What's the point of fiction?

I don't mean to deride you but this opinion isn't valid once you realize what literature actually is. You make it out to be entertainment or escapism which might have didactic utility, but it is much more than that. I'm sure there are literary critics who could express it this better than I can, but literature places you into any myriad human condition in history. Tapping into some universal receptacle of human memory and experience, which in turn you experience through them. You rarely experience non-fiction. There is also poetry which is it's own thing entirely. OP, comparing fiction and non-fic to each other in such a way is to miss the entire point of literature

>What's the point of nonfiction? There's no fundamental worth to it.
To learn how the world works, so that you can interact with it better to get what you want. Look, you can go down the hole of "what's the point of anything" or you can stay practical.

Personally I think that learning how the universe works is much better than reading some fiction book about some persons hang ups. The latter just seems like mental self-sex.

>A guy traveled the world and saved his country
>"woah so deep that's great"
>btw this didn't happen/he had a pointy hat
>"ew fuck off i hate this now"

This is you.

Poetry is way more important than fiction. Pure, unrestrained thought and lingual exploration is valuable for everyone. Even if the ideas take a while to seep into wider audiences.

>Tapping into some universal receptacle of human memory and experience, which in turn you experience through them. You rarely experience non-fiction. There is also poetry which is it's own thing entirely. OP, comparing fiction and non-fic to each other in such a way is to miss the entire point of literature
What kind of lessons do you learn from this that you couldn't learn from non-fiction?

Not to say I support the OP's sentiment, but we could just as easily live without fiction, too, as we did for thousands and thousands of years, and as the rest of the known universe outside the human race continues to do to this day.

>What's the point of fiction?
>Is fiction harmful?
>Does it distract us from the real world
It is definitely a part of the real world. How else would it 'be'?
>in a bad way?
Morality exists in a similar paradigm as fiction. You can give a glimpse of it to others.
>Non-fiction can give the same lessons as any fiction book can, but faster and better (less "diffuse"). (Do you disagree with this? If so - why?)
Fiction introduces a bottleneck for lower quality genes. Autists, atheists and materialists will never understand fiction, even though they may be enthralled by it.
>It seems to me that it's just escapism
Nothing is 'just something'.
>and that you should read relevant non-fiction and focus on the real world instead.
>should
Now you are escaping your boundaries once again. What is the goal of life, if not within the realm of imagined things?

You don't know what's practical, though. When did you become the arbiter of determining what's practical for every human being? Plus nonfiction isn't inherently more practical, because you could write a novel on what you'd think is practical, like you could write a novel on calculus, but you could write a nonfiction on calculus too, and the novel could describe all there is to know in calculus, while the nonfiction could just teach you to find the solution to f(x)=4x-9.

That "painting" is just fucking aful. Pls tell me it was made on a computer.

Practical... for what? Once again, ignoring the important stuff.

You don't like your clouds looking like a weird checkerboard?

>but we could just as easily live without fiction, too
Make a thread one year from now, without sleeping or hallucinating.
>as we did for thousands and thousands of years
We've never been without fiction.

Emotions aren't real, so how can they affect him?

You're going about it the wrong way, you can't quantify and present the value of literature like it were some cheap tool. What is the value of painting or music? What do you learn from travel or immersion in other cultures? Reread the post you responded to, emphasis on "experience", "history" and "human". If you can't figure it out from that then don't bother, most never do anyway

But wouldn't 'not bothering' be escapism?

>wouldn't 'not bothering' be escapism?
What? That doesn't make sense on any level. You just aren't able to get it, it's an ultimatum of your stupidity

>tool
I guess that's the difference between us. I see fiction as a tool and I would argue a quite poor one. Your argument is that it's something more than that - a goal in itself. I think that's fine btw. We just have different ways of looking at the world.

Tools are used. Use exists for what? You eat, then ya die. What's efficiency for, anyway? To waste your life?

OP here I'm not this guy Veeky Forums needs IDs.

You've stretched the definition of the term beyond any real use or meaning. We're talking about literature here. Strange for Veeky Forums, I know.

No, but they're a representation of the Real. It's simple reflection, autismo.

