How Fiction Makes Us Better People

now one thing that we'd love to do on a quirky inquiry here is to you know read read a whole lot read as much as you could about sociology philosophy physics science literature ancient philosophy auto kind of stuff read as much as you can but another part of me which you know talks to me at night you know especially before I go to bed this part of my brain is especially active it really wants me not only to read a whole bunch it also wants me this part of my brain also wants me to sort of thrive the reason why I am reading so it's a problem that I think deserves a lot of attention and thought it's sort of a philosophic or or or sort of like intellectual conundrum to really think about deeply at night with a pad of paper so I think the really important question here is it's it's less of how many books can I read in the year and what are some of the gimmicks and strategies that I can use to read more books in a year but I think a more productive question to ask ourselves is just how do you fiction actually make us think to better human beings I mean anyone if you set anyone a goal read a hundred books this year they can basically do it if they do it like a monkey they could do it it's all a matter of willpower I'm just saying if you devote sufficient time to reading literature well you can do it you can definitely do it you can definitely read a hundred books per year no problem takes a bit of training takes a bit of work takes a bit of discipline but you can do it but the problem that I'm seeing right now especially with in a book community it's just this lack of lack of awareness over the central problem of sort of wirey of reading so many books in the first place you know why are we reading Infinite Jest why do we read Marcel Proust why are we even reading Jane Austen or Hamlet is it just because we want to sound smarter or to beat a person sort of has a bunch of stuffing in his or her brain is that really it so these questions why we read how do literature make us into better people or just a plain question of what is the function of writing a literature in general pepping on at the forefront of my mind because I've been engaging a lot of fiction writing on my own route to short stories in a span of two weeks and one of them is really Paul polished up I think I'm gonna submit it to a magazine and hopefully someone would like to pick it up but throughout writing all these short stories does this question of what is literature for just became became ever so obvious to me that I need to resolve these questions before I can write truly impactful fiction so today's sort of a part one of why do we relive it sure I sort of addressed this problem beforehand to pass but I just want to make this sort of more explicit than what was said before literature first hand why do we read there's a part of literature I mean I've been watching a lot of David Foster Wallace interview and being reading a lot of David Foster Wallace but one one of the key things that David Foster Wallace talked about was that fiction a part of fiction was supposed to be fun it's supposed to be a lot of fun it's supposed to be a journey that takes you into an its unexpected roots it's commercial fiction on drugs it's commercial fiction on acids it's some a really good crime novel it's a really good adventure novel it's Norwegian Wood by Morikami it's some weird stuff that you read and you think to yourself what have I read it's some a sensory overload of just new information so a part of that is supposed to be fun reading fiction is supposed to be really really enjoyable but David Foster Wallace also talked about another part of reading fiction which is the morally instructive part which is the part that makes us more human so to speak the hard part of reading fiction there's certain part of a piece of fictional work that just drive you bonkers trying to make sense of but once you make sense of that part you feel very sort of fulfilled and morally redeemed so to speak you get the sort of spiritual uplift of becoming a more wholesome human being so you're no longer just trapped in your daily routines you're no longer just bounded by your own worldview it expands who you are so the second part what we're gonna talk about today as a bit of a introduction to why we read it all and also I'm gonna start bringing us some of these conceptions to my literary studies starting in march which i think is very important for me it's a very important education to me it's just extremely important especially a very good liberal sort of literary education i think it's the foundation for how to think and that's even more important than some of the technical skills you can have all the technical skills but if you don't know how to sort of reason and think philosophically I think that's even more of a tragedy than if you don't know how to do maths so that's at least my personal opinion because I'm more humanity driven I'm more I'd lean towards humanities a little more than the mathematical science doesn't mean I can't do maths doesn't mean I don't have technical skills it's just I think this part the second part that David Foster Wallace addressed we all know how to read for pleasure but when it comes down to dislike morally instructive part it gets a little trickier of how does part works it's not the sake of just reading textbook and reciting facts for their own sake we need those things that are hard to read with him fiction to actually transform us and that's where we're going to talk about today so I mean digging through some rather tedious works recently some rather you know hard fiction so to speak literary fiction and some of these books they are a little hard to get started with but once I get into the rhythm and once I went through some of these books with the concentration that they deserve with the attention of care that I deserve they pay back they really do pay back dividend to books that we're going to talk about today which is gonna address why we read it all are going to be infinite by David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen's freedom so these two books had these do two books basically pointed out to me that characters within fictions are very important to how we interact with the world so to reward that to put it in a simpler way of explanation for for the sake of argument is that when writers put a lot of attention and care into characters it is very important that as readers no matter how tedious it may sound that as readers we should temporarily suspend our own identity and to dive deep into the lives of the basically the lives of these imaginary people in books now a lot of people don't like this idea of relishing or relinquishing their identity for a little while because we're trapped you're here our own own lights we don't want to share any you know life's troubles out there who cares of Mary's dog died last Tuesday who cares of them missus Bergersen slipped and broke her hip next door three four four Collins Street you know something like that who even cares if you know someone died in my neighborhood no one cares so we have the sort of selfishness that keeps us trapped within their own