Small children (age 4-6) who were exposed to a large number of children’s books and films had a significantly stronger ability to read the mental and emotional states of other people. … The more absorbed subjects were in the story, the more empathy they felt, and the more empathy they felt, the more likely the subjects were to help when the experimenter “accidentally” dropped a handful of pens… Reading narrative fiction … fosters empathic growth and prosocial behavior. …
I wanna see you try lol.Stories are communication vehicles, and the passengers true (convincing) or not.
Someone who doesn't tell stories would be the absolute opposite of a rationalist: an empiricist who only communicates through experiment. It's just impossible.
Religion is the process of turning history into legend, so stories due to their structures and impact, end up being its aid. However, religion is a complex combination of stories, symbols and rituals. That may explain the fear or negativity that religion receives but stories don't.
With religion, I think the representative edge case is visualized a lot more (the devout and respectable priest or nun vs. the fanatic and lunatic extremist or fundamentalist) due to its impact on society that can be seen in symbols and rituals, that exist around us.
With stories, I think we see the averages a lot more in terms of their impact or utility but not the edge case neither their continous impact. When someone says Harry Potter or Apple IPhone, the mind doesn't immediately start thinking about the child standing in line dressed as a wizard who speed reads the novel or the family that camps outside the store.
Yes, but no in the way religion does. Realigion affects reality. Fiction only is manifestation of people's believes formed into stories. It's pourpouse is to share a point, not to enforce it.
You don't know how human mind works eighter. Fiction is no different from religion? What? The fiction is just people telling stories, that may be based on reality, but are not true. But religion was created to indoctrinate human being. For that matter, we have fiction that is realistic and is create in such way so that it can be as close as to truth as possible.Fiction that does more good than harm? I agree. The Bible or other religious books.
There is a clear difference in choosing to be religious and choosing to partake in a story. By being religious, you profess belief in some set of ideas on the nature of the world. If you read a fictional story, there is no belief. Religions are supposed to be taken as fact. It is non-fiction, whether it's true or not. Fictional stories are known to not be true. You don't sacrifice any of a love for truth as you've put it by digesting the contents of a fictional story, because none of the events of the story are taken as fact, whereas religious texts are to be taken as fact. Aristotle once said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." When reading fictional stories, you know that the events aren't real, but entertain the circumstances created in the story to be able to increase our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world. This is the point of the stories, and they thereby aid in the search for truth, as we have to ask ourselves questions about how we would relate in similar situations. The authors own ideas shown in the story may not be what you personally believe in, but the educated mind can entertain the ideas and not believe in them, increasing our knowledge of the truth by opening ourselves up to others viewpoints. Religions are made to be believed without any real semblance of proof, there is no entertaining the idea, only acceptance of it. This is where truth falls out the window, as where there is no proof, the truth cannot be ascertained.
Storytelling is part of human life. Every communicative, social human does it. "What did you do today?" ..."Well, first..." and there you have it, a story. Some stories recount historical events. Even those "real" stories are going to be told in the most interesting and engaging way possible, otherwise the audience will walk away. But then this begins to skew and distort the "truth". The story about your business trip will probably just cover the highlights. The fact that you spent most of your trip sitting on a plane, in a cab, or in a waiting room isn't interesting so it is filtered out of the story.We also create stories in our minds to role-play imagined scenarios, some of which are planned and expected to actually take place, while others are imagined only as contingency. Most people will try to imagine some of the most likely events, questions, and "good" answers in preparation for job interview. The guy who imagines all sorts of ways to impress a desirable woman he meets by happenchance is more likely to succeed at getting somewhere with such a women should a real life encounter take place.A variety of fiction helps us prepare for realities we have yet to encounter. Good fiction should help us to question our pre-conceived notions of right and wrong, good and bad, desirable and undesirable. But fiction is just the imagination of our peers, some of whom develop insights that spread virally until they come to be known as "great" or "classic". At the end of the day, absorbing and relying too much on gleaming "truth" from fictional stories can only take us so far and can in fact be detrimental.Classic Western tall tales told us how you shouldn't draw your weapon unless the bad guy draws first, that good guys wear white hats and never shoot an unarmed man, and certainly never shoot a man in the back. But such tales just cloud our collective minds when confronted with the reality of using violence in self defense. Is it wrong for me to shoot the terrorist in the back when he is wearing a suicide vest and running toward a school shouting violent threats? If I own a gun am I wrong to use it in self defense when an angry gang chases me with clubs?Fundamentally, literature tends to make an argument through the telling of a parable, which is also done with religion. The fatal mistake we make is to never challenge the presumptions of the story. Many stories will have you convinced that as long as you don't give up you will be the winner eventually. But how many people have racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt pursuing a law degree they simply don't have the ability to complete. The key is to enjoy stories and imagine role-play scenarios, but don't allow yourself to be lead into a delusion from an over-indulgence in fiction. Keep it balanced with rational thought and reason as well as a news feed of factual information from the real world, both the good and the bad. Learn to recognize and accept reality. Refusing to accept reality leads to the invention of religions.
