You wake up one day with the ability to freeze time at will for as long as you want with no repercussions. What’s the first thing you do with your newfound powers?
i swear these lil focusing/productivity tips are for people who already have willpower made of steel and just need the tiniest nudge to get them to study or whatever. “place a sweet at the end of every paragraph to motivate you and reward you for finishing that section of reading!” i could just eat them all though. right now. i will. “here’s an app where a tree grows when you leave it undisturbed, but dies when you keep checking all your other apps!”
The ‘sources’ aren’t even worth a response; the human brain’s ability to attribute feeling or associations to words is an obvious one, which stems back to ancient times in absolute clarity, because - without this emotional reaction - art in any/all forms would be destroyed overnight. The article isn’t “fiction influences reality”, but “fiction influences out emotion” …
It means that reading “Romeo and Juliet” may have me on the verge of tears, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to go out and commit a double-suicide because I read the play … newspapers, documentaries, and letters from loved ones could evoke the same emotions … ban those, too?
The latter is too much for me to dissect right now …
I’ll simply say that fiction can - and should - be totally free and the artist free to explore any theme as they see fit … ‘Lolita’ to ‘The Colour Purple’ to ‘Romeo and Juliet’ all discuss problematic things, some even romanticise them, and yet we don’t ban these books, because they provoke discussion and have literary merit. On the flipside, tawdry ‘Mills and Boons’ novels to hardcore porn DVDs are also allowed, because they entertain and provide a release.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s porn or gorn … for kids or for adults … poetry or fine-art or literary classics … what we read does not impact our actions, insofar as a direct cause and not a correlation. The actual studies on this are vague at best, biased at worst, and debated in most psychology classes … so far people are unanimous: fiction does not impact reality.
A good book -? It can make you think. It can make you reassess your behaviour. It can horrify you. It can arouse you. It can spark a lifetime of research. These are all emotion based … the book has engaged you on a mental level, making you think about your behaviour and personality, and - well - maybe this is what scares you … not ‘copying’ the behaviour …
I have never once - in all my years of studying Literature - served someone I hate the flesh of her children in a stew, or demanded someone serve me a pound of flesh to even a debt, or poisoned a sword in hopes of killing my nephew … I’ve never slept with my sister and then paraded the aborted foetus around on a stick, just like I’ve never stabbed my cousin to death to inherit from him … these are all stories - mostly Shakespeare - from the same two cenuries a long time ago. Still taught in schools. All taught in schools.
If you think someone is going to copy fiction -?
Get them help. They clearly need it.
Not in a derogatory way, but in an actual ‘something deeper is at play here’, because people don’t act out fantasies or fiction because ‘it’s cool’ or ‘it’s hot’ or ‘so-and-so did it’ … people who act out fiction wither wanted to/were going to do it anyway or they were deeply disturbed people with an underlying illness. People do not copy fiction as a rule.
Do you honestly think between cave-paintings on a wall and being able to buy “Hannibal” on DVD, that not one person noticed ‘people are copying from fiction’ and - you know - banned stories and art outright?
What you’re scared of is people thinking for themselves …
Let them think and let us get back to enjoying art.
