Backwards progress in fantasy

[TotallyHuman]

This trope annoys me.
By backwards progress I mean when at the beginning of time there was this super amazing thing amd yadayada, each consequent generation became worse, so the goal of progress is to trace their roots to the original amazing thing. So, rather than building on top of existing achievements, a species devolves instead. Backwards evolution.
It is hugely common in xianxia, and in ordinary fantasy too.
I hate it.

 

[SailusGebel]

Why did you post this in author general? You want some kind of discussion, or you want to rant?

 

[Sylver]

Why did you post this in author general? You want some kind of discussion, or you want to rant?

Chill
Interesting, I don't think I'm familiar with that trope do you find them in any novels in this site?

 

[SailusGebel]

Interesting, I don't think I'm familiar with that trope do you find them in any novels in this site?

I would argue that even Naruto has this trope.

 

[Generic.Archdemon]

Isnt it usually some kinda of magic apocalypse? That wipe out the ancients?

Ergo... they are all post apocalypse stories?

 

[nemonusquam_]

I would say that it's a trope rooted in history; much like the Fall of the Roman Empire and the subsequent Dark Ages. Here is an excerpt of a 8th century poem by an unknown Old English author, suitably titled "The Ruin":

This masonry is wondrous; fates broke it
courtyard pavements were smashed; the work of giants is decaying.
Roofs are fallen, ruinous towers,
the frosty gate with frost on cement is ravaged,
chipped roofs are torn, fallen,
undermined by old age. The grasp of the earth possesses
the mighty builders, perished and fallen,
the hard grasp of earth, until a hundred generations
of people have departed[...]

This author perceived Roman architecture as "the work of giants". The loss of progress is ingrained in our collective unconscious. Who is to say that the achievements of our own age will stand to the test of time? Food for thought!

 

[MatchaChocolate69]

This trope annoys me.
By backwards progress I mean when at the beginning of time there was this super amazing thing amd yadayada, each consequent generation became worse, so the goal of progress is to trace their roots to the original amazing thing. So, rather than building on top of existing achievements, a species devolves instead. Backwards evolution.
It is hugely common in xianxia, and in ordinary fantasy too.
I hate it.

A trope that became famous with the fall of the Roman Empire. But probably already widespread in Sumerian times with Gilgamesh.
But what did those before us really know? It's time to invent something new!

Edit: Ninjed by @nemonusquam_

 

[Corty]

I would argue that even Naruto has this trope.

Don't get me started on that one. Them ninjas have TVs but no telephone? Or is there a telephone? Building modern bridges, but then that gets forgotten very quickly, and they revert to medieval Japan.

That show is a complete mess.

 

[Sylver]

Isnt it usually some kinda of magic apocalypse? That wipe out the ancients?

Ergo... they are all post apocalypse stories?

Not necessarily, I would think this could be a sort of natural de-evolution type as well, where the plot focuses on the aftermath of progress, not war, and the idea being that progress has slowed to a stop or perhaps progress moved forward only to discover some negative consequences, in which people now need to look backwards.

I'm applying real life events and debates, but what comes to mind would be the whole global warming thing, and how some believe that the appropriate response is to lower the carbon footprint by stepping back from using gas-powered vehicles in favor for alternative fuel sources, like electrical for example. It doesn't necessarily mean we are in a post apocalyptic setting (although it can be argued ) and it's just my interpretation so I could be way off.

 

[RepresentingEnvy]

I don't hate it. It happens in real life, bruv.

 

[SailusGebel]

Don't get me started on that one. Them ninjas have TVs but no telephone? Or is there a telephone? Building modern bridges, but then that gets forgotten very quickly, and they revert to medieval Japan.

That show is a complete mess.

I was mostly talking about ninjutsu and powerlevels. How come next generations got progressively weaker?

 

[Sagacious_Punk]

Yeah, "backwards progress" happens a lot because A) most fantasy writers since Tolkien are stuck in the same rut he set the tone for "Ah, the good old times, they were better", and B) because most writers in general have poor extrapolation skills on a macroscopic level (hence, it's easier to apply a reductionist approach rather than a holistic one)

Coincidentally, because of B), fantasy writers are much more widespread than sci-fi writers in the speculative fiction genre. 'Cause science and logic chains do be hard, bruh. While magic and "medieval" societies are easy! (not)

 

[Yule]

This is actually really interesting! I can see why you'd hate this trope. I never really thought to look at it from such a perspective, but now that I put some thought into it, I can see why it might be unflavorful for some.

