Where does the idea of civilization come from? What does it mean and where does it go from here? What is its purpose? How does it come from within us? And where does that spark come from in the first place?
00:00:56.720And meditation, prayer, feel free to toss in your own word there.
00:01:02.760I'm going to start off by asking you, what is Western literature?
00:01:08.440You see, Western literature is actually a very unique development in history.
00:01:17.760There's a certain quality that, you know, especially starting in the Renaissance and moving forward from that,
00:01:25.060there's a certain quality that you get in Western literature that's just absent before that and elsewhere in the world.
00:01:31.480And you can sum that up as the character's arc.
00:01:35.540The growth and change that they make within themselves, which corresponds to a growth and change in the world around them.
00:01:43.300See, literature, our storytelling, is all about a protagonist encountering adversity that shakes them up and makes them confront things about themselves.
00:01:59.640And then, having that protagonist go out into the world and enforce the discovery they have made about themselves,
00:02:12.360they go and enforce that and change the nature of reality.
00:02:19.860This is what Nietzsche would call the will to power.
00:02:22.400That there's this element in humanity.