Why does fantasy have to follow the "Nature good, Society bad" formula?
>>98171166Because Kaczynski was right.
>>98171166>lands where people are fulfilled and live happy lives>"nothing works">lands where people are literal slaves filled with the hatred of their master>"technological civilization based on reason and science"
>>98171166>gandalf's this crazy person who wants to start a warWas the special grease-retardant version of the lord of the rings Thiel had to send for different from what the rest of us read?
>>98171200hobbits were greedy little jews constantly expecting presents and gifts and would steal from their neighbors the second their backs were turned. So racist they couldnt even stand the next town over cause they made use of boats.
>>98171200>>98171214>>98171217For reference, the book this quote is from isn't agreeing with Peter Thiel. "The End of Reality" is a scathing critique of Thiel and presenting him as a billionaire goon trying to sell his own rendition of reality.
>Thiel is a midwitDamn what a blackpill.>>98171166Not all fantasy does. I would argue most of D&D doesn't. Forgotten Realms is filled with exceptionally dangerous stuff outside the borders of settlement, even in apparently civilized lands. 4e's entire setting was Points of Light, based on civilization and industry reclaiming darkened lands. The even uplifted the goddess of civilization to a major deity for that. Eberron confronts both the adantages and disadvantages of technological progress, but even after Cyre and the Last War nobody is pretending they want to go back to candles and starvation (except the halflings).Most D&D settings uphold society over nature and what's outside in the dark is far more dangerous than it ever was in IRL human history.
>>98171166I think the appeal of the fantasy genre is that it allows modern readers to imagine a life without strip malls. "Nature good, Society bad" seems to be a distilled version of that.
>>98171166>Why does fantasy have to follow the "Nature good, Society bad" formula?Follows from some of the oldest fantasy we have. >garden of eden with nature Good >knowledge and fucking Sin and Bad That shit's really in there.
because i said so. i also said you should get a job
>>98171228>what a blackpillthe guy is building the torment nexus and you hadnt realized yet?
>>98171318I thought he was evil but smart.
>>98171228>he thinks most dnd is points of light lol
>>98171363>This nigger can't read.lol
>>98171249>I think the appeal of the fantasy genre is that it allows modern readers to imagine a life without strip malls.Pretty much, it's Fantasy after all; Dreaming about things you do not have.
>>98171176>Kaczynski was right.Wypierdalaj.
>>98171380nou
>>98171166>>98171176>>98171200Even wolves have a social structure. The whole "retvrn" to individual pastoralism meme is insane. Nice work if you can get it tho, the old hobby farmI would think a good setting would show upsides and downsides to everything. Like a comfortable advanced civilisation could also have a sift underbelly or even be built on exploitation>>98171217Bad b8Tolkien presented the Hobbits in their childlike simplicity and sometimes grasping deviousness and loved them anyway.That's what it is to actually love your people. To have an honest measure of their flaws but want to protect their idyll regardless.
>>98171325evil is never smart
>>98171166>see this image>reverse search it>only find social media posts and one blog from 2022 quoting him, nothing original or mass media>this thread was one of the few resultspeople getting upset about this .jpg seem midwits and boy there's a huge number of them
>>98171166They’re disgusting faggots, so (rightfully) paranoid. They’re unnatural and degenerate so spitefully hate what is beautiful and wish to bury it in filth like themselves at the expense of everyone else. It’s their only cope.
>>98171249It was a FPBP. Industrialization was dehumanizing and society still hasn’t recovered. It’s unfathomable.
>>98171438>Even wolves have a social structure.>The whole "retvrn" to individual pastoralism meme is insaneI’m glad you Reddit spaced to really drive home how much of a retard you areCan’t even get through two lines of text
>>98171626>>98171636>City boys who probably can't start a fire
>>98171582Image is bait, text is a /tg/ meme that represents the real psychology of numerous subanimals
>>98171642>t faggoid who can only jump start its own rectumNot to mention your reduction is so subhuman it’s funny.Then if your air wasters claim was the case, it would only prove the point.
>>98171636>>98171636Thanks for going on the computer every fucking day to let us know how independent you are
>>98171166You haven't actually read anything have you?"Nature is red of tooth and claw."
