Is Reading Fiction Books A Waste Of Time?

[Music] so [Music] [Music] [Music] hey you beautiful people welcome back to my channel read trouble become so yesterday i put up a poll on my youtube community tab page asking you guys whether you guys prefer reading fiction or non-fiction books so the results are actually quite balanced a lot of you like both fiction and non-fiction the people who like fiction books explained that why do they like fiction books they said that they like fiction because they are engaged in stories stories are entertaining for them and the people who liked non-fiction said that they like non-fiction because non-fiction gives them some kind of rules to live by some kind of motivation to live by but in this video i'm going to specifically talk about fiction books i'm going to talk about the world of stories so let me rewind my life a little bit when i just started reading i started with fiction but after i had read quite a few books of the people around me the people i knew the people who were actually well read told me that you should shift to non-fiction books you know you should try more self-help books and philosophical books so that you develop a more comprehensive intellect and this fact actually got me thinking that what value i was getting by reading fiction books i personally liked fiction a lot i was totally engaged in all the stories but it got me thinking and i started researching about is reading fiction actually valuable what value do you get after reading fiction like after reading non-fiction it obviously feels like you've learned a new thing and you can straight away implement that in your life if you're watching a movie if you're playing a video game or watching tv for that matter you feel you are entertained by watching the story which is shown to you so how different is reading fiction looks is it not just a form of entertainment what value do we get out of it welcome to this new video in this video i'm going to tell you some mind blowing interesting facts about reading fiction books and how fiction books are as valuable as non-fiction books i'll tell you why reading fiction books is not at all a waste of time this video is going to have a lot of information this video is going to be fun make sure you watch the video till the end you may never know which thought or fact may resonate with you and change the course of your life so let's get started when you read a novel what happens is that the words trigger representations in your imagination and a lot of the information from which a lot of what you extract the information from is actually your imagistic representation of the words so there has been a lot of research on this topic that how reading fiction how reading stories has been valuable to people a lot of eminent universities have published research papers on this very topic there has been scientific advancement and scientific research on this topic i went through some of these researches and they were pretty interesting to me and i'm very very excited to share all these information with you so basically i've condensed all those benefits into three important metrics these three important metrics sum up every benefit that you may get from fiction books apart from being entertained there are many hidden and trivial benefits which you might not have heard of reading fiction books so let's get started with the three metrics [Music] the first metric is actually a scientific metric a research was taken up by the emory university they actually gathered some undergraduate students and they made these people read novel and while they were reading these novels the activity in their brains was simulated and analyzed the results which came out were pretty interesting so before they started reading novels and after they started reading novels there was a very enhanced brain activity it was seen after they have done reading in their brain those regions which are responsible for motor activities those regions were fired up let me put this in a very simple way so when you run when you jog there's a certain part of your brain which gets fired up there are some motor activities going on in your brain and it was found out that when you are reading about running the same part of the brain was fired up so basically you can think of it like when you are reading about a man you are actually running in his shoes you are actually imagining yourself in a shoe or doing that running so its a very fascinating thought and i found out more about this and a research study by the university of sussex suggested that reading stories reading reading fiction books can help reduce your anxiety and stress levels a mere six minute reading exercise can decrease your stress levels by almost 60 percent you think about it whenever you are reading whenever whenever you are sailing with morbidic whenever you are in hogwarts with harry potter wherever you are in that iran war with khari no siri's characters whenever you are flying kites with us in the kaitrana you feel you are actually there right now imagine your brain is actually simulating all of these experiences and you're learning from all of these experiences your brain is actually growing and exercise for your brain muscles and this way reading stories reading fiction is actually changing your brain the next important metric which came out was a very very important term this term has been frequently associated with reading stories and reading fiction this term was popularized by the author and pressured and the term is empathy so when you read fiction you develop empathy for characters you develop a certain kind of feeling for that character you feel for that character you become emotionally invested in those characters greatly