The (un)Real Consequence of Fiction

Lord Byron: Truth is always strange; stranger than fiction.
Mark Twain : Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities, truth isn't.

Tom Clancy: The difference between reality and fiction? Fiction has to make sense.

Fiction is a synthative writing style that combines scenarios that could  happen into a narrative that expresses the way that things do happen.  I use the word could loosely, and in a way that is possibly in line with Wittgenstein.  Many times in fiction, especially in fantasy, the events/characters described only could happen/exist because there is a language available to describe them.  For example, it is quite easy to describe verbally and pictorially the Cheshire Cat from "Alice in Wonderland".  We have the words/images for cat, talking and appear/disappear, all we have to do is put them together in a logical/functional manner (as far as the specific language requires), and our minds can imagine the being to exist.

But the being or scenario in fiction must have a reason for existing (in the narrative.)  In fiction, every character, scene, and action is aimed towards the goal of the narrative, whatever that goal may be.  In fiction, everything has a purpose.

The question to be asked is whether or not our minds actually know the difference between fictional sensibility and real sensibility?  I argue that we cannot fully differentiate.

[Obviously, what is to follow could use some kind of validation, scientific or otherwise, but bear with me.]

I think that we have evolved as pattern recognizing beings.  It is to our advantage to take note of patterns, and use them to predict the most likely future scenarios.  For example, this process makes finding food easier, esp. when you think of agriculture as a capitalization on a recognizable pattern.  Recognizing and capitalizing on pattern is the process of finding/creating order.

In general, this pattern recognition is the basis for what we commonly call logic.  If this, then that.  It leads to the (often fallible) belief that there is a cause and effect relationship between time ordered events.  When one event repeatedly follows another event, we assume there is causality (of course there is really only correlation, but it works for the most part.)  By and large, those things that do not stick to this understanding are either rejected as anomalies or heralded as miracles.  In both cases, those who do not witness such outlying data personally often remain skeptical.

Where things regularly follow a pattern, we often create a dualistic pairing, and give the latter event as the meaning of its predecessor.  This is often the source of the meaning of words.  For example, death always follows life, so death is defined as what happens after one has lived.  (No one ever says they were dead before they were born.) Further, the reason or purpose of death is given in terms of life.  In fictional accounts (myths), there is another life achieved through death.

Back to making a point (thus proving this writing is fictional.)  In lived experience for normal functioning people, what follows does not always make logical sense to what precedes.  Where it makes perfect logical sense to plant during the spring in order to harvest in the fall, it does not make sense that one be clothed on a beautiful 78 degree day.  Of course, we can begin a series of "why/because" explanations for illogical happenings, but we often find ourselves at aporias or absurdities. 

Our ability to recognize pattern essentially forces us to create fictions where there is a lack of apparent order.  Simultaneously, the clockwork functioning of fiction [yes, I am implying that clockwork as analogy of time is a fiction] reinforces our inherent desire for order/causality.  Normal people, on some level, partially accept this paradox, although it causes us to struggle with our purpose, with what to do next and why.  We feel decentered and fractured in our search for meaning.  We accept, knowingly or not, that we create fictions as an evolutionary coping mechanism required for survival. When this mechanisms goes awry, or gets out of hand, it is called schizophrenia.  In it's essence, schizophrenia is a psychological disorder where everything makes sense, but only to the one for whom the sense is made - the (internal) narrative is completely fictionalized.

But perhaps schizophrenia is a unifying structure.  Perhaps, to one who is engulfed in fiction, there is nothing that does not make sense, and the purpose is clear.  Perhaps it is an Enlightening experience. For the rest of us, whose majority forms the 'real' reality, the schizophrenic's experience seems to be one of torment, and his/her understood purpose is often tragic.

In the end, we must question who (or what institutions) seek schizophrenia. Religion? Science? Mathematics? Art?