who cares if it's off topic if it's a better topic haha Just to expand on part of what you said, the universe is most certainly indifferent to morality and any human standards of decency (just look at freakin' spiders :ahh, and I've always been fascinated by how humans are really the only creatures I know of that have a sense of right and wrong. I mean, other animals don't give a **** (especially Honey Badger :derpe about the consequences of their actions, they just what they do. Anyway, C.S. Lewis (not exactly a scientist but made some great philosophical discoveries) wrote in "The Law of Human Nature" that humanity's concepts of the universe are limited to what can be physically observed that is not within themselves. For example, a moral sense of right and wrong, guilt and any inkling of a standard of human morality cannot be observed by an outside force such as an extra-terrestrial. Sure, an alien could look at a human's code of law, but they would never be able to fully understand that humans have a sense of right and wrong or anything of that nature. Likewise, a human cannot comprehend what could lie within an alien beyond what can be observed, and the same goes for everything else that is inhuman extending to the laws of the universe. A direct quote from C.S. in the chapter "What Lies Behind the Law": "...if there was anything above or behind the observable facts in the case of stones or weather, we, by studying them from outside, could never hope to discover it."
We really should do another thread on this though, lol. Fun as it is to talk about, the topic is supposed to be why fiction is important, and we're going off on tangents about whether fiction exists to begin with and why. XD Buuut, I have to at least respond to this bit: I've said this to people so many times. Spiders are living f**king proof that the universe does not care about humans. Or at least about me.
That isn't scientifically supported. Quantum physics and multiverse theory only actually supports the existence of all of the variations of our universe. That means everything that is possible could happen in another universe. But, if we changed our universe on the smallest of levels, we don't really know what would be possible or not. At that point, we're doing nothing more than throwing out wild ideas about things that might be true. But if something is impossible, by the fact itself it cannot happen. Therefore, there would be no variations of it except in a universe where it can happen. However, if the existence of a universe where it can happen is also impossible, quantum mechanics does not necessitate its existence. I feel like people apply a lot of wishful thinking to this scientific concept. It doesn't work on a "if you can think it, it could happen" basis. Oh wow. Thanks for putting into words what I really meant all along. But yeah. Writing is cool. I like it. I have run out of things to say due to the fact that you knew what I already wanted to say.
"as a writer, I don't believe I tell the reader a story. The reader tells themselves the story, I just give them an idea." I'd like to explore this idea a bit more. I'm also going to take a page from Stephen King here. Now, imagine a rabbit with the number 8 on its back. Simple no? You've already imagined this and actually filled in details that I didn't provide? What color was the rabbit? Did you imagine it as white, brown, black, or heck even rainbow colored? In what shape was the 8? Was it elongated, or made of two perfect Os? Also, let's say we put that rabbit in a cage. What type of cage are you imagining? Is the cage plastic, metal, or something else entirely? This is one of the things I've always enjoyed about writing. As a writer i'm trying to portray an idea to the reader. However I don't do this directly. It's almost like the writer builds up a completely empty building, and the reader furnishes it. Now, tying this back to "What is the importance of fiction?" To me, fiction allows a core idea to be expressed in a way that is friendly or familiar to the reader. That and exploring the created worlds is often fun, hence why rpgs exist. Is anyone interested in how rpgs related to this?
Totally. I also feel this is another reason why fiction is important; it stimulates people's brains. When you read a story or study a painting or listen to a song, your mind is processing and creating its own interpretation of the information it's being fed. It's exercise for your imagination. (At least, that's how people should do it. This is why it bothers me so much when people tell me stuff like "oh, I just listen to music for the sound"... there's a whole lot more to art than that, if you take your brain out of your skull and actually dunk it in.) RPGs <3 I agree with this too, that fiction can be more accessible than just writing out lists of ideas and arguments, because it's entertaining and helps our minds take breaks from reality for a while. Reading philosophical tracts isn't everybody's cup of tea, but telling stories is a long, long-lived human tradition. RPGs are just one way the tradition has evolved to make stories interactive. Also I'm a level 8 kenku rogue-sorcerer who carries an arsenal of enchanted crossbows.