As others have said already, "backwards progress" happens a lot in our actual world. Babylon, Rome, Macedonia, Chinese Dynasty, all the empires of Europe and Japan, these are all fragments of history that once ruled their respective regions! But they're gone, and empires are mostly a thing of the past now, right? We had a "backwards progress."

But fantasy is (at least kind of) about NOT being real world. It's a fictional world with fictional things and fictional events where impossible things come true, and real life complications are mostly sent through the roof! The reason we even have "backwards progress" happening in these stories, then, is probably the writers' attempts to dash a sense of realism into their worlds to make it more believable and relatable.

That's what I think is happening, anyways. I might be totally off the mark, but I'd like to believe that this trope occurs only because the writers are trying to come up with a good story. But I can see it having the opposite effect for people who'd rather not see this buildup - crisis - buildup cycle in a fictional story since we already have plenty of examples on Earth.

 

[Chaos_Sinner777]

Yeah, that bothers me sometimes too. I've been considering trying a crack at it myself and/or a subversion of the trope. Like, sure the mana decreased by half, but the complexity of magic formula increased to compensate, so the mages are actually better even if they don't have as much to work with. But, that isn't really much of a story on its own and I haven't thought how else to flesh out the idea.

 

[TheEldritchGod]

Chill
Interesting, I don't think I'm familiar with that trope do you find them in any novels in this site?

The trope is from greek mythology. There was the Mythic age, Golden Age, Silver age, everything goes to shit age, current age, yada yada yada.

"BACK IN MY DAY, men were twelve feet tall and made of GOLD. You kids today, you don't know how good you got it. Why we had to live in a lake! Every day, we had to get up, clean the lake, march 12 miles to school, up hill in the snow, both ways, then come home, clean the lake again, out father would feed us a lump of cold poison for dinner, beat up to death and dance about on our graves."

"SHEER LUXURY!"

 

[Prince_Azmiran_Myrian]

I find the term progress confusing.
What are we progressing toward? If something great existed in the past, would we not want to progress towards that? Perhaps there were better times.

Perhaps you mean accumulation instead? We do accumulate knowledge over time. But I also think that knowledge can be lost and/or corrupted. Corrupted knowledge might better be discarded even if that isn't likely to happen. Than that only leaves renewal/reclaim of corrupted knowledge. A lot of work.

As for backwards evolution, this is sort of a natural process. Natural selection preserves functioning information from degenerating down the line of descendants. We haven't yet seen entirely new information created by that process. So genetic information is preserved rather than accumulated.

 

[RedHunter2296]

It doesn't bother me that there is a de-evolution, what bothers me is when they don't explain shit about what happened, it's like that part of how a great civilization fell and was forgotten is the central point of the whole story, but somehow the author can't think of anything else but "cataclysm" and then say nothing else. It's like trying to play Fallout 4, but instead of waking up and playing Fallout 4, your character wakes up being caught trying to cross the border of Skyrim and explain nothing else but that bombs exploded and a thousand years passed, now here, gather 10 lost sheep.

 

[K5Rakitan]

Like Idiocracy?

 

[So_Indecisive]

Don't get me started on that one. Them ninjas have TVs but no telephone? Or is there a telephone? Building modern bridges, but then that gets forgotten very quickly, and they revert to medieval Japan.

That show is a complete mess.

I think in a world of superpowered Ninjas anything that gives a large information advantage is probably going to be destroyed. Harmless inventions that don't impact the Ninja caste of society is acceptable. Anything that threatens it was probably removed

 

[SailusGebel]

I find the term progress confusing.
What are we progressing toward? If something great existed in the past, would we not want to progress towards that? Perhaps there were better times.

Perhaps you mean accumulation instead? We do accumulate knowledge over time. But I also think that knowledge can be lost and/or corrupted. Corrupted knowledge might better be discarded even if that isn't likely to happen. Than that only leaves renewal/reclaim of corrupted knowledge. A lot of work.

As for backwards evolution, this is sort of a natural process. Natural selection preserves functioning information from degenerating down the line of descendants. We haven't yet seen entirely new information created by that process. So genetic information is preserved rather than accumulated.