Suppress Fiction, Distort Reality
“The state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them. A thing that is actually experienced or seen, especially when it is unpleasant.”
This is how Lexico, a collaboration between Dictionary.com and the Oxford University Press, defines reality.
All of us adults have to live in reality, “the real world”, whether we like it or not.
Or at least we should.
Still, most people, no matter how grounded or responsible, need periodic escapes from reality. ‘Mental siestas’, as I like to call them. Whether it be a job, a relationship, health or money problems, reality, the state of things in actuality, can be overbearing and oppressive. Through our mental siestas, we satisfy our desires through alternative realities or fictions. They are oft harmless, as long as one is aware that they are not reality.
As you know, there are ways to dabble in these fictions, such as video games, books, movies, TV, music, performance and a host of other hobbies.
As you might have guessed, literature is one of my favorite ways to take a mental siesta. Like the magic carpet ride in Aladdin (the 1992 version, c’mon, is there any other?), literature takes you to a whole new world. It is able to entertain and educate simultaneously, ensuring that you are recharged and ready to take on reality better than before when you return from your mental siestas.
An added benefit? It’s frequently cheap!
Recall the last book that whisked you away on a magic carpet. It stimulated mind, activated imagination, purged negative emotions, engaged in some role-playing and maybe made you think+reconsider your reality. When you put the book down, were you not better equipped to deal with, to thrive in, or to change the state of your actuality, provided that you separate reality and fiction?
If you cannot separate the two, you might end up like the poor Don Quixote, a minor nobleman and the central character of Miguel de Cervantes’s magnum opus of the same title. The Don read so many tales of knights errant, damsels-in-distress and monsters that he went on his own quest to become a knight. He saw what he wanted to see instead of what actually was. Windmills became giants, sheep became enemy soldiers and a masculine country wench became his Lady.
Don Quixote de la Mancha and his sidekick Sancho
Ending up like a modern version of the quixotic nobleman is why some people avoid fiction. I refer to them as “eternal realists.” They don’t see much value, if any, in escaping the current state of things through reading literature, playing a video game, watching TV or whatever else. Reality is the end goal, the most important thing of our existence. It’s foolish to “run away” from it, and when you add the danger of being lost in a fantasy, it’s actually dangerous to do so.
Recently, I listened to Professor Grant L. Voth’s fascinating and excellent ‘Great Course’ entitled “History of World Literature.” Some of his ideas have interesting implications for the eternal realists.
In a lecture about literary postmodernism, (a fascinating movement you must investigate!) Professor Voth states: “Art and literature can construct for us fictions by which we can live-so long as we remember that they are fictions which have no more necessary connection to reality than a chess game.”
Some postmodernist writers include Salman Rushdie and Jorge Luis Borges. The postmodernists construct vivid fictions such as Borges’s “Library of Babel.” The never-ending, labyrinthian library is a representation of the universe’s vast complexity. According to Borges, humans will never fully comprehend reality.
Of course, I’m not doing the story any justice, so go read it for yourself!
Rushdie, Borges and other postmodernists have such powers of imagination that will make you head spin. Yet they, the creators of such wonderful, bizarre, beautiful, imaginative and unrealistic worlds, always knew that their writings were anti-realistic fictions and no more reflective of reality than a game.
Allow me to put my Freudian hat on, pipe in mouth and dabble into some psychoanalysis.
Since the caveman’s day, we homo sapiens have proven our capacity for imagination, creativity, art, fiction making and taking mental siestas. Although the earliest examples of these, such as cave drawings, national mythologies and literature such as The Aeneid were mostly believed to be true, they still show the impressive capability of humanity to use its imagination to help cope with a sometimes overbearing and oppressive reality.
As we have become more reliant on reason and science, leaving some myths and religion behind, imagination, creativity and desire for fiction hasn’t waned. In fact, due to ample free time, more money and higher standards of living than ever before in human history, the desire has increased!
We need meaning, imagination, creativity, art and fiction. Without them, we become prisoners of reality. Not being able to take a mental siesta is a terrible thing.
The eternal realists who don’t dabble in this essential part of human nature are lying to and depriving themselves. With enough suppression of healthy fiction, they will distort reality in other, damaging ways.
For instance, in the polarized United States, partisans on both sides actively search for echo chambers which confirm their viewpoints. They ignore or criticize those who disagree with them. Their imaginations run wild, under the guise of being grounded in reality.
Some dismiss literature and/or other forms of fiction as a waste, yet they make their own facts, relying on wishful thinking, debunked research and conspiracy theories. They are participating in fiction, while constantly masquerading as presenting fact!
We all have at least ‘eternal realist’ on Facebook who every, single, freaking day posts false/incendiary stuff, convinced that their fiction and fantasy is reality. They say everyone else isn’t ready for “truth.”
Perhaps if they indulged themselves a bit, allowing themselves some guilty pleasures in literature, video games or the like, they could do as Borges, Rushdie and other postmodernists have done: let the imagination run wild, entertain the mind, help find meaning in life while clearly separating fiction from reality.
Khattam Shud, the enemy of stories and storytellers
This point bears repeating: Fiction, in whatever form, while not being reality, certainly interact with it in constructive ways. Professor Voth points out why Khattam Shud, the villain in Rushdie’s Haroun and the Sea of Stories, hates them: “Inside every story is a place where people can be free, and they can imagine and live in alternate worlds, which makes the job of tyrants nearly impossible. Rushdie suggests that tyrants and people who want to suppress the imagination in favor of fact are allies in the campaign against stories and storytelling.”
The eternal realists, in their crusade against stories, imagination and fiction will either leave the world a depressing place full of facts and naked reality, or they will simply substitute one fiction for another, while pretending that their fiction is fact.
Professor Voth made me remember that paradoxically, engaging in mental siestas through fiction in all its forms makes a better reality.
The two are synergistic.
Denying fiction and alternative realities, as long as they remain in the mind, will backfire. Those who profess an unwavering allegiance to “facts” engage in fiction in some way.
You see it every day in politics.
Ironically, by avoiding fiction and suppressing imagination, it’s facts which suffer the most.