Gather Round, Children
Irradiated by LabRat
Blogfriend Blunt Object has an ongoing series about fiction and its dangers.
The gist of his point is that the act of consuming fiction is essentially the act of absorbing and accepting someone else’s narrative, in a form in which its biases and errors of construction and perception go down much more easily than had the same person simply asserted them to you as fact. At one point he describes it as an “unpatched security hole” in our cognition.
With respect, I disagree. If the human taste for fiction and narrative is an unpatched security hole in our thinking, our taste for sports is an unpatched security hole in our bodies. Sports cause us no end of problems- they expose us to physical danger unnecessarily, wear down our bodies more than normal life would, and cause us to divide into little rival tribes. Every game of sandlot baseball is an opportunity for someone to lose some teeth or get concussed or break a limb. Across the animal kingdom, studies of play have shown that it exposes those who engage in it to much more physical risk than they gain in reward in the form of practice or physical development.
But, almost no one questions the benefit or healthiness of physical play, even to the point where we really probably should. It’s self-evident that physical play builds coordination, encourages self-directed exercise, and that children aren’t quite right and really can’t stay on an even mental keel without it. It exposes us to risk and injury, but even if we can’t quite quantify it, the benefit is more than worth it to the point where we engage in national navel-gazing in how we can manage to encourage more of it in children and adults alike.
One of the most interesting theories I’ve seen on the subject of humans and their art- including fiction- is that art is actually a form of cognitive play. All small children, no matter their culture, will draw and color if given an implement that will make marks, and all of them enjoy storytelling and story games. The author’s assertion is that these activities are as much a part of our development into mentally normal humans as crawling and running around is important to developing our motor skills, and I think he makes a very strong case. (The details of said case are worth actually buying the book, though I had a lot more use for the first half than the second.)
Storytelling is specific exercise for a specific cognitive skill, one that develops late: abstract reasoning. In order to create a story, you need to create multiple purely abstract concepts and string them together in a way that makes sense and communicates something interesting enough to be worth paying attention to. Speculative fiction in particular is an exercise in changing a few variables of the known universe and then taking the results to as logical and interesting a conclusion as the author can imagine. A strong storyteller must specialize both in social skills (making the audience empathize with the abstractions and believe the premises of the created world), abstract logic, theory of mind (creating characters with believable motivations), and many other human cognitive specialties. It’s as much exercise for our particular kind of mind as Parkour is exercise for our particular physical specialties.
Blunt isn’t wrong about the dangers of absorbing someone else’s worldview uncritically in story format, but if we’re both right that leads to an interesting conclusion: literary education as valuable beyond the simple study of fiction. Given that English lit classes teach students to analyze fiction, pull it apart, identify its aims, values, and goals, examine it in context of the time and place it was produced and the life and worldview of its author, it’s essentially a self-defense course in fiction. Once you can ably dissect it, you can see its seams and pick out the author’s worldview from your own more reflexively. Once you understand how to pick out themes, ideas, and decide how well (or badly) it’s been developed, you can more easily examine a narrative’s premises as well as its desired conclusions.
If we are both correct, it’s a strong argument for required liberal arts education.
May 15th, 2012 at 11:08 pm
I should mention that “unpatched security hole” doesn’t mean “not useful, only harmful”. Quite the opposite, in fact; most of the truly epic security holes in the annals of computer security have come about because someone maximized the usefulness of a tool without thinking too hard about how it could be misused.
That said, I’m well aware of the shortcomings of programming analogies in the realm of the biological.
(Also, I’m mostly using that thread of articles gently to twit those of my friends who love to tell people about their literary interests and scorn any “genre fiction” they come across, provided that it isn’t anime or manga. My tongue should probably be a bit more visibly in cheek.)
May 15th, 2012 at 11:12 pm
Well, yes, but when you set out a four-part post series entitled “Fiction Is Bad”, you should probably expect some serious ripostes.
Besides, which, a rigorously reached conclusion of “everyone should be subjected to English Lit” is far too delicious not to post.
May 16th, 2012 at 3:06 am
Can I be contrary and disagree, in part, with both of you?
I’ve always considered fiction as a genre in which the authors perceptions and world-view are highlighted. An example would be, a book I mostly enjoyed, Stephen Kings - The Stand. Kings opinions on liberal arts (Good people) versus Science/Engineering types (Bad people) is so plain it’s jarringly painful. Or consider (my favourite author) Terry Pratchett. His ‘holding a mirror up to the world’ style illustrates his views perfectly (and whilst the humour fits my own skewed wit, even I, jaded as I am, have delighted at the new perspectives [his] on old ideas he raises).
In fact I can’t think of an author that doesn’t (and I’m no expert) indicate plainly, to anyone that looks, their opinions, biases and even interests (although I’m willingly to stand corrected) and it’s considerably harder to see in the classics in which we have little in common socially, educationally, etc. with the author. I’ll concede that those of more youthful inexperience than myself (OK, I’m old, OK, happy?) are more vulnerable, but I suspect that rather than being used to slip strange world-views into untainted minds fiction plays more of a role in raising the possibility that the culturally conditioned ideologies aren’t the full story in reality (thinking Nivens - Fallen Angels).
