Tolstoy once said that if people are suffering, why should he go out there and tell a love story? And the answer is quite simple: Humans use narratives to understand the world, to find reasons for change, to escape briefly into the world they could have so they don’t lose their will to live.
Fiction is meant to enhance reality, not replace it. We don’t dream to relive, we dream to throw our mind into new situations, new artificial experiences, to prepare us for what is out there. The same goes for children’s play. Theatre. Movies. Art. It’s sense-making.
- Keywords: life, psychology
- Source: Enter the Supersensorium
- Related: Dreams help prolong our brain’s plasticity - they are a cure to overfitting
- This is somewhat at odds with the idea that you should focus on how you feel in your dreams, in contrast to focussing on what is actually happening in the narrative and why your brain is mixing together all kinds of weird shit. (focus-on-the-feelings-in-your-dreams-not-the-narrative)
- Escapism?