So you don't think stories are like religion because you like people who are really into stories but you don't like people who are really into religion? If you were into a particular religion, mightn't you say something similar about other religions, that they aren't true religions because you don't like those sort of people?
Stories based on religion yes, I am a Journilst at the cnn center also a poet & author. Stories or truth is a broad spectrum to narrow it down to make your case. I am not religious, yet soirtitual as well as literal case in point; string theory is based on a holographic principle. That at our furthest point of our comsos relaying information that we perceive in our 3-D perception viewed everyday. Quantum brain never dies, that within itself is a story of fantasy/reality conundrum.
Good question. I wouldn't say that stories are necessarily misleading.
I would compare them to nuclear power. They are powerful and can be used for good and bad things. Obviously, the more the story tells you something about reality the better.
The problem with news, TV and most movies is that they drift too far away from reality. You already named some good examples like the all to common happy endings, just world assumptions, fear spreading, etc.
But what if stories are used as a medium to tell us something about reality? The book "Atlas Shrugged", although it some flaws, told me about the problems of communism and why true altruism (putting the goals of others before your own) would never work. "The Wolf of Wall Street" tells us something about the hedonic treadmill and that money will never be enough.
I think we shouldn't abandon stories altogether. Only cut out the ones that distort reality.
This is an interesting question, because it seems to assume that I can give up story.
Yes, I suppose I can stop reading fantasy novels bordering on chic-lit and watching sit-coms, but those are only invented story forms and can therefore be avoided. The acts of storytelling and storylistening seems to be unavoidable and intrinsic parts of being a human animal; they seem to be my modus operandi for organizing my experience.
Nearly every waking moment, my mind is flooded with a stream of comments, images, judgements and the like, all bubbling and congealing into stories I believe accurately reflect my experience—what I believed happened today, why I chose to do what I did, that the physical world is as it appears to be through the lens of my human body, who I am, the nature of ultimate reality, and so on. Then, when I come home to my girlfriend, meet with friends, or call my family for a chat, I also tell stories about these things for the same reasons, only this time I receive feedback (their stories about my experience and their own) to keep myself accurate or even to convince them to adopt my version of reality. I tell stories to myself and others and I seek out stories from others to understand myself, the world, and our relationship.
I may also mix symbols into these stories to better express my abstract mental experience. Or, perhaps I tell purely fictional stories using symbolism to communicate my experience in ways that pure facts cannot.
Your question is, "if I give up the benefits of religion, because I love far truth, why not also give up stories to gain even more far truth?"
My response is that I do have a love of Truth (though, aspire to be present in the moment to moment rather than the past and future) and I have given up the benefits of religion to quell my uncertainties. However, I cannot seems to give up stories, because they are how I organize my experience. Without stories—telling and listening to my own and the stories of others—is what allows me to operate at all.
Kirkus Reviews sums up one piece of atheist fiction, "Death and other Taxes" with the words, "In his often disturbing yet oddly endearing first novel, Miller creates a kind of “Jabberwocky”-style story in which fans of strange, Seuss-ian characters... will feel right at home... Yet the story is so whimsically told that the Through the Looking Glass frivolity starts to make a strange sort of sense."
Avery Hurt, a full-time freelance writer who specializes in literature, health and science journalism says, "This book seemed to me like The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy meets Dante... Joan Didion wrote that “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Miller is telling himself, and us, stories to help us deal with death. As [the boy] eventually comes to accept and understand his death, the reader comes to accept the deaths of us all."
