I like to try something different this week. Usually I rant on some subject of the personal
interest. After I voice my opinion on
the subject I want to discuss this week I will provide some sources for readers
to check. Hopefully this will initiate some
responses from readers, so I might get new ideas and perspectives on this
subject. The subject in question is the
importance of fiction to the human development.
In classical understanding you might take fiction as literally works of
any genre not classified as non-fiction, but I like to include in this also
games, movies, etc.
From what
I perceived in our society based on how funding is distributed to preserve what
we value, fiction tends to be classified as an entertainment. By this implication it has little value if
any value at all. My argument is that
fiction is vital to the development of humans as social creatures, not only as children
but throughout our lives. Outside of the
entrainment value of the fiction (and remember I am using this term very
broadly), I believe that fiction allows us to develop our values and moral
understanding of the world. Now I will not
argue that some people tend to learn less, but like anything else learning experience
is very personal in its nature.
If we value
fiction’s importance to the human society, then how come we discount it in our
everyday lives? I will argue that the
problem is that our society is so materialistically driven that anything which
does not immediately equate to dollar value we tend to take for granted. Outside of distribution of the entrainment, fiction
tends to be devalued or at least ignored by a larger portion of the population. In reality no one is immune from pursuing
some type of entrainment, even if only occasionally.
Some of
sources of study on this subject I found can be followed in following links:
Now obviously this is just a short list, and some of you
might have a lot more interesting sources on this subject. I ask you then to share those sources and
your thoughts here if possible on this subject.
The question is: do you think fiction is of a lesser importance? And bringing it to subjects of librarians and
libraries some of the discussion showed how libraries nowadays create business
centers which focus on helping people develop business. Considering that libraries now focus on
helping communities in areas of interests like that, what about creation of the
entertainment centers which would focus on more ambiguous development of the human
nature?
No comments:
Post a Comment