BUT...and here’s one of the things that was a “eureka moment” for me...getting those new ideas...those inspiring ideas or things to think about...ALSO give us a positive emotion...and THAT positive emotion...a feeling I refer to as “enlightenment”...IS why those stories exist.
Huh. I never thought of it that way.
Hmmm… some stories might be designed as warnings (this is what happens if you throw too many nuclear bombs about!), or to try to get more people to work on a difficult problem (this is what happens if we don’t solve world hunger!) or to try to promote a worldview (this is why my proposed political system is the best!). In the latter two cases, they would work best if they also inspire a positive emotional response, encouraging more people to share the story; in these cases, as with the thought-inspiring stories, inspiring a positive emotion is not the major aim of the story, but it is an important part of the story nonetheless.
This still leaves the warning story; the story of the person who went down a dark path, and comes out the worse for it. Hmmm… now that I think about it, I guess such a story could be written to appeal to a sort of feeling of moral superiority, a sort of smugness, a “I-wouldn’t-be-so-evil” sort of feeling. (I’m not sure that that’s necessarily a positive emotion, but it is a pleasant one).
Hmmm. You raise a surprisingly good point. I’m sure there are still counterexamples out there (how would you class Macbeth, for example?) but they’re clearly a lot rarer then I’d thought.
This is very exciting. I was hoping to be able to share some of my ideas here about this field with rational-minded people and see if they found them interesting (I find this site’s content and its members extremely interesting), and even this little chat here is quite encouraging.
Anyway, there are certainly stories that are designed with an agenda (like you said, as warnings) or to get people to care about something. BUT, if the story doesn’t actually work and doesn’t feel correct to people, it won’t be effective. For example (and I hope this is a good example), imagine if we took a story that illustrated the Big Bang back to some of our ancient ancestors. They would laugh us out of the village (if they didn’t kill us) and tell us that Vishnu created the Universe in a flower from his belly. In this case, our story has failed, even though we had the intent to tell them something extremely important and much more true than what they already believed.
Now, the second point you brought up is great, and it is indeed separate from giving “enlightenment”. Which is the story of a person who goes down the dark path and fails. This is a fine story obviously and many successful stories (like tragedies) take this form. But while these are not giving us a NEW idea, instead, they’re UNDERLINING what we already believe or know is true, which ALSO feels very good, though not QUITE as good as enlightenment. I label this, underlining what we know, as “Confirmation.” And in short, THIS is why we want to see the right guy get the girl, and people who have tragic flaws suffer from them, and why Batman can’t lose in the end (and you’d better not try it if you write the new Batman movie). We expect (though we may not know it consciously) movies to give us that feeling in the end...that what we believe is true, in this case that the person who shows the good traits eventually wins.
I actually haven’t been able to read Shakespeare yet, (the Old English is a tough barrier for me), but I do intend to...and we may find that Macbeth gives this feeling of confirmation, as many tragedies do, which is why it functions well.
Anyway if I get started this post will run all day. But I hope this is interesting and makes sense. I’m using this exchange as a measure for whether or not people might like posts on this topic.
Huh. I never thought of it that way.
Hmmm… some stories might be designed as warnings (this is what happens if you throw too many nuclear bombs about!), or to try to get more people to work on a difficult problem (this is what happens if we don’t solve world hunger!) or to try to promote a worldview (this is why my proposed political system is the best!). In the latter two cases, they would work best if they also inspire a positive emotional response, encouraging more people to share the story; in these cases, as with the thought-inspiring stories, inspiring a positive emotion is not the major aim of the story, but it is an important part of the story nonetheless.
This still leaves the warning story; the story of the person who went down a dark path, and comes out the worse for it. Hmmm… now that I think about it, I guess such a story could be written to appeal to a sort of feeling of moral superiority, a sort of smugness, a “I-wouldn’t-be-so-evil” sort of feeling. (I’m not sure that that’s necessarily a positive emotion, but it is a pleasant one).
Hmmm. You raise a surprisingly good point. I’m sure there are still counterexamples out there (how would you class Macbeth, for example?) but they’re clearly a lot rarer then I’d thought.
Hi CCC,
This is very exciting. I was hoping to be able to share some of my ideas here about this field with rational-minded people and see if they found them interesting (I find this site’s content and its members extremely interesting), and even this little chat here is quite encouraging.
Anyway, there are certainly stories that are designed with an agenda (like you said, as warnings) or to get people to care about something. BUT, if the story doesn’t actually work and doesn’t feel correct to people, it won’t be effective. For example (and I hope this is a good example), imagine if we took a story that illustrated the Big Bang back to some of our ancient ancestors. They would laugh us out of the village (if they didn’t kill us) and tell us that Vishnu created the Universe in a flower from his belly. In this case, our story has failed, even though we had the intent to tell them something extremely important and much more true than what they already believed.
Now, the second point you brought up is great, and it is indeed separate from giving “enlightenment”. Which is the story of a person who goes down the dark path and fails. This is a fine story obviously and many successful stories (like tragedies) take this form. But while these are not giving us a NEW idea, instead, they’re UNDERLINING what we already believe or know is true, which ALSO feels very good, though not QUITE as good as enlightenment. I label this, underlining what we know, as “Confirmation.” And in short, THIS is why we want to see the right guy get the girl, and people who have tragic flaws suffer from them, and why Batman can’t lose in the end (and you’d better not try it if you write the new Batman movie). We expect (though we may not know it consciously) movies to give us that feeling in the end...that what we believe is true, in this case that the person who shows the good traits eventually wins.
I actually haven’t been able to read Shakespeare yet, (the Old English is a tough barrier for me), but I do intend to...and we may find that Macbeth gives this feeling of confirmation, as many tragedies do, which is why it functions well.
Anyway if I get started this post will run all day. But I hope this is interesting and makes sense. I’m using this exchange as a measure for whether or not people might like posts on this topic.