Fiction and Reality

FICTION

&

REALITY

Fiction is the creation of worlds that are anything but reality. Still, every fiction reveals a truth. A fiction evokes the imagery of our own lives as a mortar to construct worlds in our imagination, and in a way, gives a glimpse of ourselves and our relationship of the world if we look at it a certain way. Upon reading a fiction, the more rich and evocative the fictional world that arises from it, the more rich and evocative the life that imagines it, and the more in reality they are. But upon entering these worlds is exactly where we should heed caution. So let's be cautious.

I forget who she was, but she said something like "The purpose of literature is to prove that other people exist". Perhaps a bit too existential for my tastes, but it is a notion that is pleasing to my ears. The fictional character is the inverse of a real human being—a human inside-out. Neither eye to eye nor skin to skin, we do not have that visceral and immediate sensual experience of them—their look, their movement, their presence—but we are privy to their sordid and tangled minds, and our imagination does the rest. The exact opposite is the case when we behold the bare reality of a being. No mind, no fiction is apparent upon reading them. Then, they speak...and our imagination does the rest.

If you'll allow me to present another fiction, here the always lithesome Language enters the light in all her unsullied beauty. Only within language and expression can the spirit truly exist as it finally reveals itself to our senses, allowing bodies and minds to tangle with one another at a distance—to comfort, to fight, to belittle, to make love, and wonder, and especially to imagine, unlike any other relationship in the known universe. Only beneath and raveled within the lace dress of Language does the mind exist—and the same with your gods, your laws, your spirits and promises, you superstitious ones. I beg you to point to me anywhere else in the world where you might pin these words in all confidence, except upon these words themselves.

Language is the first of her kind in history, the titan among titans, and that slow, unwilling and mediocre sapient, the last over-ripe species of its once majestic genus, is the Prometheus of this grand story. Irony, once again, is alive... or so one might say. But only through language can we prove that we exist.

But dearest friend, as you know already, there is a certain principle in fiction known as “show, don’t tell”, a cliché that creative writing students hate to hear and creative writing teachers hate to explain. The idea is to treat the audience as if they were beings who possess a human imagination rather than beings who need to be told through brute force what to think. I find this motivation to be in good taste. The author who shows as opposed to simply tells relies on the reader’s own imagination to do much of the work for her, and to facilitate filling in the blanks by utilizing the visceral, the sensual, and the objective, to bring the reader as much as possible into her fictional world. Upon reading, a somewhat intimate relationship between the author and her reader forms as both imaginations combine in unison to flesh out an entirely unique story as it is filtered by two entirely unique minds. Every fiction is a fiction of this reality, and not another one, no matter to what extent this reality is distorted to suit it.

Though the use of rigid formulas for creative endeavors can only be a mental straight-jacket, and such principles such as "show, don't tell" should be used with discretion no matter how much a self-proclaimed authority tries to pound it into you, without first understanding such rules one could never hope to properly break them.

However, this cliché has another function besides helping to paint a more rich and sensual fictional world in our own imaginations. I claim it has another, more subtle use as a measure in determining what stories can be applied to reality and what stories cannot.

As an illustration, let us evoke our own imagery of our favorite fiction, God. We are unable to. God possesses no detail and no setting, and only vague terminology could ever hope to conjure any notions in its regard. We can use nothing of reality to describe it. We cannot take any combination of things nor ideas to evoke such a being. It has no immediacy, no power, no shape. It is no longer a question whether such an entity exists in reality, but whether it is even possible to, given that not even the boundless human imagination could evoke it from anywhere else but the fiction it is contained within.

As the history of of theism shows, with such notions, we can only be told and not shown. There is no detail, no metaphor, to help evoke images in our own imaginations, and this is not because such descriptions are poor in form, but that they are poor in reality. What's worse, by attempting to force this fiction in reality, to claim it is not a fiction, the imagination, the evoking spirit, who by utilizing a life's experience to engage in creation, is instead negated and suppressed upon imagining it. No imagery, no depiction, no imagination allowed. Tell, don’t show—the contradiction of a fiction that promulgates a spirit, yet denies it play.

Not until we imagine the work of Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel, or the work of Da Vinci with his Last Supper—true artists, who put together from the stuff of reality, an image, a fiction for our lusting senses—could we ever imagine a relationship with such entities and settings. And to those great authors of the Bibles, who by weaving reality into their story by way of metaphor and allegory, albeit somewhat ironically, gave us realities upon which to imagine, no matter how much they distorted it to suit their creative needs.