This fant-sci novel(fantasy rooted in footnotes) fills a niche between atheist apologetics and pure imagination. It is designed to question popular notions of eternity through telling a new story in order for us to to live with the reality of Death - who, incidentally, is characterised as you've never seen her before.
The point of the discussion is that fictions helps us come to grips with fact, which the study demonstrates. Religion is the inability to tell fact from fiction - but the study does not explore the denial of facts and what that does to a person's moral compass - Ref: https://www.smashwords.com/...
It's depressing that few of the commentators appear to have understood your point. Most object that enjoying fiction is very different from believing a religion. But it isn't. These people, who think there is a qualitative distinction between enjoying a story and believing it to be factually true, have no understanding of how human minds work.
The research and common sense both suggest that reading fiction actively gives people less-realistic views of the world. Now, this depends on what fiction you read! Popular fiction makes people feel good by telling them that they're good and the accepted social norms are good. But some fiction can help you become sensitive to or understand other viewpoints. It's always a mix, though; no one ever really writes truth. But I think there is fiction that does more good than harm to its readers.
The bottom line is that rationalists usually fetishize truth. Learning how to pursue truth objectively is both so general-purpose and so difficult that the instrumental goal of being rational is responsible for more rewards and reinforcement than any of the end goals it is used for, and eventually it displaces them in the organism's value system.
I personally feel like there is nothing wrong in reading a good fiction novel every now and then. Sometimes that is just what I need to stop thinking about all of the troubles in my life. I have been having a lot of stress in my life lately and I have to say that my latest read, "SportsFan Chronicles" by Kurt Weichert was just what I needed to get my sanity back- humorous books usually do.http://www.sportsfanchronicles.com
Man this is a beach ball set on a tee, so allow me to knock it off vigorously: Religious faith is predicated on believing the "stories" are at least mostly true. When one watches a fictional film or reads a fictional book, they do so EXPLICITLY KNOWING that it is indeed fiction and that they shouldn't take it as truth. To turn your questions around, what would you think of someone who walked around saying that "The Avengers" is real, or that he hopes to meet Dorian Gray one day? Would you hire that person? Would you want to be their friend?
I wanna see you try lol.Stories are communication vehicles, and the passengers true (convincing) or not.
Someone who doesn't tell stories would be the absolute opposite of a rationalist: an empiricist who only communicates through experiment. It's just impossible.
Religion is the process of turning history into legend, so stories due to their structures and impact, end up being its aid. However, religion is a complex combination of stories, symbols and rituals. That may explain the fear or negativity that religion receives but stories don't.
With religion, I think the representative edge case is visualized a lot more (the devout and respectable priest or nun vs. the fanatic and lunatic extremist or fundamentalist) due to its impact on society that can be seen in symbols and rituals, that exist around us.
With stories, I think we see the averages a lot more in terms of their impact or utility but not the edge case neither their continous impact. When someone says Harry Potter or Apple IPhone, the mind doesn't immediately start thinking about the child standing in line dressed as a wizard who speed reads the novel or the family that camps outside the store.
Your thoughts if any on the above?
You're right that I don't know how the mind works well enough to assert fiction is no different from religion. I don't remember now why I said that.
Yes, but no in the way religion does. Realigion affects reality. Fiction only is manifestation of people's believes formed into stories. It's pourpouse is to share a point, not to enforce it.
You don't know how human mind works eighter. Fiction is no different from religion? What? The fiction is just people telling stories, that may be based on reality, but are not true. But religion was created to indoctrinate human being. For that matter, we have fiction that is realistic and is create in such way so that it can be as close as to truth as possible.Fiction that does more good than harm? I agree. The Bible or other religious books.
There is a clear difference in choosing to be religious and choosing to partake in a story. By being religious, you profess belief in some set of ideas on the nature of the world. If you read a fictional story, there is no belief. Religions are supposed to be taken as fact. It is non-fiction, whether it's true or not. Fictional stories are known to not be true. You don't sacrifice any of a love for truth as you've put it by digesting the contents of a fictional story, because none of the events of the story are taken as fact, whereas religious texts are to be taken as fact. Aristotle once said, "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." When reading fictional stories, you know that the events aren't real, but entertain the circumstances created in the story to be able to increase our understanding of ourselves, others, and the world. This is the point of the stories, and they thereby aid in the search for truth, as we have to ask ourselves questions about how we would relate in similar situations. The authors own ideas shown in the story may not be what you personally believe in, but the educated mind can entertain the ideas and not believe in them, increasing our knowledge of the truth by opening ourselves up to others viewpoints. Religions are made to be believed without any real semblance of proof, there is no entertaining the idea, only acceptance of it. This is where truth falls out the window, as where there is no proof, the truth cannot be ascertained.