>>98171674Then do the gene pool a favor and drop dead.
>>98171678>>98171691>spireful subhuman fag proving the pointImagine being so addle brained and delusionally proud of it.
I know this is /tg/ and not /v/, but this screenshot was a pretty compelling moment for me in the Talos Principle 2.I personally would not be alive if it weren't for technology, too, after my abusive first girlfriend stabbed me with a knife and left me for dead. (Meth is an insane thing)Nature is brutal, and the notion of it being some ideal state is a myth told by people with mouths full of shit
>>98171768We are all but dander on the shoulders of giants, but they think themselves gods...
What I WANT to know is why do we seemingly only use anthropomorphizing language about nature —like wanting and desiring and giving— when it benefits us but the second you imply nature being cruel people are so quick to point out that nature isn't human an has no desires and wants.If mother nature had a personality, she'd be a cruel and callous bitch who doesn't give her children so much as a crumb without having them fight for it.
>>98171176>hardship builds character therefore we should increase the amount of hardshipI agree wholeheartedly.
To answer your overt question most fantasy actually written with a heavy narrative focus around ecology and returning to nature against the destructive nature of social progress was created during times when clouds of smog blotted out the sun over major cities, acid rain was a regular thing, and we punched a hole in the ozone layer.Now on to what you actually wanted to stir up. Yes. Thiel is a nitwit. Musk is a nitwit. The last few years have been horrifying in their revelations about the mental capacities of billionaires. They don't understand the consequences of their actions and being surrounded by nothing but sycophants and yes men has warped their basic human understanding of, well, basically everything.
>>98171768Sure, anon. But even in your own post, consider that the medical technology that saved your life also led to the discovery of the meth. The whole retvrn thing is just the evergreen notion that life is better somewhere else.
>>98171642>simply puts fork in outletpathetic
>>98171804I think it's because deep down we want to deny that humanity can be just as callous, cruel, and indifferent. Most people have been disturbed by man's inhumanity to man and don't want to think about it.
>>98171166What does he mean by "nothing works"? Seems like quite a lot worked just fine, from reading the books.
>>98171804because antropomorphizing natural processes is an instictual and inherently harmful practice that limits our understanding of the natural world. you might be too young to remember the 2000s well, but that was a common angle of creationists struggling to grasp evolution. it's going to be a part of our culture for a while until it either sinks into the subconsious enough to never bring up again or gets supplanted by some new hot topic
>>98171768technology is not good or ill. it is empowering. technology can empower you to save a life, but it is humanity that drives you to do so. After all, any medicine is also a poison in lazy, stupid or malicious hands, and often far more potent a poison than a cure. radiopharmaceuticals come to mind. can you confidently say that the people wielding our technology and operating our machines have enough humanity to be trusted with them? can you confidently say that you will be able to put the genie back in the bottle if, or when they go to far? and how long can you afford to wait before you cant?
>>98171166You noticed a trend anon.Create a story delving into the opposite premise.> 'Nature bad, society good'Perhaps you can even manage a more nuanced exploration than the things you are complaining about?Doing that would be a greater victory than anything you could achieve in this thread.
>>98172038The guy's takeaway was that Sauron was good, actually. He named his company Palantir. You don't have to analyze anything he thinks that closely. There's nothing worth analyzing.
>>98172025>The whole retvrn thing is just the evergreen notion that life is better somewhere else.Indeed.>>98172028>Relying on Electrical InfastructurePathetic!
>>98172113Nah, the tranny will just keep (you)ing itself as always.
>>98172037Yeah it's interesting to me how we use "humanity" as a synonym for good and moral.
>>98171804>>98172185>we>ourNice try AIDSgolem
>>98172168>simply smokes at a petrol stationpftt. nothing personell kid
>>98172267>Relying on Petroleum Infrastructure and AN ALREADY LIT FLAMEPATHETIC!!!
>>98172205>tryTry again ebolajerk.
>>98172288What then? The eyeglass method? The fire striker? Friction? Wait for lighting to strike?
