The Great Novel of the Next Century

All great literature is built on the collision of human motivations and drives (vectors). Therefore, to know what conflict the great literature of the generation should address, one must understand the strongest vectors of the era, examine how they can collide, and what happens then. Usually, it's the rise of a new vector that replaces the old ones and collides with them powerfully, preferably in an internal conflict and not just an external one. Or in a conflict of the tragic kind, where human desires and vectors collide with a reality stronger than them, above them

Cupid's arrow as a vector of the heart (Source)

The stronger the vector - the more it creates, regardless of what it's directed at (aliens could have an enormous attraction to green triangles and great literature would be created around it, which we could understand if we translate the triangle into something we know, for example as an allegory, like how the Song of Songs was entirely translated from vector to vector). Because there are always complications, motivations - a vector hits a wall, problems with other vectors, sacrifice, etc. Men have a stronger vector than women (biologically, including proving themselves), and therefore create more, except for one female vector of caring for a child, which can still create great literature (men created the Binding of Isaac, vector against vector).

This is why Buddhism is the culturally poorest religion because it's all about suppressing vectors. Christianity also suppresses the sexual vector with the ideal of abstinence, which is why the death of God was the revival of sex, and that was the depth of the matter - not what Dostoevsky thought (the death of morality), or what the Nazis thought was the revival of sex as race. Important vectors like love, sex, religion, or opposite vectors like death (actually the inversion of the positive life vector) have produced a lot of literature, with the important vector changing each time (meaning in each period one of the vectors becomes more important: in times of famine it could be food, while in times of sexual famine it's sex), and in the sixties a lot of art and culture was created around a new vector of drugs, songs of unrequited love for drugs, etc.

Therefore, literature and art will now be created around the vector of addiction to the internet and Facebook. Houellebecq, for example, is literature around the sexual vector, but what's needed is Houellebecq with Hanoch Levin who feels the pain of male sexual inferiority. All of feminism is a movement that came because the forces in sex are reversed between man and woman compared to other things, so when sex became a dominant vector, men became the weaker sex. Greed is also celebrating. And so these are the vectors that are operating: sex and money, and both are being replaced by addiction to technology, and this is the great story of culture and not Houellebecq.

Vectors like love and religion and fear of death and nationalism (war literature) and children and family continue to decline from their greatness, and their literature becomes uninteresting, and drugs have also died for now, assuming no new drug is found. The whole world is the replacement of vectors, that's all of history, the biggest motive. Once they wanted this way, and then for these reasons they wanted that way. For example, there's enough food. Once the average person had no chance of getting money, and in general the ways to get money were not sophisticated and it was only a byproduct of other things (honor, marriage, etc.), so it wasn't a significant vector, and there wasn't too much variety in what can be done with money. Therefore, the money vector began to create great literature only with the rise of capitalism.

But part of every vector is a story that's told. For example, the aspiration for social fame can still be revived. A new vector can be created or an old vector can be given power, if one manages to glorify it in literature and culture - it's bidirectional. That's how Freud really influenced. He defeated all competitors (Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Einstein, even Darwin), by understanding the vector of sex as central. Marx succeeded because he understood the importance of the new vector of money but acted in the wrong direction against it. And another who won is Turing. Freud and Turing and maybe also Rothschild. Therefore, the great literature of the period is that which will examine the collision between its two great vectors: technology and sex.