What is Literature for?

Summary

This script explores the profound impact of literature on our lives, positing it as a 'reality simulator' that offers invaluable emotional and experiential insights. It argues literature as a time-saver, allowing us to safely navigate a vast array of human experiences and emotions, fostering empathy, and broadening our perspectives. The narrative highlights literature's ability to challenge dominant values, providing a mirror to our inner selves and serving as a non-judgmental friend. Ultimately, it positions literature as a therapeutic tool for understanding life's complexities and cultivating wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

Takeaways

• 📚 Literature is a time-saver, offering experiences that would otherwise take lifetimes to encounter.
• 🌐 It acts as a 'reality simulator', allowing us to safely experience a wide range of emotions and events.
• 🔑 Literature provides a window into diverse lives, from historical figures to contemporary characters, broadening our perspective.
• 🌏 It helps cure provincialism, virtually transporting us across continents and centuries, fostering global citizenship.
• 🤝 It teaches empathy by showing us the world from different points of view, enhancing our understanding of others.
• 💡 Literature often challenges dominant value systems, advocating for ideas and feelings that may be overlooked in a commercialized world.
• 🗣️ Books offer a space for authentic self-expression, often more honest than everyday conversations.
• 💖 Great writers can articulate our innermost feelings and experiences, making us feel known and understood.
• 🗺️ Literature provides a map to our inner selves, aiding self-discovery and introspection.
• 👥 It serves as a corrective to superficial relationships, offering the companionship and truth that friends might not.
• 🚫 Literature often explores themes of failure, providing a more nuanced view than media portrayals, evoking empathy and self-awareness.
• 💊 The script suggests treating literature as therapy, prescribing it for various life challenges and emotional states.
• 🏆 Literature is valued for its ability to enhance our lives with wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

Q & A

What is the primary argument presented in the script about the value of literature?

The script argues that literature is a time-saver that provides access to a wide range of emotions and experiences, acting as a 'reality simulator' and offering insights into different lives and perspectives.

How does literature help us understand complex emotions and situations?

Literature allows us to safely experience complex emotions and situations like divorce, remorse, or making significant life decisions, which would otherwise take years or even lifetimes to experience directly.

What role does literature play in broadening our worldview?

Literature cures us of provincialism by introducing us to people from different cultures, times, and places, turning us into 'citizens of the world' at almost no cost.

How does literature enable us to see the world from different perspectives?

Literature performs the magic of showing us what things look like from someone else's point of view, allowing us to consider the consequences of our actions on others.

In what way does literature challenge the dominant value system?

Literature often stands opposed to the dominant value system that rewards money and power, instead making us sympathetic to deep, important ideas and feelings that may not receive attention in a commercialized world.

Why does the script suggest that literature can be more than just entertainment?

The script suggests that literature is more than entertainment because it serves as a form of therapy, helping us to understand ourselves and others better, and providing wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

How does literature help us to better understand ourselves?

Literature provides descriptions of our inner lives and experiences with an honesty that ordinary conversation does not allow, often making us feel known better than we know ourselves.

What does the script say about the portrayal of failure in literature compared to the media?

The script notes that while the media often harshly judges and sensationalizes failure, literature tends to evoke pity and fear, showing a more nuanced understanding of how close we all are to making mistakes.

How should we treat literature according to the script's perspective?

The script suggests that we should treat literature as a form of therapy, prescribing it in response to various emotional and psychological needs, rather than just as a distraction or entertainment.

What is the ultimate value of literature as presented in the script?

The ultimate value of literature, as presented in the script, is its ability to help us live and die with more wisdom, goodness, and sanity by providing deep insights into the human experience.

Why does the script refer to literature as a 'reality simulator'?

The script refers to literature as a 'reality simulator' because it allows us to experience a vast array of situations and emotions that we could not encounter in our own lives, thus expanding our understanding and empathy.

Outlines

00:00

📚 The Value of Literature

This paragraph explores the purpose and benefits of literature, questioning why we should spend time reading when significant events occur in the world. It argues that literature is a 'reality simulator' that allows us to experience a wide range of emotions and events in a safe environment. By reading, we can accelerate time and gain insights into different lives, fostering empathy and understanding of diverse perspectives. Literature is presented as a tool for personal growth, a way to challenge dominant value systems, and a source of honest reflection on our inner lives.

Keywords

💡Literature

Literature refers to written works, especially those considered of superior or lasting artistic merit, including novels, poems, and plays. In the video, literature is portrayed as a profound tool for personal growth and understanding, offering a wide range of experiences and emotions that would be difficult to encounter in real life.

