08-07-2025, 05:06 PM
I watched this video a while back, and would love to chat about its ideas here. If you don’t want any current events stuff, skip to 1:27.
https://youtu.be/TNI92D_fvO8?si=9KE_xMNRoi3vlq3i
The presenter, Struthless (a creativity-focused self-improvement blogger; his channel started as a way to use creativity to promote his sobriety) discusses how exciting developments in art often follow times of social/economic crisis. How wonderful that his great, timeless example of this that appears near the video’s end is Dante!
Someone more familiar with general Renaissance history than me may be able to comment on how well the idea holds up; certainly in Dante’s case, though, social crisis had an effect in the creation of his work. Had the situation in Florence never developed as it did, and Dante had been known as a politician foremost, it would be difficult to imagine a situation in which he reaches the same spiritual heights that he does with the Comedy.
But I think Dante (and Struthless) make a case for this very strongly on a personal level. Dante writing his masterpiece in exile, Struthless making videos as an effort in sobriety; both are art being born out of a rebirth, rising from the ashes of the life before. Even if we look at something like Paul’s letters in the Bible, it starts with the “one day, everything changed” as he falls off his horse on the road to Damascus.
Is this maybe pointing to a pattern of the “felix culpa,” or happy fault that having a low point gives us a place from which to rise? It feels like asking if we could even have the Comedy had the Pilgrim never been lost in the dark forest to begin with; without that moment of being lost, Beatrice/Mary wouldn’t have had reason to send Virgil.
As I think of it, in general the idea of new life and creativity rising from chaos and times when the old falls apart is very Christian in its heart
It may be a bit of a ramble, but I hope this serves as a good starting point to explore the personal, social, and/or cosmic levels of the pattern that the video describes!
https://youtu.be/TNI92D_fvO8?si=9KE_xMNRoi3vlq3i
The presenter, Struthless (a creativity-focused self-improvement blogger; his channel started as a way to use creativity to promote his sobriety) discusses how exciting developments in art often follow times of social/economic crisis. How wonderful that his great, timeless example of this that appears near the video’s end is Dante!
Someone more familiar with general Renaissance history than me may be able to comment on how well the idea holds up; certainly in Dante’s case, though, social crisis had an effect in the creation of his work. Had the situation in Florence never developed as it did, and Dante had been known as a politician foremost, it would be difficult to imagine a situation in which he reaches the same spiritual heights that he does with the Comedy.
But I think Dante (and Struthless) make a case for this very strongly on a personal level. Dante writing his masterpiece in exile, Struthless making videos as an effort in sobriety; both are art being born out of a rebirth, rising from the ashes of the life before. Even if we look at something like Paul’s letters in the Bible, it starts with the “one day, everything changed” as he falls off his horse on the road to Damascus.
Is this maybe pointing to a pattern of the “felix culpa,” or happy fault that having a low point gives us a place from which to rise? It feels like asking if we could even have the Comedy had the Pilgrim never been lost in the dark forest to begin with; without that moment of being lost, Beatrice/Mary wouldn’t have had reason to send Virgil.
As I think of it, in general the idea of new life and creativity rising from chaos and times when the old falls apart is very Christian in its heart
It may be a bit of a ramble, but I hope this serves as a good starting point to explore the personal, social, and/or cosmic levels of the pattern that the video describes!
