Okay, guys. I've had a VERY stressful week, and I really haven't been able to blog.
Sorry!
But, you'll be getting a little more out of me today as I make up for the lack of posts.
Here we go!
Lately I've heard a lot of discussion over books, and media and ideas.
"I read it like it's a book, and so should everyone. If it's just a book than how much affect does it actually have?"
And, at face value, that's true.
But I think not taking stories to heart is a little more complicated than we realize.
Humans have evolved into forming 'mental models'. They detail what we see as the normalcy. It give us a structure as to how the world works, and lets us predict what will happen in given situations. It's how we predict the endings of books, and decide if we should tell her that it makes her butt look big, because it'll make her angry.
These models are based on our surroundings, and the things that happen to us, and around us. We take those influences and our minds paint pictures of the order of life and people.
(Flawed paintings, I might add)
And, naturally, some experiences carry more weight than others. Things that are really unique or unusual, or that have happened more recently, for example.
And we're not so great at distinguishing the differences between what's really happened to us, and the things we've heard stories about.
And we can account that fact that, more likely than not, most early stories told by humans were about real life.
People told stories about that one time they were picking berries, and their buddy got super sick because he ate one.
Stories, wither or not they actually happen to us, help us understand the world outside of ourselves.
We can hear a story and incorporate it into our working model of the world.
Now, staying alive isn't our main concern, and is therefore no longer the main point of stories.
So we started telling fiction stories, but by then the story telling part of our brain was hard-wired.
So now we're stuck with this mental mechanism whereby we can treat fiction with the same weight as non-fiction, and use that to shape our idea of the world.
And this isn't a conscious decision, you can always step away from a story and say it it isn't real, but your self-conscious brain is already there.
You can even look at things and say, "Well, I know that despite this story, girls don't need romantic relationships", but that doesn't stop the part of your brain that forms that expectation.
And because that's not a part of our minds we always control, we should think more carefully about the media we present ourselves with.