And if only we could evoke the imagery of the dear Buddha, the man seated lotus-like in a sort of smug serenity, but when we do, we are only nodding to Greek sculpture and Hellenistic influence, probably inspired by depictions of Apollo. Before the conquests of the Great Alexander, Buddha was never depicted as a man at all.

Our fictional nature is a reality. In other words, we can learn from it. A setting formed in the imagination so as to facilitate a fiction is in direct proportion to the setting experienced in one’s life.

Oh great Irony. Oh Fiction and Language. Through your stubbornness and persistence, through your ever clumsy way of doing things, and by the way man both enslaves and liberates his own imagination, it is you who proves other people exist.

So just a thought what if what we consider as reality is fiction.

a reply to: FormOfTheLord

Consider it how you wish. But we call it reality because that is what we are speaking about when we use that term. Considering it a fiction does not change it, but might change people's treatment of it if they consider it less than real.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

As the history of of theism shows, with such notions, we can only be told and not shown. There is no detail, no metaphor, to help evoke images in our own imaginations, and this is not because such descriptions are poor in form, but that they are poor in reality. What's worse, by attempting to force this fiction in reality, to claim it is not a fiction, the imagination, the evoking spirit, who by utilizing a life's experience to engage in creation, is instead negated and suppressed upon imagining it. No imagery, no depiction, no imagination allowed. Tell, don’t show—the contradiction of a fiction that promulgates a spirit, yet denies it play.

God has no image - it says in the bible to not make images of God because the word 'God' is pointing to emptiness or no thingness.

Not until we imagine the work of Michelangelo on the Sistine Chapel, or the work of Da Vinci with his Last Supper—true artists, who put together from the stuff of reality, an image, a fiction for our lusting senses—could we ever imagine a relationship with such entities and settings. .

Now that an image of God has been drawn next to a man, it appears that you can have a relationship 'with' God - this is the deception. 'Relationship' implies two things. The realization of God is the realization of no separation - hence not two. The realization of God is realizing wholeness.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

God has no image - it says in the bible to not make images of God because the word 'God' is pointing to emptiness or no thingness.

Like I said, vague ideas require vague metaphors to describe it. God points to human vagueness more than it does to “no thingness”. The true mark of fiction.

Now that an image of God has been drawn next to a man, it appears that you can have a relationship 'with' God - this is the deception. 'Relationship' implies two things. The realization of God is the realization of no separation - hence not two. The realization of God is realizing wholeness.

Show don’t tell, itsnowagain. Tell me again how you are also a banana?

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Tell me again how you are also a banana?

There is no banana.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

There is no banana.

How is there no banana?

a reply to: LesMisanthrope
Because there are not two things.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

Because there are not two things.

But there's you and a banana. Two things.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope
A banana is not the experience happening here.

a reply to: Itisnowagain

You would take a bite of one thing, but not another.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope
There are no things - there is just experiencing.
Without experiencing what would there be?

Experiencing gets divided by thought/concepts into 'experienced' and 'experiencer' - duality. There is not two - there is just the one, which is experiencing - experiencing is one - non dual.

Show don’t tell, itsnowagain.

Here is a show but will it be a seeing and hearing?

a reply to: Itisnowagain

There are no things - there is just experiencing.
Without experiencing what would there be?

Experiencing gets divided by thought/concepts into 'experienced' and 'experiencer' - duality. There is not two - there is just the one, which is experiencing - experiencing is one - non dual.

There is no experiencing, itsnowagain. There are only things, an uncountable amount of them—pluralism. This is why you are not a banana.

originally posted by: LesMisanthrope


There is no experiencing, itsnowagain. There are only things, an uncountable amount of them—pluralism. This is why you are not a banana.

That is an individuals perspective of course!

a reply to: Itisnowagain

That is an individuals perspective of course!

Correct. Two things with two different perspectives.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

There is no experiencing, itsnowagain.

Really???
Are you saying that there does not seem to be something being experienced by you the experiencer? Which equals experiencing?

a reply to: Itisnowagain

I see and interact with things, yes. If you wish to call my relationship with other things "experiencing", by all means. But I feel the term experience is too vague and dubious for my liking.

How would you know of existence or question it if you were not experiencing?

a reply to: Itisnowagain

How would you know of existence or question it if you were not experiencing?

What is "experiencing" but my body? These concepts are one and the same.