Storytelling is part of human life. Every communicative, social human does it. "What did you do today?" ..."Well, first..." and there you have it, a story. Some stories recount historical events. Even those "real" stories are going to be told in the most interesting and engaging way possible, otherwise the audience will walk away. But then this begins to skew and distort the "truth". The story about your business trip will probably just cover the highlights. The fact that you spent most of your trip sitting on a plane, in a cab, or in a waiting room isn't interesting so it is filtered out of the story.We also create stories in our minds to role-play imagined scenarios, some of which are planned and expected to actually take place, while others are imagined only as contingency. Most people will try to imagine some of the most likely events, questions, and "good" answers in preparation for job interview. The guy who imagines all sorts of ways to impress a desirable woman he meets by happenchance is more likely to succeed at getting somewhere with such a women should a real life encounter take place.A variety of fiction helps us prepare for realities we have yet to encounter. Good fiction should help us to question our pre-conceived notions of right and wrong, good and bad, desirable and undesirable. But fiction is just the imagination of our peers, some of whom develop insights that spread virally until they come to be known as "great" or "classic". At the end of the day, absorbing and relying too much on gleaming "truth" from fictional stories can only take us so far and can in fact be detrimental.Classic Western tall tales told us how you shouldn't draw your weapon unless the bad guy draws first, that good guys wear white hats and never shoot an unarmed man, and certainly never shoot a man in the back. But such tales just cloud our collective minds when confronted with the reality of using violence in self defense. Is it wrong for me to shoot the terrorist in the back when he is wearing a suicide vest and running toward a school shouting violent threats? If I own a gun am I wrong to use it in self defense when an angry gang chases me with clubs?Fundamentally, literature tends to make an argument through the telling of a parable, which is also done with religion. The fatal mistake we make is to never challenge the presumptions of the story. Many stories will have you convinced that as long as you don't give up you will be the winner eventually. But how many people have racked up hundreds of thousands of dollars in student loan debt pursuing a law degree they simply don't have the ability to complete. The key is to enjoy stories and imagine role-play scenarios, but don't allow yourself to be lead into a delusion from an over-indulgence in fiction. Keep it balanced with rational thought and reason as well as a news feed of factual information from the real world, both the good and the bad. Learn to recognize and accept reality. Refusing to accept reality leads to the invention of religions.
So you don't think stories are like religion because you like people who are really into stories but you don't like people who are really into religion? If you were into a particular religion, mightn't you say something similar about other religions, that they aren't true religions because you don't like those sort of people?
Stories based on religion yes, I am a Journilst at the cnn center also a poet & author. Stories or truth is a broad spectrum to narrow it down to make your case. I am not religious, yet soirtitual as well as literal case in point; string theory is based on a holographic principle. That at our furthest point of our comsos relaying information that we perceive in our 3-D perception viewed everyday. Quantum brain never dies, that within itself is a story of fantasy/reality conundrum.
Good question. I wouldn't say that stories are necessarily misleading.
I would compare them to nuclear power. They are powerful and can be used for good and bad things. Obviously, the more the story tells you something about reality the better.
The problem with news, TV and most movies is that they drift too far away from reality. You already named some good examples like the all to common happy endings, just world assumptions, fear spreading, etc.
But what if stories are used as a medium to tell us something about reality? The book "Atlas Shrugged", although it some flaws, told me about the problems of communism and why true altruism (putting the goals of others before your own) would never work. "The Wolf of Wall Street" tells us something about the hedonic treadmill and that money will never be enough.
I think we shouldn't abandon stories altogether. Only cut out the ones that distort reality.
Do you not think people's view of the world is affected by the fictional stories they read & enjoy?
This is an interesting question, because it seems to assume that I can give up story.
