I think Gottschall is trying to say that humanity as a whole desire drama and gossip and other things of this nature. I don't really agree with him on that but, he does make several strong arguments. Fiction, does always seem to be full of drama and trouble. I would like to think of it from a different perspective than Gottschall. We create trouble and drama in our minds because ultimately people like to be the hero and the problem solver. We make up problems just so that we can solve them.
He refers to fairytales and the sadness and drama that is involved with seemingly every single story. But, that is where he ends. As the story continues to unfold there is usually a great message of perserverance and overcoming overwhelming odds. When I was a child, I can remember creating wonderful adventures in my mind that my friends and I would go on. Every one ended with someone saving another or a victory of some sort.
There is no denying that people are completely fascinated with gossip, sex, and scary dramas. I wish there were other ways of knowing happiness and peace other than feeling dissapointment and heartache. Without the bad we would not understand the good. This is what I hope the authors of the fairytales and stories for young children were thinking anyway.
Lou recognizes a crucial question to follow up Gottschall reading for this week: why the heroic endings to these scary stories children tell? If we are simulating threatening life experiences as a kind of practice play, do we even as children have some kind of instinctive "visualization" strategy to help us gain confidence? And why wouldn't confidence itself just be fantasy?
ReplyDeleteI think that when you say "Without the bad we would not understand the good" you are bringing up a key point with modern day stories. Unfortunately that is not what the original fairytale authors were trying to portray.
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