I think I’d agree with the “everyone should be subjected to English Lit” (aren’t they already?) if those who taught the subject weren’t indicating their own biases in the selection of only certain ‘fashionable’ types of literature (at least here in the UK). This enforced study of ‘dusty old tomes’ is what turns so many potential readers off that it should be banned . Admittedly this is nothing more than a criticism of teaching style as opposed to subject but would you enjoy any pastime if you first had to memorise and dissect the nuts-and-bolts of a dry example?
I suppose my view is that reading fiction should be encouraged not only because it’s educational, or even enjoyable, but because it stretches the ‘imaginations sinews’ and, rather than being an “unpatched security hole”, I see it as and error-check.
Just Sayin’
May 16th, 2012 at 4:38 am
LR, awesome post, THANK YOU. As an english major and someone who once contemplated being a historian, I’ve been frustrated for a long time. I can’t help but periodically yell at the TV when politician X is expounding on the new science and math push (while gutting lit and history) “Look, Fuckwad, if the kids aren’t engaged, and taught to read well (which includes being engaged) how do you expect them to READ the damned science textbooks?”
But, pedagogically speaking, I do not actually know that is true. Is it? Or am I just a grumpy humanities geek?
Also, I can’t help but feel that if the student learns how to read a piece-history or lit-and learn how to pick through to the ramifications behind it, maybe if they encounter mortgage agreemens, enlistment papers or marketing campaigns they will be better prepared to do the same with those.
So these are frustrations that will probably make me mutter anbs swear to my grumpy grave-and also my reasons for really appreciating your post.
May 16th, 2012 at 5:46 am
Able: It’s not just the UK.
I learned to read when I was 3, and have read thousands (tens of thousands?) of books in the interim. And I might have enjoyed possibly 1 or 2 percent of the books I was forced to read in mid and high school. Mostly the Shakespeare. But even then, the instructors seemed bent on threshing any possible enjoyment out of the experience and leaving only the chaff.
May 16th, 2012 at 6:01 am
@LR, blunt: even a tongue-in-cheek humor can contain thoughts that are worth turning over, examining, and considering carefully.
One thing I think is useful to note is something I see Glenn Reynolds talk about. Whenever he posts about the usefulness of a Liberal Arts education, he always mentions that the most useful part is the part which encourages rigorous thinking about people and society.
And he comments that it is possible (and easy) to do something which looks like Liberal Arts but skips the rigorous thinking.
May 16th, 2012 at 6:52 am
Nice post!
And I’ll second the comment that, ‘it is possible (and easy) to do something which looks like Liberal Arts but skips the rigorous thinking.
People tend to forget that the original Liberal Arts started with Logic, Grammar, and Rhetoric. I only encountered those as core themes when I was taking Latin, I never have encountered them as subjects in their own right. Logic was conspiciously absent from the general science courses I took as well, the assumed tenor was that these facts came down from on high and how one establishes a scientific fact was not up for discussion.
May 16th, 2012 at 7:31 am
Nowadays, it seems that most educators treat logic, grammar, and rhetoric as the most trivial of subjects.
May 16th, 2012 at 7:56 am
Squid:
I see what you did there.
May 16th, 2012 at 11:10 am
LR:
If we’re going all lit-crit close reading in here, I should point out that the posts are titled “Fiction is bad for you“. War is bad. Pederasty is bad. Double chocolate brownies are bad for you. (“Go ahead and read that Michael Crichton novel IIFYM….”)
I like your argument about storytelling as an exercise in abstract reasoning, and it’ll take me a day or two to really think through the implications. It sort of fits with one of the Robin Hanson posts I linked to:
You’re writing about people who create stories, and he’s writing about people who consume stories, but there’s common ground there.
Able:
You might like this other response to my latest rant on fiction. (Yay! I’m engaging the blogosphere!)
May 16th, 2012 at 1:46 pm
I would like to see more critical thinking and skepticism being taught.
Some folks do need to be reminded that things happen in fiction because the author decided they will happen.
I’ve caught and called out more than one SF author at a convention panel for trying to pretend that events in his novel represented factual arguments concerning real world issues.
May 17th, 2012 at 8:09 am
Squid,
“Nowadays, it seems that most educators treat logic, grammar, and rhetoric as the most trivial of subjects.”
*golf clap*
May 17th, 2012 at 1:08 pm
FWIW I have not abandoned the thread, but the morning after I posted the son of a bitch I got hit with the Allergy Attack From Hell, which as of yet has not abated.
I cannot think very well through histamines and sinus headache.
May 17th, 2012 at 1:57 pm
Thanks, Tam & Elmo. It’s good to be among my own kind.