The Power of Collections for Criticisms and Critiques of Modernity
In the year 2021, we live in a more connected, yet more complicated, world than humans have ever experienced. To parallel this changing substratum of reality, our sources of literature are undergoing modifications to try and mirror that diversity and the many different relative complications which arise from our increasingly modernized world.
Traditionally, most novels and books have a specific set of themes and a limited scope. With so many aspects of our existence in need of attention and reflection, the curation of a series of stories that touches upon more than one theme of critique per story, across multiple stories, is an efficient way to say a great deal about the modern human condition within one solitary collective work.
In Alethea’s Dreams multiple stories are able to open up and develop diverse spaces for the culmination of varied subjective perspectives and interests within multiple protagonists, antagonists and ‘others’. This method provides a fuller-spectrum picture of how we are not only self, but self and other—to other selves.
While creating Alethea’s Dreams, it became apparent that there is a special power that can be derived from a collection of stories (as opposed to a singular novel). The special power is that through writing a collection of stories you are less limited as to the number of topics and themes that can be woven into one book.
Alethea’s Dreams reaches into as many nooks and crannies of the modern human condition as possible. In its entirety, the Dreams touch upon the following themes;
- Addiction
- Business Ethics
- Capitalism and Consumerism
- Civil Rights & Social Equity
- Coping Mechanisms
- Homelessness
- Cultural Heritage
- Death
- Domestic Abuse
- Domestic and International Politics
- Drug Wars
- Environmental connection/ concerns
- Immigration
- Incarceration
- Lingering effects of Colonialism and Modern Imperialism
- Parenting
- Poverty
- Prejudice
- Psychotherapy
- Service, ideals of service
- Slavery
- Social and Political Order
- Suicide
- Terrorism
- Totalitarian States
- War
Thus the power of a collection, such as Alethea’s Dreams, to function as a broad sweeping critique of modernity is amplified by the way that these themes do not occur in isolation. As in ‘real life’, there are overlaps, cross-sections and divergences of aspects of all of the themes above; which cumulatively display the existential agitations of our stressed relative interests and innate lostness in our relations from self to self, self to world and self with other selves.
Traditionally, most novels and books have a specific set of themes and a limited scope. With so many aspects of our existence in need of attention and reflection, the curation of a series of stories that touches upon more than one theme of critique per story, across multiple stories, is an efficient way to say a great deal about the modern human condition within one solitary collective work.
In Alethea’s Dreams multiple stories are able to open up and develop diverse spaces for the culmination of varied subjective perspectives and interests within multiple protagonists, antagonists and ‘others’. This method provides a fuller-spectrum picture of how we are not only self, but self and other—to other selves.
While creating Alethea’s Dreams, it became apparent that there is a special power that can be derived from a collection of stories (as opposed to a singular novel). The special power is that through writing a collection of stories you are less limited as to the number of topics and themes that can be woven into one book.
Alethea’s Dreams reaches into as many nooks and crannies of the modern human condition as possible. In its entirety, the Dreams touch upon the following themes;
- Addiction
- Business Ethics
- Capitalism and Consumerism
- Civil Rights & Social Equity
- Coping Mechanisms
- Homelessness
- Cultural Heritage
- Death
- Domestic Abuse
- Domestic and International Politics
- Drug Wars
- Environmental connection/ concerns
- Immigration
- Incarceration
- Lingering effects of Colonialism and Modern Imperialism
- Parenting
- Poverty
- Prejudice
- Psychotherapy
- Service, ideals of service
- Slavery
- Social and Political Order
- Suicide
- Terrorism
- Totalitarian States
- War
Thus the power of a collection, such as Alethea’s Dreams, to function as a broad sweeping critique of modernity is amplified by the way that these themes do not occur in isolation. As in ‘real life’, there are overlaps, cross-sections and divergences of aspects of all of the themes above; which cumulatively display the existential agitations of our stressed relative interests and innate lostness in our relations from self to self, self to world and self with other selves.
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