think that it is God's providence that allows certain works to remain with us and other works to be taken away from us, and we are left with those things that are most necessary to acquire our salvation to a certain degree, or you know, or not even that, because there's a lot of bad stuff that also remains. So we are left with those things that make it so that the narrative that God is trying to weave comes about, and those things which do not contribute to that narrative are in due course eliminated from the historical record. But you can also read this to a certain degree as a sort of like a natural selection process, right? Where if you don't want to take that religious angle, you can look at it sort of like the survival of the fittest, right? If a book somehow manages to survive to this day, perhaps it is not so much a testament to the quality of the book, though it could be, but a testament to the fact that there was someone out there, or many someones out there, that were willing to see so much importance in that particular work that they thought it was something worth preserving and it was something worth keeping around. And the very act of existence, in and of itself, is a statement, especially for a work of art. And you can also think about this when you think about historical sources, we've lost most of which, you know, you often see these memes on the internet, but they're true that we we I think we lost something like 98% of all the ancient works of literature that existed, right? And you know, I would assume that in large part that 2% that remains remains because there were enough people that cared about it. And there's that one saying that says that, you know, you die twice. You know, there's your first death, which is biological, and then the second death is when your name is uttered for the last time. And those things that remain with us, in some degree, are things that have not suffered the second death quite yet, things that are are resisting the perpetual march towards entropy that traps all of human existence. But that also brings me as a novelist to ask myself the question are the things that I'm writing that are so important to me, are they worth preserving? Obviously, I would say yes, because there are things that certainly mean a lot to me, but there's a certain there's a certain reality to the fact that that is not necessarily going to happen. I will not be the arbiter of whether what I get made gets remembered. And statistically speaking, considering the fact that, you know, it's not just crap that we've lost, in fact, there are parts of classic novels or or classic myths that we've lost. You know, I I only learned recently that there are parts of the Odyssey and the Iliad and that that mythic cycle that are lost. There are books in between the Iliad and the Odyssey and before those books that were part of that ancient cycle of poetry that quite literally inspired the rest of the Western tradition. There are parts of that that are missing, that we no longer have access to. So if if pieces of the Iliad, if pieces of Homer's epics can be lost, then who am I to claim to assume that the fantasy novel that's sort of my passion project is worth preserving? I can't decide that. You know, the reality is that I would have to impact enough people over the course of enough generations that there are enough people willing to keep around whatever it was that I produced. And when it comes to success, to the metrics of success, well, it's very hard to measure if that's possible at all. Not just because of the fact that it's very hard to sell novels in general and the fact that most people read, but rather there are literal books that were very popular at their time but are virtually forgotten. Don Quixote, which was uh the classic uh Spanish masterpiece, which is uh you know a satire of chivalric fiction, it was in large part a satire of a more straightforward work of chivalric romance written in in Spain called Amadis of Gaul. Now, Amadis of Gaul was very famous for its time, it was very famous as a contemporary work. However, basically after the the key uh you know uh Don Quixote this uh came into the scene, it it was basically eradicated from the historical memory. If it's remembered at all, it's remembered for being, oh yeah, that's the thing that Don Quixote was parody. And that there's there's something to that, you know, even just because you are famous in your lifetime doesn't mean anything. And conversely, there are books that changed entire societies after the death of the author. Think of St. Augustine, his entire corpus, his confessions, his his theology. He was a relatively unknown uh theologian until much after his death, and he is one of the most important figures in in the West. And you know, yeah, you can think about like uh other other novelists too. Um, there was one that I just had in mind, and you know, I just forgot. This isn't the one I was thinking of now, but um, there was this one janitor who spent his whole life working on like this big story, this this big novel, and it isn't until he dies and people start cleaning out his apartment that people that people found that he produced this this massive work of outsider art, Henry Darger. And you know, he never saw any fame for his work in his life because he never shared it. It was only when he died, when it had an impact. So that the nature of the permanence of your work is something that you cannot predict. That's why we are best off, you know, writing things that appeal to us, not just because of the fact that you know those those are things that are the most genuine, and things that are genuine um tend to be the best they can possibly they can possibly be compared to things that are not genuine, but because of the simple fact that you know, since success, since longevity, since these are things that in large degree we don't have control over, the reality is that um you know you will waste your life trying to pursue the memory of people whose names you don't even know, the people, the memory of a posterity that is yet to come. It is a it is a futile endeavor, and it will only bring you pain and misery trying to do that. And I guess, you know, I can close off by saying that yeah, I I would like for people to remember something about me, to remember the things I I write, but you know, I'm also you know, I'm also willing to accept that you know that's probably not gonna happen, and that's something that as an artist, it is an existential