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is reading fiction beneficial?


TheSwoleOne

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Of course, we can all agree that not all fiction is created equal, but in childhood exploratory reading of even dungeons and dragons level nonsense can encourage creativity, empathy, even didactic moralizing by providing heroic ideals and complicated moral situations (ie: "Raistlin sure is cool," thought little Billy, "but should he really have blasted his brother out of anger and frustration or killed that innocent gnome?"). 

 

I would imagine that realism, though infinitely more boring, can touch on more important social issues and provide a historical basis for humanity and its dreams at various times. Reading a Jane Austin novel really isn't that fun to a young boy, but it shows him a completely different way of conceptualizing the world and a different set of priorities. Sophisticated fiction such as Tristram Shandy can encourage critical thinking about even the most basic of assumptions (like Locke's rights, based on the idea that through the equity of our senses we should all equally enjoy them). Beyond spelling and communication skills, reading difficult material can enhance esoteric, conceptual, structural, and even logical problem solving skills.

 

Realistic and naturalistic fiction, with its ties to contemporary events in the author's life, can provide a historical and, even if flawed or biased, accurate picture of where we have been and how we are getting to the places we want to be in the future. This context, the philosophical and rational tradition, going through Plato and the famous theologians and philosophers of our time, is beyond any one person, but the best works of fiction touch on these complexities of human life (Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Proust, Balzac, Sterne, Mishima, Dante - all worth reading not necessarily purely for the plot and for entertainment but for the themes and historical epochs they depict). Even fantasy like Eddison's Worm Ouroboros shows a very different world view, hyper masculine, where paradise is getting back your enemies to fight them all over again, forever - a very different way of conceptualizing "victory" and happiness than our modern ideas.

 

I do feel that the destabilization of the canon was something of a sin, creating a generation of pseudo-philistines who believe that contemporary problems are all that there is, never realizing that the historical precedents that led us here should never have been overthrown and destroyed, for if the past cannot be remembered it is in large part as if its hard-earned lessons are lost.

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Narrative fiction expands your empathy.  People who read become more empathetic, which improves social relationships, so has a society-wide benefit.  Even if it is "bad fiction".  Presuming most of the bad fiction is not anywhere near as bad as the worst of the Sad/Rabid Puppy shit.

Ironically, the more I read about certain political issues and the more empathetic I become, the smaller my Facebook friends list gets. 

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Of course there are case when an appeal to "diminishing returns" is fairly trivially plausible. But who am I to point out that re-reading LotR every other year has "diminishing returns" if a reader takes delight in that? I should grant that s/he is smart enough to know that there are diminishing returns in such a case.

But this obviously does not apply to reading more and different stuff. Or to few widely spaced re-readings of great books.

 

I cannot provide the cog science details for the differences between reading and watching movies/TV.

But books give you insights into 3000 years of different cultures, attitudes, experiences, philosophies, ideas.

Movies only about 100 years and TV series about 50 and both of the latter are also much more biased both to western and modern culture and to mass-marketable entertainment.

 

So the spectrum can hardly be compared. There are also books, like Homer, the Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Dante that have been "classics" and were continuously read, studied, commented on, for hundreds or in the former cases thousands of years.

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Jo,

So the spectrum can hardly be compared. There are also books, like Homer, the Bible, Plato, Aristotle, Dante that have been "classics" and were continuously read, studied, commented on, for hundreds or in the former cases thousands of years.


Well said. Just remember most (myself included) will be reading translations and transcription. Something is lost to both translation and transcription.
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Yes, sure. Very few of us are Tolkien-style polyglotts in ancient languages.

 

But one will still get a more authentic impression of 10th century iceland by reading a translation of some sagas than by watching "Vikings". And similarly with reading Homer in translation and watching a 21st century movie about Troy or "Xena" or sth. like that.

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I haven't seen the show, although my brother told me about it. Apparently it's mostly about Ragnar Lodbrok raiding Britain.

 

Don't get me wrong; I do not think that the main benefit of reading fiction is that one can skip history class ;)

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Short answer: Yes

 

Long answer: Hell yes.

 

Besides, what's the definition of "beneficial"? What may seem beneficial to one person may not be beneficial to another, and vice versa. If you find reading enjoyable, then do it. If you don't, then don't. I don't think it matters what you are reading, so long as you enjoy it. My sister loves reading motivational self-help books, which I absolutely hate. But she loves them, so I say go for it.

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  • 2 weeks later...
Likewise, there are some nonfiction books that make you smarter in that they expose you to information. Again, most books seem no not have that feature: I haven’t seen any numbers, but I assume there is one “self-help” book sold for every introduction to cosmology, one Malcolm Gladwell sold for every Richard Dawkins.

 

Wait - are the self-help and Gladwell better than intros to cosmology & Dawkins or is it the reverse? Because you probably could go either way on both of those.

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Wait - are the self-help and Gladwell better than intros to cosmology & Dawkins or is it the reverse? Because you probably could go either way on both of those.

 

I can't tell whether reading hasn't been beneficial to you or whether you haven't read the things you speak of. 

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I loved in the movie Sideways when the protagonist (Murphy or Miles?) is talking to his friend's future father-in-law. He's writing a book and.the father-in-law becomes concerned. He asks "is it fiction or nonfiction?".

The protagonist waits a beat and answers that its a bit of both, since parts of it are drawn from his own life. FIL responds with something like " oh good - there is too much to learn about this world for people to read about made up things."

The guy came across as a major ignorant.douche. Fiction isn't automatically beneficial,.but neither is.anything, except maybe dogs. And cheese.
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