6.3 KiB
Anti-rational genres and works?
-
Author: u/None *
-
URL:
-
Score: 3
-
Created: 2018-05-11T07:41:52
Post:
[removed]
Comments:
u/OutOfNiceUsernames [+10] fear of last pages (3 hours later)
- (in-universe) the Newspeak from 1984
- (in-universe) the Cantus sealing ritual from Shin Sekai Yori
- belief magic, sympathetic magic, contagious magic, emotion magic, etc
- Doctor Who often features a genre that I’d call the opposite of Cosmicism — humanity manages to survive one apocalyptic scenario after another, the main crew manages to overcome one incredibly powerful foe after another because the human race itself is the darling of the universe; and from the way the Doctor talks one would assume it has a plot armor that’s an actual in-universe phenomenon. Though perhaps it’s only because one single — but incredibly powerful — entity is fond of humanity.
- similar themes are also present in many /r/HFY/ texts \ recommendations.
- “brainwashing” techniques (sorry for no specific links) used by religions, cults, other organised groups that are molded into a story-telling format
- scriptures and texts of many religions and cults,
- Heavy-handed implementations of AnAesop (e.g. in folk tales), Anvilicious (e.g. in children's TV series, mainstream media, etc), AuthorTract, etc.
u/None [+1] (7 hours later)
I'm not referring to when it's done unintentionally, as flaw in the narrative, or a general 'bad storytelling'. I'm talking about when it's done purposefully, to evoke specific emotions.
u/sicutumbo [+1] (9 hours later)
Why are the magic systems you listed in your third point anti rational? Yes, they are verifiably not how our world works, but in fiction it could be a simple fact of the world. I don't see why those magics encourage any type of anti rational behavior, even if the real people who believe in them aren't rational.
Those magics may tend to appear more often in works that are not rational, but I don't see why they are necessarily anti rational. You could drop a rational character into a universe with those magic systems, and have that character use them without giving up their rationality.
u/WalterTFD [+3] (6 hours later)
Romance as a genre tends to be anti-rational, not in the straw vulcan sense, but in the 'nobody in this story is taking actions that make their desired outcomes more likely' sense.
u/None [+3] (10 hours later)
[deleted]
u/embrodski [+2] (14 hours later)
One of my favorites :)
u/melmonella [+2] Tremble, o ye mighty, for a new age is upon you (3 hours later)
I am not entirely sure what to do with your question. Rationalization, as far as I know, is an inherently human thing, and no human is "incapable" of it. From context I presume you meant "inability to explain" instead? Those are not the same, and I'd even call them opposites in some sense.
As far as genres that have characters be unable to explain or unwilling to try to explain a certain facet of their world... Pretty much all of them? From the sidebar:
In Rationalist Fiction, rationalist and scientific methods are used to demystify mysterious phenomena.
Since it is stated as a major distinguishing feature of the genre, it implies that most of the works outside the genre do not possess it. Which is fairly consistent with my experience. It's not like Frodo ever asked any pointed questions to Gandalf regarding his magics.
Finally, regarding this:
a protagonist has to 'surrender' to the idea of a something so much greater than them, they can't rationalize or explain it
I am not entirely certain why something being greater than you, in whatever sense of the word, would cause you to be unable to make predictive models of it. Nuclear fusion at the hearts of stars is greater in destruction (just from the sheer amount of energy involved) than anything humans have done, but we still can make models about it. Economics involves thousands of humans, AI research is already so complex no single person can "see" what is happening on all levels of it at once (i.e. model what a neural network would do starting from properties of transistors, or even from machine code) and modern medicine is getting so complex we are close to tapping into the images inside someone's brain, but we can still perfectly well make models about them. One the other hand, Force is a fairly trivial future prediction/telekinesis thingie that works incredibly intuitively and results of applying it can be predicted by a ten year old. There isn't much "great" or unintuitive about it in comparison to some of the things humans are actually capable of modeling. Schrödinger Equation would eat Force for breakfast and not even notice it.
Oh, and doctor Strange was just a classic straw man of a "rational" person at the beginning of the movie. There was even a post about it here when movie came out.
u/None [+1] (7 hours later)
I read a book about two higher beings going to earth (or awakening two humans not sure anymore) and every human attacks them on sight. I guess it should have some bullshit about the higher beings frequency. But I stopped after some doctors smacked themselves into forcefields to hurt those two. The npc were just acting horrible unbelievable.
Anyhow I felt strong emotions and then rage quit. So not sure if this irrational behaviour was designed that way.
If you want to know the books name, I can look if I can find it.