It's Monday 4th January 2016 so I am going to assume that we are all comfortable talking about Star Wars plot revelations. No? Well, bare with me and we can both contribute to the greater understanding of human behaviour[1].
'There is another,' Yoda's words to Obi-wan in Empire Strikes Back (Irvin Kershner, 1980)[2] are a sound logical start. Otherness, in the shape of the unknown or different, provides the foundation for examining the human condition in its messy, all-too-human glory. We are not known to each other in the way each other knows themselves. Luke's sister is unknown, Luke's father is unknown, Luke is unknown to himself.
It is only through resolving our conflict with the Other that we can progress, narratively speaking. Acceptance leads to progression, continuing the conflict with the Other can only be reactionary and keep the status quo. The status quo can be very comforting, free from conflict of conscious or thought, where as progression is hard.
Fiction, along with art and music, can offer ways to resolve the conflict over human behaviour. The creator can try to express that deep message from within that states who they are, where they are coming from, and why they are here. It is not easy, and certainly open to misunderstanding and miscontextualisation, but progress is hard, progression is never meant to be anything other than difficult.
Through this difficulty comes a second conflict, a conflict of confidence. Am I doing the right thing? Ray Bradbury expresses this conflict through Captain Beatty in Fahrenheit 451: "Where's your common sense? None of those books agree with each other[3]." What can we do other than burn when no one can agree? Beatty is an exaggeration of the conflict 'ignorance is bliss when knowledge is confusing.'
Yet is it that confusing? Beatty's description of the problem, a lack of 'common sense,' could be seen as a lack of critical thinking. Humans are hardwired to evaluate their surroundings, to process their environment and deal with it accordingly. Picking between two different berries, one poisonous and one not, is not a thousand miles different from picking between two different theories; one selects the berries and literary theories based on their experience and perspective[4].
Experience and perspective can have a large contribution to how humans interact, and reading fiction contributes to gaining the unacquirable experience and perspective. David Commer Kidd and Emanuele Castano examined how literary fiction led to better performance on tests of affective Theory of Mind and cognitive Theory of Mind. Theory of Mind being the skill that enables humans to 'understand others' mental states' allowing for complex social relationships[5].
There is still that difficulty in acquiring the knowledge though there is a palpable gain in experience, therefore a palpable benefit in how humans interact. By using this knowledge, by resolving some of the conflict one has with the Other, one can move towards a state of unotherness. It is not possible to know everything about the Other, it is only possible to know enough to allow for social interaction, and one has to accept and tolerate this new conflict. By ignoring the process of gaining this knowledge one becomes reactionary, fighting to keep the status quo rather than progress. As J.B. Priestley notes in English Journey[6]: "[The world is more provincial now]. It must be when there is less and less tolerance in it, less free speech, less liberalism. Behind all the new movements of this age, nationalistic, fascistic, communistic, has been more than a suspicion of the mental attitude of a gang of small town louts ready to throw a brick at the nearest stranger."
The small town lout is not a reader. The small town lout clings to the small amount of knowledge and experience they have that allows them to resist the other. The small town lout can appear to have a lot of knowledge though underneath the surface, underneath the fair words, there is the foul feeling of reactionary thoughts at play. The small town lout lacks confidence to allow complex social relationships.
Which is a shame, when one thinks about it.
Notes and References
1 - Bjork (Human Behaviour, One Little Indian, 1993) provides a very good guide on the anthropological study of humans, and what to do if one should get too close.
2 - Keep up, dear Reader, did you all think I'd reveal plot details for The Force Awakens? I mean, it's pretty difficult keeping Elo Asty's death a secret. Oh crap, did I just say Elo Asty dies. Oh crap, did I just swear again. Crap.
And yes, that joke was brought to you via Love Actually (Richard Curtis, 2003).
3 - p43, Grafton Books, 1987.
4 - "Johnny, have you been eating poisonous post-modernist structural berries again?, you know what happened last time, you where sick for a week and threw-up a version of Hamlet your stomach had been working on."
5 - Comer Kidd, David, and Castano, Emanuele. "Reading Literary Fiction Improves Theory of Mind." Science Vol. 342 no. 6156 (2013): pp. 377-380
6 - p155-p156, Penguin Books, 1981.
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