The Best of Both Worlds...

Yes, I just did that. I used the title of my favorite TNG episode for a blog post title. Deal with it.

Recently, I have been thinking about how fiction and fantasy stories are actually good things. This runs contrary to how some people view the world, since, to them, anything that is not "real" cannot be good.

From a philosophical sense, this is, in a sense, true, since to actually have qualities, something needs to exist. But... 

We can look at this in two ways.

1.  The concept of the fantastical thing can actually be thought of, so there is, at least, some reality there, the reality of an idea. For instance: I show you this picture:
   
   You (presumably) know what this is (if you don't, I am so sorry), where it is from, what it can do; there is content to this. It has a this-ness. While the particular version of what it is may be fictional, it has concepts that are real: gun, weapon, laser, emitter end goes towards other man, etc. Be that as it may, there is a reality to this phaser (ok, now you know what it is) even if it is fiction. So, the fact that it has an ideal (meaning in the manner of an idea) existence, it can have the qualities of good, beautiful, things like that. And that's just a prop, not a story element, plot, characters, events, or anything, this is just a thing. So, doesn't that lend itself to the idea that there can be good in fiction?
2. This may be a very lame reason, but I'll go for it anyway. The fact that so many people can see good in fiction like The Lord of the Rings, Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, etc. is a fairly good indicator that there actually is something there. Now, of course, popular opinion does not guarantee the truth of anything, but, in this case, it, at least, merits a closer inspection. Because we can look at a film like Star Trek: Insurrection and see the struggle between following orders and doing what is right, we can see that there is some content behind it that makes it real to us. So, while there may not actually be a U.S.S. Enterprise orbiting the Earth (I know, I just shattered someone's world... Oh wait, that was mine!), the stories that are told have meaning to us and so can have content that is actually good or bad.

OK. So, fiction can be "real", in a sense, but can it be "good?" This other question comes in when we compare some fantasies to other. First, not all fiction is created equal. There is good fiction, like what I've mentioned above (and plenty of others), and there is bad fiction (I won't point names or name fingers, but you know of what I speak).  So, there can be "fantasies" that are bad (and some downright evil), but the simple fact that there is one bad PotatOS, does not mean that all potatoes are bad.

(Yes, that was a Portal 2 joke)

Sometimes we can also worry that fantasy or fiction causes us to become detached from reality or feel discontented with reality (You know, like those sad people after Avatar came out). Instead of me coming up with reasons, here are some other awesome people to explain this:

Fantasy is a natural human activity. It certainly does not destroy or even insult Reason; and it does not either blunt the appetite for, nor obscure the perception of, scientific verity. On the contrary. The keener and the clearer is the reason, the better fantasy will it make. If men were ever in a state in which they did not want to know or could not perceive truth (facts or evidence), then Fantasy would languish until they were cured. If they ever get into that state (it would not seem at all impossible), Fantasy will perish, and become Morbid Delusion. ~J.R.R. Tolkein

“It would be much truer to say that fairy land arouses a longing for he knows not what. It stirs and troubles him (to his life-long enrichment) with the dim sense of something beyond his reach and, far from dulling or emptying the actual world, gives it a new dimension of depth. He does not despise real woods because he has read of enchanted woods: the reading makes all real woods a little enchanted. This is a special kind of longing.” ~C.S. Lewis

Another guy that has some really cool things to say about this is G.K. Chesterton. In his book, Orthodoxy, he says that fairy tales (which are fiction) are:

“Those tales say that apples are golden only to refresh the forgotten moment when we found that they were green. They make rivers run with wine only to make us remember, for one wild moment, that they run with water.”

In these two sentences, it is quite apparent that fairy tales tell us something about the world and how we are meant to interact with it. We adults have forgotten that it is an amazing thing that apples in our world are, in fact, green, instead of another color such as gold. We no longer remember that our rivers need not have run with water, but rather could have run with something else, such as wine. This reminds us that the world is wonderfully made. Even though we are used to its existence, since we live in it every day, we should be constantly be amazed at the world, because of the amazing fact that things work the way they do and not another way.

            In fact, Chesterton says that it is adults, not children that need fairy tales. When we are children, “we do not need fairy tales: we only need tales. Mere life is interesting enough.” Because children have not seen many of these things before, they seem to be fantastic, which they actually are. Because we have lived in the midst of all these amazing things, we have become accustomed to them, thus it no longer shocks us that things in the world happen. We need a dragon to pop out of a door to make our lives interesting and to fill us with a sense of wonder. The point of fairy tales, then, is to inspire in us a sense of wonder. As stated above, these fairy tales remind us that the world did not need to be so. It could have easily been created in another way, with the “laws” being entirely different. The fairy tale should make us draw connections between our world and fairytale land. By doing so, we rediscover our wonder at things by seeing how the fairy tales point to our world, where they draw their substance from. If the thing in fairytale land is so amazing, surely the actual things out of which it was created must be even more so.

Why yes, that was from a paper I wrote a while ago. You caught me!

So, through all of that mess that I just typed up, suffice it to say: Fiction is a good thing and you can get good things from it! Get it? Good.

Granted, from the fact that the topic of this blog is fiction, this should be obvious. However, since I was pondering it, it seemed like it should go up. If you have a comment, I would love to see it, even if it is just "Well, that could have been better." 

Well, I'm off. It's time to go do some work in the Great Unknown (Theology papers). Until then, Live long and Prosper!