[johndoe4589]

Was just thinking about this recently as I started following a few people.

We are increasingly living in a world of fiction. Previously it was mainly fed through television. You'd grow up on television series, and as a young man/woman you'd try to be cool like them, dress like them, talk like them. You build your world view around "influential" portrayals.

Nowadays, we haven't freed ourself from media controlled television at all. It's actually worse, because now advertising is blurring the lines even more between real people and fiction. We eat and breathe fiction, then we live our own life trying to resemble it.

Nothing is new there. But what's new for me is I started to recognize that fiction in and of itself is probably as detrimental to our society as fear is. It's well known that fear drives self centered way of life and when we are in survival mode, we just don't make good choices and we lack compassion.

Lately I'm thinking that fiction, on a collective scale, is just as bad as fear. It keeps us unconscious. Just like fear it dissociates us from what we are, and from one another. It's really detrimental to us as individuals, and as a society. Unlike fear, it isn't immediately felt in the stomach.. so there is no sense of urgency.. And yet it is there... one just looks at the world to see the massive disconnect in our life on a day to day basis. I guess fear and fiction are best friends. Fear drives us to dissociate, and fiction provides the perfect happy place to dissociate.

John Berger, Ways of Seeing

"But where is this other way of life?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5jTUebm73IY

[qznc]

I don't think that we are increasingly living in a world of fiction. We always have. It is human. Kids believe in Santa Claus, adults believe Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. Some believe in Mohammed, Jesus, Jahwe, or Dharma. Some believe they will become rich in Silicon Valley, others on Wallstreet. Some believe in articles from mainstream media, some don't. Many people have dreams for their future, which is just fiction they are telling themselves.

You consider these thoughts dark or cynical. Why? Humans have built an amazing civilization with a global economy and messaging travel across the globe in milliseconds. We did all this as fallible meat bags believing in dreams and telling each other mostly false stories. That is a great story as well. ;)

[johndoe4589]

By the way I just realized... kids do not believe in Santa Claus. WE make them believe in it. Big difference. And in fact in some parenting circles, it is suggested that you should never tell such stories to your children.

This is another big debate altogether and I genuinely have no interest in debating that. Just threw it out there because it sounds like you lump together things that are very different from one another.

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/logical-take/201512/in-...

[johndoe4589]

Perhaps I should have defined my use of the term. "Fiction" for me was implicitly referring to a narrative which tends to revolve around self or collective identities.

I think there is a distinction that can be made, which happens to be echoed by an intuitive sense that we have. We all dislike self centered people. Why is that? What is it about it that makes us uncomfortable? And why do we not like lies? Why do we resent when people posture? Why do we feel uneasy when someone makes a fake smile? Or when someone tries to convince us and you can feel their motive is self centered?

We all have in us a drive towards authenticity, genuineness, truth, whatever you want to call it.

What's dark or cynical about that?

On the science side, there is recent research looking into the "default mode network" that highlights how it appears to be the source of our self-related ruminating thoughts. In fact it appears that 90% of our thoughts in any given day are about "me", or some made up collectives which we use to extend our identity.

This amazing civilization we have built is not built with the self-referential type of fiction. It was built with our abstract thinking, and language capacities. (which is a practical type of thinking or narrative)

True, humanity is not going to drop their stories in a day. But I wouldn't lump fiction and abstract thinking together as "fiction". One is obvious fiction, which is based on identities, which in turn is based on our sense of survival; The other is of a more practical nature.

[RMacy]

That was uplifting.

[eutropia]

“In a word, they failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions.”

[artur_makly]

thanks for sharing that mystically dark video