Never before were we able to write and distribute on a whim. Paper and ink used to be come to hard by; good luck reproducing it for others to take in. Mass reproduction only graced us 600 years ago, and for a good while was terribly expensive. Not too long ago publishing companies decided (and, to some extent, still do) who makes the rounds or gets squelched. Such a large provision of profit they cut for themselves, too! A stark difference to now. Now we have our own machines to write up whatever we like. There’s software out there that’ll help you make a book.
The starker contrast from the past, though, is a waning interest in books at large. What used to be the more well-to-do pastime is now boring. Families used to pinch pennies to collect their own personal library. Now those books and their titles are hard to remember. Literary culture is waning. Literary culture is the core of shared belief, of common culture. Literature literally holds our thoughts, and now we no longer share them, for we no longer read them (unless they’re hot takes, from anonymous people online, with little room for grey area). You see this fragmentation of culture even within close friends.
Funny enough, writing to publish I once dreamt about, but I could not shake this concern of how divorced writing is from reality, with or without the above developments. The .lost in translation. phenomenon is usually restricted between different languages, but I would say it even happens in the same language. Words evoke differently for every person. Nuance haunts most of our word choice. And, more often than not, we begin valuing the words and ideas instead of the world as is.
“Literature is the most agreeable way of ignoring life.”
― Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet
So on one hand you have all the tools before you to construct the very vehicle that defines peoples, nations, cultures, and on the other hand this hidden fear of persecution due to misunderstanding, fear of being unintelligible due to those language nuances, fear of not enacting any change because nothing is new underneath the Sun, no one is going to read, what exactly do you hope to change anyway - is thanks not enough for the day? Does dissatisfaction always have to drive creation?
It is confusing. It seems to boil down into two choices: either believe you can pen down the bridge toward the world you want, or furrow in yourself and your private world. You could probably merge the choices too, taking both ‘world’ and ‘private world’ as all the same. We often conflate expressing oneself and helping that self be understood.