Yeah, it is true that humans have, for as long as recorded history has been around to tell us so, told, shared, written and depicted stories, even at primitive stages of human existence. That's gotta' mean it's got some kind of purpose... but then again people have picked their noses for quite some time as well... but then again then again nose picking does have a purpose in a weird way lol
Now to keep this conversation going because it is a fun one. I'm going to play the devil's advocate a bit. If a writer does not explicitly give an idea to a person, could it then be argued that we do not need writers at all? After all, a person can have the same idea if they sat down and imagined for a bit.
I don't think so, because I think the source of ideas lies in each individual person's brain chemistry and the experiences they understand well enough to be able to retell. It's sort of like, even though anyone can technically do science, we have scientists who do it for a living because they're better at it or have more resources to dedicate to it than others. Writers can take months or years developing a concept before they publish it, because they themselves have to understand what themes they're trying to discuss and why. And even after all their work, they can only portray ideas they've forged out of experiences in their own lives. It's impossible (or at least, sure close to impossible) to forge an idea out of experiences in someone else's life; no two brains have the same thoughts because they're all seeing the world from a different angle and through a different lens. I think the only way two people could truly have the same ideas, the same imaginations, and the same outlooks on life, is if they were living identical lives. And since that doesn't happen, communication is the only way those ideas can get around. Basically this: Spoiler: image
Fiction is a concept that allows people to escape the rather boring and monotonous thing that is reality; it allows you to view it from more unique perspectives rather than the one we constantly live in every day. Without fiction to give us that one little sliver of hope that maybe someday reality will take a better, lighter turn, we're already lost. The day non-fiction takes absolute precedence over works of fiction is the day Humanity's creativity dies, and therefore, individuality is sacrificed for conformity and order. Fiction is chaos and reality is order; they need to be balanced in order for society to function. Some people take it too far into both areas. We call people who live/want to live in fictional worlds insane, and we call absolute realists with no imagination deadpan and pessimistic. Such is life, such is people. We need fiction. It drives us to do what we want in the hopes that our presently fictatious desires will become a non-fiction truth. Everyone wants a million dollars, but they realize (Most of the time) that they have to go through reality to get to their dream. Fiction helps us set goals, and when we meet these goals, the borders of fiction can go beyond even what most people can ever, no pun intended, dream of. Nobody thought that anyone could jump 120000 feet from the air; and Felix Baumgartner did. People thought they would never walk on the moon, that space travel was just 'science-fiction'. And Neil Armstrong and his crew (+NASA helping) did. Who knows what we consider fiction can become reality now? Only time can really tell.
I see your point, but I have another question for you and I'm going to tie this in with below quote as well. We are trying not to touch on the idea of escapism, per ops request. However what do yall think about this? Since not everyone can tell/write/create a good story from their imagination, then society as a whole suffers. We are leaving the creativity to the select few that are "good" at it, rather than coming up with ideas on our own. Also the only way to get good at something is to do it yourself. Right? So i'll rephrase my previous question. Should we have writers at all, by having others guide our imagination are we stifling our own?
Escapism is a large portion of fiction. It would be folly not to discuss it even with the OP saying not to.
I'd have to disagree there. While Escapism is definitely a part of fictioon, I do not think it is an inevitable fact. Fiction can be used for means other than escaping the reality. It can be used to entertain, and to predict. Also to cut off this rebuttal before it comes up, being used as an entertainment is not the same as escapism. Someone can play the violin, enjoy it, and not use it as an escape (It can be used for escapism but it is not a fact of entertainment). Thus I argue that fiction is the same way, it can be used for entertainment without also being used an escape.