Yes, I suppose I can stop reading fantasy novels bordering on chic-lit and watching sit-coms, but those are only invented story forms and can therefore be avoided. The acts of storytelling and storylistening seems to be unavoidable and intrinsic parts of being a human animal; they seem to be my modus operandi for organizing my experience.
Nearly every waking moment, my mind is flooded with a stream of comments, images, judgements and the like, all bubbling and congealing into stories I believe accurately reflect my experience—what I believed happened today, why I chose to do what I did, that the physical world is as it appears to be through the lens of my human body, who I am, the nature of ultimate reality, and so on. Then, when I come home to my girlfriend, meet with friends, or call my family for a chat, I also tell stories about these things for the same reasons, only this time I receive feedback (their stories about my experience and their own) to keep myself accurate or even to convince them to adopt my version of reality. I tell stories to myself and others and I seek out stories from others to understand myself, the world, and our relationship.
I may also mix symbols into these stories to better express my abstract mental experience. Or, perhaps I tell purely fictional stories using symbolism to communicate my experience in ways that pure facts cannot.
Your question is, "if I give up the benefits of religion, because I love far truth, why not also give up stories to gain even more far truth?"
My response is that I do have a love of Truth (though, aspire to be present in the moment to moment rather than the past and future) and I have given up the benefits of religion to quell my uncertainties. However, I cannot seems to give up stories, because they are how I organize my experience. Without stories—telling and listening to my own and the stories of others—is what allows me to operate at all.
Thoughts?
Kirkus Reviews sums up one piece of atheist fiction, "Death and other Taxes" with the words, "In his often disturbing yet oddly endearing first novel, Miller creates a kind of “Jabberwocky”-style story in which fans of strange, Seuss-ian characters... will feel right at home... Yet the story is so whimsically told that the Through the Looking Glass frivolity starts to make a strange sort of sense."
Avery Hurt, a full-time freelance writer who specializes in literature, health and science journalism says, "This book seemed to me like The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy meets Dante... Joan Didion wrote that “We tell ourselves stories in order to live.” Miller is telling himself, and us, stories to help us deal with death. As [the boy] eventually comes to accept and understand his death, the reader comes to accept the deaths of us all."
This fant-sci novel(fantasy rooted in footnotes) fills a niche between atheist apologetics and pure imagination. It is designed to question popular notions of eternity through telling a new story in order for us to to live with the reality of Death - who, incidentally, is characterised as you've never seen her before.
The point of the discussion is that fictions helps us come to grips with fact, which the study demonstrates. Religion is the inability to tell fact from fiction - but the study does not explore the denial of facts and what that does to a person's moral compass - Ref: https://www.smashwords.com/...
It's depressing that few of the commentators appear to have understood your point. Most object that enjoying fiction is very different from believing a religion. But it isn't. These people, who think there is a qualitative distinction between enjoying a story and believing it to be factually true, have no understanding of how human minds work.
The research and common sense both suggest that reading fiction actively gives people less-realistic views of the world. Now, this depends on what fiction you read! Popular fiction makes people feel good by telling them that they're good and the accepted social norms are good. But some fiction can help you become sensitive to or understand other viewpoints. It's always a mix, though; no one ever really writes truth. But I think there is fiction that does more good than harm to its readers.
The bottom line is that rationalists usually fetishize truth. Learning how to pursue truth objectively is both so general-purpose and so difficult that the instrumental goal of being rational is responsible for more rewards and reinforcement than any of the end goals it is used for, and eventually it displaces them in the organism's value system.
I personally feel like there is nothing wrong in reading a good fiction novel every now and then. Sometimes that is just what I need to stop thinking about all of the troubles in my life. I have been having a lot of stress in my life lately and I have to say that my latest read, "SportsFan Chronicles" by Kurt Weichert was just what I needed to get my sanity back- humorous books usually do.http://www.sportsfanchronicles.com
Man this is a beach ball set on a tee, so allow me to knock it off vigorously: Religious faith is predicated on believing the "stories" are at least mostly true. When one watches a fictional film or reads a fictional book, they do so EXPLICITLY KNOWING that it is indeed fiction and that they shouldn't take it as truth. To turn your questions around, what would you think of someone who walked around saying that "The Avengers" is real, or that he hopes to meet Dorian Gray one day? Would you hire that person? Would you want to be their friend?