Real people are messier in some ways than the fictional - its takes weeks and months and years for the story line to happen to them instead of hours - unless its a Robert Jordan character, in which case reading it its takes weeks and months and years for the story line to happen - so we get worked up about it much more deeply becasue the intensity is higher.
Oscar Wilde also thought that theater was a way to exorcise compassion rather than exercising it. I wonder what other ideas he had in common with Augustine?
People read fiction because it is entertaining. In the same way that a cult survives not because it is a social good but because it exists to perpetuate itself, fiction succeeds not by improving people's lives but by compelling people to keep reading.
It is becoming more evident to me that to a large degree, people choose their activities and friends and lovers not because they are productive or virtuous, but simply because they are entertaining.
Oh, I dunno. In moments of honest self-examination, I recognize that I have made choices about which potential partners I wanted to invest time in, based partly on how productive the person was (in terms of present and future income, and less quantifiable factors like how well they contribute to the upkeep of a household). Another factor is the question of whether they're sufficiently healthy and functional human beings to make a good parent at some time in the future.
But it you may be right that the dominant factor is simply how well they help to pass the time. *g*
What I don't understand is my recent taste in fiction. My desire to read fiction has mostly left, but Tolkien still gets to me. Yet Tolkien is very stylized, very unreal.
Why is it that I'm so touched by the image of the wind mingling Faramir's dark hair with Eowyn's golden hair?
Why did I cry when I last read the death of the imaginary Theoden King, but shed not a tear for my grandmother, whom I loved, until I saw her grave?
Am I broken, I wonder? Or is it the very unrealness that makes me free to feel? I don't understand.
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I have the same problem.
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It is becoming more evident to me that to a large degree, people choose their activities and friends and lovers not because they are productive or virtuous, but simply because they are entertaining.
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But it you may be right that the dominant factor is simply how well they help to pass the time. *g*
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Why is it that I'm so touched by the image of the wind mingling Faramir's dark hair with Eowyn's golden hair?
Why did I cry when I last read the death of the imaginary Theoden King, but shed not a tear for my grandmother, whom I loved, until I saw her grave?
Am I broken, I wonder? Or is it the very unrealness that makes me free to feel? I don't understand.
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Who listens to what music?
I Love songs Justin Timberlake and Paris Hilton
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