That's not exactly what I'm trying to say; regardless of what you personally believe fiction to be, some people view it as an escape and use it thusly. Escapism is a part of fiction, though not absolutely for everyone. That's what I mean by inevitable, because there are people who view it as such, and use it as such. Make sense? You're just gonna have those types of people that use it as an escape, which isn't really a bad thing.
I'll agree on that, however your earlier point was that escapism was the basis of fiction. Do you mind expanding on that point a bit to connect it with what you are currently saying? Currently I do not see how escapism is the basis.
Edit: Late because it's a long post lol [MENTION=771]Saikyo the Teemo[/MENTION] Spoiler: tl;dr It's true that fiction is entertaining because it does give that unique perspective on life, one that isn't bound by the reality we know. But I've touched a bit on why I think reading and writing as a way of "escape" is extremely unhealthy. Fleeing from reality isn't going to help us deal with it; we live in reality, so no matter where we go it will follow us. And if we choose to believe we can ignore our problems rather than face them, it just means it'll hurt that much more when they bite us in the ass because we were too busy looking the other way. Real hope comes from real things, not fake ones. We shouldn't look at fiction as a way of escaping reality, but a way of expanding it. Even though we're looking through an imaginary person's perspective, a (good) fictional story will still demonstrate something that's true about real life. The goal is to grasp that idea and find ways apply it to reality, not live in the story we found it in. Any hope we gain from just reading a story--and I would argue this is true of nonfiction too--is entirely false hope. We need to learn and apply those core ideas in real ways for life to ever change. Otherwise we're just deluding ourselves. I don't think I entirely understand you here lol. Maybe I can't get my head around this idea just because I don't think human creativity can ever die, ever. Even if fiction were to somehow stop existing entirely, imagination is still an integral part of what we are as a species, and we use it to solve real problems just as much as we use it to tell stories. I actually believe fiction is order and reality is chaos. XD Sure our goal is to treat the human mind as a purely rational, scientific machine, but the truth is it isn't. There will always be stuff we don't know about the universe: stuff we haven't observed, processes we don't understand, and predictions we can't make. All this stuff contributes to reality being the mysterious thing that it is. Even though we're trapped in it, we don't know what makes it tick or why stuff happens. It's chaotic. Fiction on the other hand, is something we build entirely in our minds, and our minds are always drawn to order. There are a handful of mathematical and philosophical reasons for why this is, but for now I'll just summarize with the idea "it just makes things easier to understand". We build settings, characters, and storylines based on things we know, and we structure them in such a way that though not necessarily predictable (I think we can all agree a predictable story is a boring one, lol), but will more or less make sense to a user after they've had a chance to digest it all. They get the main ideas the author was trying to convey without having to deal with all the noise, variables, and randomness that real life would have thrown into the mix. And thus, I don't see fiction as a way of applying chaos to the order that is reality; it's a way of applying order to the chaos that is reality. As for the parts about insane or deadpan people, I agree that it's difficult or nigh impossible for those types to function in our culture... but that's all a part of the chaos that reality throws at us. This is, of course, more or less what I said earlier. It's the opposite of escapism. I believe the goal of fiction is to use it to help us face reality, not to help us run from it. To do this we need ideas from creative people and the passion and intellect to use them in the real world. If we let ourselves stop short of this, we're wasting our time. I'll rephrase my answer then, lol. I said earlier that anyone can do science, but we have professionals who do it for a living. I'll amend that say everyone should do science, because that is how ideas get refined. One doesn't have to be an expert on a subject to be able to think about it in a scientific way; it just means they don't know as much or have been studying it for as long. But anyone can and should think critically whenever they're fed information. So to extend this to fiction, a writer feeds an idea to their audience, but remember it's the reader that tells themselves the story. It's the reader that interprets that idea and expands on it. The writer has no control over this, and shouldn't attempt to control it, because it's how the reader exercises their own imagination. Essentially yes and no: By having a select few people guide our imagination, we would be stifling our own, but that doesn't happen. At least, I sure hope no one lets it happen.
