This morning I was stuck between two worlds. Here, my brain is dripping endless intangibles into my consciousness. I struggled for the first ten minutes of what we call "being awake" (I personally refer to this "state" as an extended trauma), trying with all my might to get those damned dreams to clot. Stop the drip! Now I am awake, but floating on my heels. As humans we must come to a crossroads at some point: to be really good at something you must practice. As my fifth grade teacher once said, "Practice doesn't make perfect. Perfect practice does!" Now I'm in the business of being a hermit. Not to practice, but to exercise to the best of my abilities, which I think is my writing. To be a wholly well-rounded human being you must appreciate the delirium of excess, but understand the necessity of restraint. This piece of writing isn't very well organized. I'm tired, and I mostly wanted to get what little structure this thought process had out onto writing...so... sorry for the stream of consciousness feel.
I'm going to discuss about Fiction. Fiction and history are the only two types of information. The past is history, the future is fiction- we stand with one foot on each side. Fiction is the mother of the necessity which mothers invention. We shape our approach to the future based on our personal notions of fiction. Fiction gives us wings, history gives us a horizon.
Stories--theater, art, comics, video games, poems, books, anime, movies, tv shows--they shouldn’t be treated as an escape. They should serve to form our sense of fiction that we use to make our mark on the future. The struggles of fictional characters are left open to our own personal interpretation. Why did the villain lose? Should the hero have won? What would it mean for the world if it turned out differently? How would I have acted in the same situation? Why? We make ourselves the fictional characters of our own story!
It’s tempting to assign higher objective value to one work or genre of fiction over another. There might be some validity behind this urge, but the concern here is what the fiction can bring out in an individual, and not the other way around. Since we are all different-we will be influenced by fiction in different ways.
Artists with a sense of futility should know their work isn’t meaningless. It seems more and more like society demands a justification from the artist about why they are creating what they are creating. The more fiction society has to draw from, the more developed our imagination and our sense of self can become.
Most people become who they are because of who they’re around. That’s too homogeneous a pool in most cases. Fiction provides more input for personal growth.
Mediums of fiction are often looked down upon by society. “Nerds.” The only mistake a stereotypical “nerd” is making is by using fiction purely as an escape instead of a tool. Fiction shouldn't be treated as a drug or some kind of substitute for real life. Having a personally applied knowledge of a given work or body of fiction is just as important and useful to society in the long run as a complete knowledge of….say….. law. Focusing only on history creates stagnation while focusing only on fiction creates degradation. One has to see how they work together, but society needs to quit downplaying the importance of the role of fiction.
We are the living legacies of the heroes and villains of fiction. We can give their struggles worth. They can give our struggles personal meaning. They help us form a “why” for ourselves instead of just a “how.” Society focuses too much on the “how” and usually deals with the “why” superficially… mostly by way of marijuana politics.
History is important because we can see how people’s choices, actions and their sense of “morality” played out in the real world. This is the horizon. History shows us the edge of known human capability. People need horizons so they have something to shoot for and so they can quantify their own experiences- this way we can understand what it means to grow. Historical stories can also serve some of the same purposes as fictional ones, but can never be quite as useful in that regard because they are grounded in reality... and if we want to get anywhere then reality must never be taken completely on its own terms.
Because of fiction, I can be Deepa, MBA student and the progeny of knights, pirates, mercenaries, angels, demons, soldiers, thieves, kings, samurai, wizards, con men, ghosts, detectives, vampires, spies, ninjas, astronauts, and Indiana Jones. Isn't that better than simply Deepa, MBA Student?