little bubbles and I think personal growth or growing out of your sort of little bubble is a part of becoming more more of a holistic person and fiction if you read it correctly and some of these masterful works like Jonathan Franzen David Foster Wallace their characters have the ability to sort of break you out of your bubble to give you perspectives never ever before seen to give you these sort of revelations of that's what it looks like to live life from that person's from that person's perspective that's what it's like to lose a son that you like or to lose a family member that's what it's like to feel grief that's what it's like to lose a pet that's what it's like to you know have your ambition crushed that's what it's like to really feel like you're inadequate that's what it's like so as we suspend our own little identities as we suspend our own little egos we begin to open up to these whole webs of experiences out there through fiction vicariously you know you're not out there doing drug deals you're not out you're not a part of a dysfunctional family you're not part of um the Boston alcoholic anonymous but you are experiencing these people's lives by curiously and you're sort of relating your own life experience experience with them and these characters are going to break you out of your sort of little bubble and that's really gonna make you a more empathetic person or sympathetic person in that sense and I think it really sort of calms you down and really tears you up to face life with all its complexities and with all its sort of messiness so to speak it opens up a new realm a new dimensions of how to deal with certain situations how to respond wisely in conflicts and how to they exactly stay your life on your own course so to speak so these good fiction books they're essentially self-help books that helps you to define your identity your sense of self because as we grow up the formation of identities always Iraq a reaction against or a conscious yearning to be a certain thing and then there's also your base identity which is the identity that you you know when you when you completely when you when there's you know that old concept of it ego and superego which is not exactly not exactly that accurate of a model but for the sake of this analogy there's like the super-ego which is the stuff that you're trying to that you're trying to sort of reach thursday ed which is the stuff that you're trying to fight your base instincts and there's the ego which is like the central balancing act and I think the formation of identity is either reaction against certain identities out there or a yearning towards identities that you find attractive so thereby good fiction has the function of showing you so many people that you can sort of weave through what you want to be and what you don't want to be through a very efficient medium so if you want to figure out who you are if it takes you 20 years just in your living real life and to find out these people out there because you coming to relatively limited numbers of people every single day you come in contact with people that you just see once and never see them again and it might take you 20 years to really figure out what you want and who you are and what would your motivation see life William motivations in life are but if you read some really good high-quality literary fiction that have really just masterfully constructing constructed characters you're able to meet 40 50 people in a span of a week if you if you're a very avid reader these 40 to 50 people are going to begin to define this web of what are some of the characters or what are some of the personality traits that you react against or what are some of the personality traits that you want to embody even more so it's really exposing you to things that's you know showing you what you could be and showing you what you don't want to be so you begin to build up this very good moral judgment and then at the end aspiration and sort of wisdom began to congeal with the more that you read and the more now you began to really sympathize deeply with the characters the more now you're gonna live life it was just just as completely you know amazing we're not exactly amazing but in this completely different way you've got this critical faculty in your brain that you can think with that you can reason with it's really sort of a liberation from a really real sense of liberation from you know stagnant thinking it's really a liberation from you know following the latest fads and liberation from just you know getting stuck in a news cycle 24/7 and then having people tell you what to think but because now as you're relating to so many characters within fiction as you're encountering so many people encounter so many signs of arguments that it becomes very hard to take sides and eventually I think you're gonna or I'm gonna reach a place or you were gonna reach a place if you're reading enough that you don't take a side anymore you're able to see all perspectives with the sort of elevated view and then you you're able to see the dynamics of how they all play out and that inspire dynamics is stasia yellow spire dynamics which is a very holistic view of entire you know entire dynamics of spire dynamics which I find very inspiring to eventually get there so you can view literature as self-help but it's more subconscious way of doing self-help it's a more subconscious way of you know really therapeutically rewire you so that you're more of a human being so that you're more holistic and able to relate to other people so you're a more able to function in a world when things really you know do hit you hard so I doubt much of this episode made any sense and if you follow towards the end keep in mind that this video is unscripted I think it's hi it's I think it's it's one of my most abstract videos yet yet if you're able to get something out of it well here you go if you don't like it go watch some of the other more videos videos on a commonplace book on or on drafting essays and on how to read books so this video is you know a little bit more abstract than the other ones but expect more of these videos in a future to come because some University it's just gonna be a goldmine of new stuff and as I'm making sense of Audis new information input there will be more videos talking about those revelations um after I go to university in March so RC walden here signing off right now hope you enjoyed this video and check out these two really brilliant books Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace and Jonathan Franzen's freedom incredible studies of characters incredible just own descriptions of characters and incredible everything that we've talked about thus far able to relate you to different characters and then you know gaining the life experience of imaginary people really really makes you into a whole different person and I'm not kidding it's it's quite funny how it works but it just works so happy reading and I will see you next week

Channel: Robin Waldun

Views: 57,140

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Id: CbPW7_MSCZA

Length: 15min 28sec (928 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 18 2020