Fantasy tends to be theist, Tolkien was a devout Catholic, thus the dragons and balrogs are corruptions, not true nature, nature is actually inherently good as it has to be as the creation of a loving god.Scifi is atheist so it can go deep into the cosmic horror mentality, that the universe in which we live is full of dangers that could wipe us out in an instant, cold and unfeeling, as though all of human civilization. In fact it is true since one day our sun will start to die and expand into a red giant engulfing the earth, or at least making it as hot as mercury if earth's orbit decays enough to place it outsideIt is naive to reject off hand the possibility conscious beings were merely sharted into existence only to exist for a short time in the cosmic timescale, with our current age of modern prosperity and freedom even more fleeting before we are plunged back into the brutal darwinian grind of our forefathers, assuming we don't just up and wipe ourselves out. If this is the case, then surely we are right to struggle against nature and wrest from it the decent existence it refused its creations, since in a cold materialist world there is nothing moral in bending nature to your will, cutting down a tree to build a log cabin, which will make some of the schizo vegans here screech. The real issue here though is to reject darwinism and entropy itself which is to run against materialism itself. One must be a little superstitious. One must have, dare I say it, faith, that you as a conscious being and others like yourself have some sort of inherent value.
>>98172388as though all of human civilization never mattered*
>>98171166Traditional games?
>>98171768I believe the main point is that without Nature to balance Nurture, things actually worsen.Have you ever seen a coddled man-child?
>>98172288That's how hunter-gatherers did it, they found an existing brush fire and did their best to feed it and keep it alive. Chainsmoking is just a way of honoring that ancient tradition.
>>98172325PATHETIC!!!
>>98171166>mental midget thinks he's got a spicy hot take on classic literature>gets literally every major detail wrong and misunderstands the entire work in a way that displays that no only is he a fucking retard, but that he never actually fucking read the books, let alone watched the movies
>>98171166Fantasy is the opposite of reality, so of course it can pretend that vaguely defined environmental factors cause evil instead of innate instincts that have existed from the dawn of time
>>98171325If he was actually smart, he wouldn't be evil.
>>98172037I think that's where a lot of these nutjob conspiracy theories these days come from I mean, apart from the CIA and FBI. People see their government operated by callous, cruel and indifferent agents operating in self-interest to the detriment of their fellow man, and they literally just snap because it's too hard to live with for them. They want to believe that they are inherently good and virtuous for the simple quirk of being human, and so if someone isn't behaving how they want they mustn't be human, they must be reptilian overlords from a distant planet come to harvest our DNA. Introspecting enough to realise that we are all meat automatons capable of abject atrocity just as easily as good is simply beyond their scope.
>>98171768OK but he also only exists to make the game because his ancestors struggled and survived for 1000s of years being culled by the exact same type of shit that would have killed him without technology, and MORE, to produce the specific genetic template that in interaction with his environment and the technology there would produce the game. You can't separate one from the other.I was also born with a condition that means I would have died if I had been born more than 60 or 70 years ago. There are millions of people who are the same.
>>98171200he said sort of, so he's sort of right, somewhere out there in the ether.
>>98171166It certainly doesn't, altough if the theme is there, you can bet it's going the Tolkien route. Nature (or at least pastoral) good, industrialization bad. Society is not the problem here, anyway.Because -big surprise!- fantasy is made for modern people.
>>98171166Are there any examples of the opposite?
>>98171804Because we want to protect nature, or more precisely, decently "pristine" and "living" biomes. This is a good thing (duh), but retorical language tends to fall into irrational bullshit.I'll point out that "cruel" is as wrongly humanizing as "giving" tough. A soft meadow in may, the harshest desert, Saturn clouds: they're neither. They're indifferent.
>>98173054You can find ones in which it's both sides of the coin.Princess Mononoke cames to mind.
>>98171166>Why does fantasy have to follow the "Nature good, Society bad" formula?"The faculty or activity of imagining things, especially things that are impossible or improbable."Huh, I don't see anything in there about having to follow any sort of formula, so you can make your games however you want.
>>98172851Boiled down to their pure essence, conspiracy theories are a denial of the banality of evil. To some people, a world full of monsters is more comforting than accepting that people generally do bad things for stupid and venal reasons, or that bad things can occur purely by happenstance.