Yes, but yours is explicitly lacking a fundamental element, you are a moron. Go back to wherever you came from

>You've stretched the definition of the term beyond any real use or meaning.
On the contrary, I'm embracing the wholeness of things.
>We're talking about literature here
Oooh. Yeah, my bad. However, I would argue that fiction is dead as of now anyways, or soon to be. This spiritual desert will yield no fruit for the Lord nor man.

To get what you want out of life - to change the world in a certain way. I don't see (reading) fiction as a goal in itself and others do. I guess that's where the disagreement comes from. Or do you disagree?

>To get what you want out of life
Which is, by definition, fiction. Until you have it, in which case you need a new goal.

Not an argument. You're upset because fiction means a lot to you and so you react emotionally when I question it.

Now this is silly and you know it.

A world without fiction is fiction. Merely yours. You just want to conquer the whole world to suit your goals and ideals.

I'm quite serious here.
>silly
What characteristics does this include?

Nonsensical.

Well, your limits are not the limits of reality.

>Not an argument
It's not a matter of arguing. You are trying to question the oldest and greatest artistic medium and admit to not being able to understand it on a fundamental level. This makes you a fool, that's all there needs to be said. Hopefully for your own sake you are young enough to grow into, because this is a kind of ignorance that can only be afforded to children

>he posts on an anime forum asking why we need fiction

That's true. I guess I just don't see the point of not facing reality at all times. Trying to escape reality leads to bad outcomes. I base this on observations and my own experiences to some degree. That's why I wrote that fiction can be harmful in the OP.

OP is an idiot, but every other poster with the exception of the art posts are almost as bad, you all can hardly articulate the value of what should be your passion or hobby, I'll chalk it up to the hour and hope these are /lit9k/ cross posters

If you are looking for lessons in your books, I think neglecting fiction is incorrect.
Why would it matter if the event in the book actually happened? There could still be something to be learned. Sometimes it is more difficult to find meaning or a lesson in a work of non-fiction.
I think there is something very primal, and necessary about fiction.
I know a few people that have told me they only read non-fiction, probably for reasons similar to yours, OP. But I think these people are missing out. I hope you try to find something meaningful to you.

>Trying to escape reality leads to bad outcomes
You think so? A.A Milne and Tolkien tell a different story.

>pic
Hard to take you seriously when you disregard analytic philosophy. Your argument not making sense makes sense now.

Rape in fiction leads to rape in the real world.

>you all can hardly articulate the value of what should be your passion or hobby
The board doesn't define me! >reeee
I honestly just attempted to help out the poor OP, but he needs to grow up or take drugs; he has been industrialized too far.

Yes they got a financial gain out of it. I was however talking about reading fiction.

I was saying that WW1 led to Winnie the Pooh.

>Yes they got a financial gain out of it.
Money is fiction. It's true so long as people believe in it and sacrifice for it.

Ffs It's not disregarding the use or even value of analytic, it's about meaning. That's the entire point of this stupid thread, that OP is trying to use an artistic medium to gain information in a way similar to stem fields. That's why it's an apt comparison, did I really have to walk you through that?

You just need to go back to and take your harmless non-fiction books such as Mein Kampf and Der Judenstaat with you, and try to make sure they don't fall onto your head.

Silly post.

I consider fictional literature to be a sort of superstimulus to our brains. Same as music can be considered as an "auditory cheesecake" (an idea proposed by Pinker), literature exists to tickle the sensitive spots of our mental faculties. You are right that it does not have any intrinsic value per se. (there was a guy recently arguing that you should read only summaries of the books instead of the books themselves I think you would get along by the way). However, just because something is not adaptive does not mean that it should not exist and we should not enjoy it, see? You miss the point entirely if you think that literature's only function is the accumulation of knowledge about this world we happen to exist in. I think fiction does an amazing job in terms of accurately portraying human archetypes and personalities. It might be even considered as case studies of human psyche and pathologies.
In conclusion, I suggest you read the first chapter of "Hard Times" by Dickens, I think a lot of your questions will be answered just by reading the first pages of this "fictional story which has nothing to do with reality".

Thomas Gradgrind, sir. A man of realities. A man of facts and calculations. A man who proceeds upon the principle that two and two are four, and nothing over, and who is not to be talked into allowing for anything over. Thomas Gradgrind, sir—peremptorily Thomas—Thomas Gradgrind. With a rule and a pair of scales, and the multiplication table always in his pocket, sir, ready to weigh and measure any parcel of human nature, and tell you exactly what it comes to. It is a mere question of figures, a case of simple arithmetic. You might hope to get some other nonsensical belief into the head of George Gradgrind, or Augustus Gradgrind, or John Gradgrind, or Joseph Gradgrind (all supposititious, non-existent persons), but into the head of Thomas Gradgrind—no, sir!