helps to develop your social cognitive abilities story writers like shakespeare and franz kafka and dostoevsky why are they so popular why do people study them so much because the characters which these authors have written they have such a wide range of emotions that you feel some of those emotions are actually your emotions you see somewhere of your emotions and the character of macbeth you see your decision-making problem in prince hamlet's character you see that aloneness loneliness the concept of existentialism in gregor samsa's metamorphosis so empathy is a very very important metric which has been come up there's a very very interesting lecture by dr jordan peterson on harry potter he has compared how the character of harry potter actually depicts all of humanity it's a brilliant lecture put the link in the description below you can check it out i'll reiterate some points from the lecture which i found very fascinating so there's an underground tunnel the chamber of secrets as it's known there's a bacillus there's a snake in the tunnel so this snake actually represents our inner demon everybody has an evil side it's like a yin-yang concept where there's a little bit of evil inside of all of us harry is also touched by the evil he's touched by voldemort he has a part of voldemort inside him so it's his is his job now to face that evil and conquer that evil the way to the time is actually through the bathroom which is a very inconsequential place it's a very trivial place so dr peterson says that sometimes to face your greatest evil to face your greatest fears you have to use the most inconsequential means to do that so this is a brilliant analogy and there are lots and lots of analogies in in many many great works that's why empathy is one of the most important metrics which you develop by reading stories the next metric which we are going to talk about is actually a very very deep philosophical question uh we won't really deep dive into the intricacies but it helps us to answer a basic question who am i the way to explain this is that see by reading non-fiction books you get a set of rules that you should do this there are these kind of rules people have done this and they have reached here but some of the fiction stories are so harding and so powerful they've tried to tap into the basic human emotions the day-to-day emotions and they've tried to answer the purpose of their lives many of the novels you'll find the main goal of the placental protagonist is to find his or her own purpose in life it is said that when you ponder over questions like these a certain idea pops up and you change the world you are inspired greatly by these works of fiction and you might change the world for example charles darwin who gave one of the most revolutionary theories in the history of our revolution in the history of our civilization the survival of the fittest charles darwin was greatly inspired by stories stories in which the central character was actually changing himself in different situations he was actually adapting to the difficulties he had a villain so he was changing his ideology to face the villain he was basically being tested in all these conditions by reading all these stories charles darwin came up with the theory of survival of fittest elon musk has frequently talked about isaac asimov's novels have greatly led him to take an interest in robotics in building spacex and tesla so stories have greatly inspired him albert einstein has been greatly inspired by the works of theodor dustersky paul max who is one of the most original thinkers of the world has been greatly inspired by shakespeare and his tragedies so yeah the more stories you read the more you are open to ideas the more you're open to interpretation so i really don't like the fact that in school how we were taught reading novels what does the author mean by why the curtains are blue so it's it's an open interpretation you can interpret whatever you want you can be inspired by the blue you can be demotivated by the blue so in this way actually uh reading stories helps you uh reading fiction helps you yeah those were those points i really wanted to talk about these points because these points really fascinated me when i went through the research papers and stuff so i made this video i hope you liked it i hope you found some value in this video and i hope the next time you read stories uh i really hope you get inspired and you know change the world we need a lot of original thinkers we need a lot of revolutionary people we need young energetic people who can change the world one day at a time so i hope this video inspires you to read more and more stories and travel the world together with the author so thank you so much for watching this video uh if you like the content don't forget to press the like button down below put a comment uh share the video if you think this video would be beneficial to someone and do subscribe to my channel will come up with such content every week and yeah do keep supporting me i really really appreciate all your support and thank you so much for supporting me so yeah see you in the next video bye

Channel: Read Travel Become

Views: 37,367

Keywords: reading fiction, is reading fiction useful, is reading fiction good for you, reading fiction benefits, reading benefits, benefits of reading, benefits of reading books, is reading fiction a waste of time, is reading fiction useless, reading fiction is a waste of time, reading effects on brain, reading fiction vs nonfiction, read travel become, fiction books, benefits of reading fiction, benefits of fiction books, advantages of reading books, why i started reading fiction

Id: ESsyxS5ZuiI

Length: 10min 1sec (601 seconds)

Published: Sun Sep 27 2020