>>98171166>Peter Thiel talks about how great Mordor is>Peter Thiel wrotes an essay about Watchmen>Peter Thiel talks about the Anti-ChristOk, how many popculture nerdisms does he talk about? Is there an essay about how the Imperium from Star Wars, GoT finance system, WH40k antichrist symbolism?
>>98171214He read the Russian cope version which has that exact premise
>>98171325Who told you he was smart? You know he's not an obscure person. Like... his every utterance is documented and reported on by journalists whose full time job is to follow him around and record what he says. It's not secret. It's literally all just there for you to read about.
>>98171804You're gonna have fun when you discover the concept of "gods" and what their biggest critics say about them.
>>98175317Storytelling and GM basics? Sure this could have been posted in /Lit/ too.
>>98171325Evil is a byproduct of Dumb.
>>98171166It's a woke troupe but it's not as common as you think. Often the ones that do are hand fisting it in where it annoying with the classic evil rich CEO against the noble savage tribe and the main character who join him to back the tribal girl or something like that. Or you have some good ones where they make it clear their is no good side just sides. Like Princess Mononoke, often enough the people pushing the who back to nature BS are the hipper doesn't know how anything is made, just the classic person evil cause they have land, drilling for oil, running a factory, or whatever gay captain planet storyline they saw as a kid. Also, many NGOs give grants to people who push their agenda in their novels and stories. Why do you think we were flood that woke shit but now they can't even pay for a pride parade. All funded by tax breaks, grants and NGOs pushing their cause. Once you prevent them from using tax papers dollars. Now it's dying and falling apart. It wasn't ever popular, just the people pushing it were trying to make it seem like it was, hoping for it to catch on.
>>98175351The what
>>98172388You are correct anon, but your reliance on big words and "big" syntax is doing you a disservice. More people will read if you focus on substance first and flavour later.
>>98176517The Last Ringbearer
>>98175735>those rich environmentalists getting those fat green checks to complain about pollution7/10 bait. You're doing a fairly good job of pretending to be the kind of low IQ poster who thinks that the real fatcats getting rich from lying about the system is the scientists, but you don't quite sell the idiocy well enough. You've gotta dumb down the logic into something visibly simple and black box. Also you didn't link it back to any of the culture war boogiemen that crowd blames for anything.
>>98175041He's apparently a big One Piece fan and thinks the series is a retelling of Revelations with Luffy as Christ.
>>98171228I mean, he is explicitly textually correct about Ozy, who is an evil narcissist whose plan will fail and probably make things worse since the major powers will be up arming to fight ayylmaoiens that don't exist.
>>98171537Evil isn't wise. Evil can be smart, meaning clever, but it is ultimately destructive. Wisdom is understanding that creation is the higher faculty.
>>98171200yeah, but in Mordor the line goes UP
>>98180806I bet he likes the WH40k fluff. He makes everything about religion. Does he know that there is a machine god in 40k?
>>98171166Like half of fantasy has the "shining city on the hill" with the good king and his knights bringing order and slaying the monsters appearing from the wilderness type stories. Ya fulla shit.
>>98176700Are you lying to us, or to yourself?
>>98181692>posts a bunch of industries destroying the planet>actually they're pro environment! what does the bootlicker means by this?
>>98181732To add on to what he's trying to say, they misdirect people's good intentions to made up nonsense like global warming so you don't look at the colossal dumps full of cellphones where nothing will grow ever again for thousands of years because of the lithium batteries in them. Planned obsolescence, this whole idea of an internet of things, the fake and gay economy actually are eating away at the planet. In a very visceral, tangible way. It makes the paperclip factory scenario seem so naive its almost cute. Replace AI with GDP that accurately describes the present.
>>98171228Well I personally lost it at:>Thiel later finds biblical meaning in the manga One Piece
>>98171176Ted was a mythologized LARPer. He didn't actually practice what he wrote and his victims had pretty much nothing to do with the systems he ragged against.
>>98182310I remember seeing some letter he wrote in reply to someone who asked him how him and his friends should conduct themselves and make themselves able to deal with the oncoming horrible future we were stuck with and his advice was like>you should all go jogging regularlyAnd that was about it.