crisis that you must face. That there is a very real, in fact, not even just real, there is a probable chance that whatever it is you are making will not be remembered after your lifetime. Dare I say, it might not even be remembered even within the same generation in which you are working, and that is the default. That is the default setting. That's the default reality. This podcast, ride or wander, anything could happen to it. You know, the the people that listen to this and and you know have cherished memories in this, you know, the reality is that um one day I will die, and one day there will be a final Rider Wander podcast, or dear listener, one day you will die, and there will be a final day where you listen to your final Rider Wander episode. Or, or conversely, there might be a day where you're like, you know, I I don't really enjoy the Rider Wander podcast anymore, so I'm not really gonna be listening to it anymore. And or you probably don't even think about it. You you just stop listening to it, and that will be the last day that you listen to a writer wander podcast, and maybe 10 years in the future you're gonna be like, oh yeah, I I listened to that thing. I I wonder, I I wonder. Gee, I I listened to that thing, I wonder what would happen. Uh what would it what it was called? I wonder what it was called, and then you're gonna forget. Because it's been so long. Not only that, if I die and no one can pay the subscription to a Buzz Sprout, which is the service that I use to host all the episodes, well, uh unless I back these up in the future, which you know I I probably should, then those episodes are gone for good. And even if I back them, uh back them up in the future, you know, one needs only to look at the certain the controversies that the internet archive has been embroiled in. So the the most comprehensive archive of internet history is under threat. And do you know how many websites we know about, thanks to that website, that allows you to look into the past of the internet? Do you know how many websites we would no longer have any evidence ever existed if it wasn't for the internet archive, and people want to get rid of it? To me, it's a crime against humanity, and it's unfortunate, but it's a very real possibility, and in fact, history is a privilege. You know, think think about think about our hum our own humanity. Most of human history hasn't even been history, it's been prehistory. We were hunter-gatherers for hundreds of thousands of years, most of our societies and ancestors left no written records, and for a long portion of history, humans were living in huts and other structures made of organic material that have long since faded away. I come from a place where the indigenous population made were again were hunter-gatherers, they lived in huts that were made out of the local plant life, and obviously, you know, those things disappeared. And you know, people often like to blame colonialism for this, and there's certainly some degree of it, but the reality is that when almost all of your written uh culture when your written culture is basically non existent, and when your material Culture is primarily composed of organic matter that is going to decompose at some point in the future, then the reality is that you know, by its very nature, intrinsically, it was a society with an expiration date, unless unless it switched, right? And you know, again, I'm not I'm not casting any judgments, it's just that objectively speaking, um, they're they're just not leaving behind a historical record, uh, you know, for for whatever reason, and that's just what it is. That that's simply that's simply what it is, and what things we do know about them come from other cultures that did have uh his advanced historiographic methods that preserve their stories. So again, it it's very it it is it the you know the truth, the true death, the second death, the second death of forgetting. It is a sword which constantly dangles above our heads. And there are people who say, and I think that there's a book about this, that all of our human efforts to some degree are directed towards what the what that book calls an immortality project. That is to say, projects to somehow enhance our own longevity in existence, right? Um, the most basic of these is you know the basic task of reproduction. Reproduction can be seen as a certain way of immortality in which you are spreading your genes into the next generation of humans. And obviously, the more sophisticated a society becomes, the more abstract these things become. You know, the more you start visualizing it in terms of art, like we often do, or in terms of philosophy, or in terms of impacts that we make on a on a historical level, right? The way that we acted, right? So again, you know, just just food for thought. You know, just think about it. You know, how much sir, have you have you thought about your own lack of permanence today? Have you have you contemplated impermanence today, sir? Because I think today today is a good day. Today is a good day to be thinking about your own impermanence, to be thinking about how entropy is approaching at every waking moment, and it is a good day to think about how you will live your life with that fact in mind. You know, I believe in eternity, I believe in salvation, I believe in a heroic ending, I believe in a crown awaiting me in heaven. Should I cooperate with divine grace? But we all need to ask ourselves, what are what are we waiting for? What are what are you waiting for? And that's a question that a lot of people run away from. That's a question that a lot of artists run away from. But I think that when you come upon an answer to it, your art will be all the better. And obviously, I have my own answer to it, and I do believe I have the absolute truth. But I think that uh, you know, more than trying to convince you to fall on my side on this, I'm inviting you to simply contemplate it. Because again, it it is surprising the degree to, you know, I guess now we're just entering a conversation about about death in general, but uh about our impact after death. But this is this is something that's always worth thinking about, and it's something that I think the world will be a much better place if we if we thought about this, independent of whatever conclusions we came to. Though I certainly would like you to, you know, to come to the Catholic truth, but that's not that's not the goal here, right? So again, ride or wander, keep wondering.