Yep, literature is a bitch. A liar, it makes us see things that aren't there. We believe, by reading literature, that we're "expanding our consciousness" or that we're "living a thousand lives that we've never lived" but what we're doing is that we're imagining, projecting, gargantuan superstructures that exists only in our head, like a rhythm that we didn't hear before or a certain upsurge, a certain tone that we didn't grasp. Yet literature is necessary. Ask yourself: has there ever been a time when I truly didn't do this? When, by observing the world, you didn't project yourself into it? Human consciousness is narration: a chair is never only a chair. We can't help but doing art.

That being said, I think the vast majority of literati are mediocre retards that should be gassed.

"Trying to escape reality leads to bad outcomes.", he wrote on an anonymous imageboard, one he had browsed mindlessly for hours and hours on end, wasting his fleeting youth in the pale glow of his screen, completely oblivious to the deep, melancholy irony of his words.

>Non-fiction can give the same lessons as any fiction book can, but faster and better (less "diffuse")
Here's where you're wrong OP. the human mind isn't optimized to take in information point blank, it's designed to analyze things and see them from many angles, to create a psychological model of reality.

If you wanted to get rich, and got a book titled "how to get rich" and inside it said "earn money", you wouldn't be satisfied. You probably wouldn't even get better att earning money from the experience. I agree that someone writing a fiction about how they think one is to earn money, without them having any experience, you probably wouldn't learn much, but you would learn more then the first example, as before you only had your own fantasies on how to go about, now you have two peoples fantasies, the probability that you take 'something' valuable out of the experience is very high.

you're also misunderstanding the notion of what non-fiction implies. Both fiction and non-fiction contains a mixture of fictitious and real elements no exception. According to our current understanding of the universe, we are composed of atoms, but when you're looking at things your eyes and your mind cooperate to create fictitious narratives of your daily life. The distinction you're trying to make between fiction and non-fiction is also a fictitious creation of your overly Conscientiousness personality filter, the 'real world' as you call it does not make this distinction.

There's good fiction, and bad fiction as well as good non-fiction and bad non-fiction, the distinction of what is valuable learning experience for you is not between genres, it's up to the individual text itself.

Your English is great man.

I'd say fiction allows us to give reality to issues that we may not have direct experience with, and every non-fiction is filtered through our own view of reality which is clouded by all of our prejudices and perception of it. It is injected with meaning that is not inherently there. For example imagine if a girl gives a boy an item, from that statement your mind conjures up many different meanings depending on the context and the small actions between the two and much of it could be simple fiction until proven otherwise. Hopefully this makes sense and not rambly wambly

>lessons
t. school of resentment

>Ecли жe бы я хoтeл cкaзaть cлoвaми вce тo, чтo имeл в видy выpaзить poмaнoм, тo я дoлжeн был нaпиcaть poмaн тoт caмый, кoтopый я нaпиcaл cнaчaлa. И ecли кpитики тeпepь yжe пoнимaют и в фeльeтoнe мoгyт выpaзить тo, чтo я хoчy cкaзaть, тo я их пoздpaвляю И ecли близopyкиe кpитики дyмaют, чтo я хoтeл oпиcывaть тoлькo тo, чтo мнe нpaвитcя, кaк oбeдaeт Oблoнcкий и кaкиe плeчи y Кapeнинoй, тo oни oшибaютcя. Bo вceм, пoчти вo вceм, чтo я пиcaл, мнoю pyкoвoдилa пoтpeбнocть coбpaния мыcлeй, cцeплeнных мeждy coбoй для выpaжeния ceбя; нo кaждaя мыcль, выpaжeннaя cлoвaми ocoбo, тepяeт cвoй cмыcл, cтpaшнo пoнижaeтcя, кoгдa бepeтcя oднa и бeз тoгo cцeплeния, в кoтopoм oнa нaхoдитcя.
- Л. H. Toлcтoй

Imagine this board reading just one or two books on literary theory/aesthetics. We'd avoid so many pointless threads.

To live another life.