>>98171166>Why did one of the greatest foundational pieces of modern fantasy focus on "Nature Good, Society bad"?It's almost as if the author witnessed first hand the horrors of massive and rapid technological advancements that resulted in the deaths of millions.
>>98171214For a strange reason, everybody who is critical of Tolkien don't seem to have read the books.
>>98172388>Scifi is atheist so it can go deep into the cosmic horror mentality,A lot of old science fiction was spiritual in nature, just read the old pulp magazines.
>>98171166Um. Did he totally miss the point of Lord of the Rings? Unless this is a misplaced quote of his? Mordor is the corruption and ruination of artifice. The abuse of it. It drills into nature. It destroys. The elves represent the beauty of artifice. The art of it. It weaves into nature. It preserves. The Palantir was made with a noble goal in mind before it got hijacked for evil. How nature is seen, and used, is a core theme of LotR. Gandalf uses blackpowder in the creation of fireworks to inspire joy and wonder and laughter. Saruman uses blackpowder in the creation of bombs for war. The wizards don’t weaponize ignorance the way Sauron does. They don’t form cults and superstition like he does. The wizards simply know things you don’t, and can do things you cannot. This isn’t really complicated. Elves are so good at art/artifice it’s angelic in seeming and appearance. It’s not magical to them (what is magic is also a point of perception; the elves look to the wizards the same way men and hobbits look to the elves). They’re more independent and don’t outsource to machines the way orcs and dwarves and humans do. Their industry is more so sincere.
As a homosexual male I am kind of disgusted how homosexual males like Thiel and Altman are leading the charge into the age of tech hell. They’re either blatantly wrong about what they preach or they’re painfully, dangerously naive.
>>98182330Well, what was he going to write? He knew damn well that the Man was going to read any and all of his correspondence and that he wasn't going to be allowed to be inflammatory.
Tolkien wanted technology to be more in tune with nature. If Thiel doesn’t understand that, then he can get fucked in the ass I guess.
Tolkien knew well the tension of technology and the threat of the machine. Tolkien explains the use of magic in his mythos and how it relates to machinery. Tolkien had thought through, with great clarity, the difference between the magic of the elves and that of Mordor.He observes that the hobbits do not understand the difference between the magic powers exercised by the elves and that of Sauron: “the Elven queen Galadriel is obliged to remonstrate with the Hobbits on their confused use of the word [magic] both for the devices and operations of the Enemy and for those of the Elves.” Tolkien says the lack of a proper word (other than “magic”) for the work of the elves portrays the same confusion in our own minds and mythologies.He goes on to explain the difference: “Their [the elves’] ‘magic’ is Art, delivered from many of its human limitations: more effortless, more quick, more complete (product, and vision in unflawed correspondence). And its object is Art not Power, sub-creation not domination and tyrannous re-forming of Creation.”Tolkien elucidates the dilemmas we face as technology snowballs and threatens to blow up in our face. Put simply, the magic of Mordor is the machinery of murder. It is the pursuit of power for its own sake, and perceives the natural world merely as a raw material to be exploited, distorted, and destroyed. In the films, we see this in full display as the wizard Saruman destroys Fangorn—chewing up the forest to fuel his machines of war. The realms of the Elves, in contrast, at Rivendell and Lothlorien, are havens of harmony, beauty, and peace created by elven magic.The distinction elucidates our own continued, confused, modern relationship to technology. Do we use our increasingly sophisticated gadgetry and expanding knowledge in an elvish, creative, and artful way to bring light, beauty, and truth to the world, or do we use technology to manipulate, make money, and thus gain more power in the world?
>>98171166Gandalf brought knowledge of gunpowder to the Shire by way of his fireworks. He’s probably why the Shire has Victorian-era levels of amenities to begin with. Or not. He came across pipe smoking while visiting the Shire. It’s the south of Middle Earth that’s a backwater shithole. Bree looks straight out of the 17/18th century. Is Thiel just retarded?
According to Thiel, any concern for the way technology is developing, is a sign of the Antichrist. We shouldn’t question our toys and tools. Just accept it.
>>98171166Name 5 instances of this.
