diagrapher asked: Regarding "neotonous traditionalism"; I'm a bit uncomfortable interpreting OTHER peoples' misfortune this way, but one of the main ways I look back on my own painful near death from infection is "wow, that was really interesting :-)". Mind you, I find it much harder to feel that way about the bullying I suffered in school. Actual death can't be like that since it's not something people can look back on, but I assume JCW believes in an afterlife.

Yeah, now that I think about it, I suspect that is a not an uncommon response?  Once you’re sufficiently far from something like that, it’s just a “new experience” you had.

Mostly when I talk about the problems with NDW’s view I’m thinking of things like [insert long list of historical massacres, genocides, and other atrocities].  It’s not just that it’s disturbing to me for someone to look at such things as just part of an enjoyable narrative – it’s also that they don’t even seem to have narrative justifications.  Some kinds of horror just repeat themselves over and over again across history.  If it’s a story, it’s a lot like one of those fanfics where a character keeps getting beat up and humiliated across the course of 400K words, which is not what most of us usually mean by “a good story.”