💡Reality Simulator

The term 'reality simulator' is used metaphorically to describe literature's ability to place readers in a variety of situations and emotions as if they were real. It emphasizes how literature can simulate life's complexities and diverse experiences, allowing readers to safely explore and learn from them.

💡Emotions

Emotions are the feelings that literature can evoke in readers, such as empathy, sadness, joy, or fear. The script mentions that literature provides access to a range of emotions that would take years to experience directly, highlighting the emotional depth and breadth that literature can offer.

💡Citizens of the World

Becoming 'citizens of the world' in the context of the video means gaining a broader perspective and understanding of different cultures, histories, and people through literature. It suggests that literature can transcend geographical and temporal boundaries, fostering a sense of global belonging.

💡Point of View

The concept of 'point of view' is central to literature, as it allows readers to see the world from different perspectives. The video script discusses how literature can show us what things look like from someone else's perspective, enhancing empathy and understanding of diverse experiences.

💡Consequences

In the video, 'consequences' relate to the outcomes of actions depicted in literature, which can help readers consider the impact of their own actions on others. It suggests that literature can provide a deeper understanding of cause and effect in human interactions.

💡Dominant Value System

The 'dominant value system' refers to the prevailing societal values that often prioritize money and power. The script contrasts this with literature, which typically challenges these values and encourages readers to sympathize with ideas and feelings of deep importance that may be overlooked in a commercialized world.

💡Honesty

Honesty in literature is the truthful representation of human experiences and emotions. The video script notes that books can provide an honesty that is different from everyday conversation, offering readers a more authentic and unfiltered look into the complexities of life.

💡Inner Lives

The term 'inner lives' pertains to the personal, often unspoken thoughts and feelings of individuals. The video emphasizes how literature can articulate the delicate and unique experiences of one's inner life, giving voice to emotions and sensations that might otherwise remain unexpressed.

💡Friendship

In the context of the video, 'friendship' is discussed as a corrective to superficial relationships. Books are described as true friends that are always available and provide honest accounts of life's realities, offering a depth of connection that may be lacking in everyday friendships.

💡Failure

Failure is a common theme in literature, as the video script points out. It discusses how literature often explores the stories of people who have made mistakes or faced setbacks, offering a more nuanced and empathetic view of failure compared to the often harsh judgments of the media.

💡Therapy

The term 'therapy' in the video is used to describe literature's ability to provide emotional and psychological healing. It suggests that literature can serve as a form of therapy, helping readers to process emotions, understand life's challenges, and find solace in the shared human experience.

💡Wisdom

Wisdom in the video is presented as one of the key outcomes of engaging with literature. It implies that through reading, one can gain a deeper understanding of life, enhancing their ability to navigate it with greater insight and judgment.

Highlights

Literature provides access to a wide range of emotions and experiences that would take years to experience directly.

Literature acts as a 'reality simulator', allowing us to safely experience various life situations.

Reading literature can speed up time, showing the progression of a life from childhood to old age.

Literature introduces us to fascinating characters from different times and places, broadening our worldview.

Reading helps cure provincialism and turns us into global citizens at a low cost.

Literature enables us to see the world from different perspectives, fostering empathy and understanding.

Books often oppose the dominant value system that rewards money and power, promoting deeper values.

Literature allows us to explore our true selves and the honest descriptions of our inner lives.

Great writers can articulate our own thoughts and feelings better than we can ourselves.

Books are true friends that provide unvarnished accounts of reality, unlike superficial friendships.

Literature often explores themes of failure, offering a more nuanced view than the judgmental media.

Reading about failures in literature evokes empathy and fear, reminding us of our own vulnerability.

We should treat literature as therapy, prescribing it for various emotional and psychological needs.

Literature's prestige comes from its ability to help us live and die with more wisdom, goodness, and sanity.

Literature provides a corrective to the superficiality and compromises often found in social interactions.

Reading literature can be a time-saver, offering more experiences than we could have in a lifetime.

Literature can make us more sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are undervalued in a commercialized world.

Transcripts

We have a general sense that these sort of places

are filled with things that are deeply important, but what exactly is literature good for?

Why should we spend our time reading novels or poems

when out there, big things are going on.

Let’s have a think about some of the ways literature benefits us..

Of course, it looks like it’s wasting time, but literature is ultimately the greatest

time-saver, for it gives us access to a range of emotions and events that it would take you

years, decades, millenia to try to experience directly.

Literature is the greatest ‘reality simulator’, a machine that puts you through infinitely

more situations than you could ever directly witness.

It lets you - safely: that's crucial - see what it’s like to get divorced.

Or kill someone and feel remorseful. Or chuck in your job and take off to the desert.

Or make a terrible mistake while leading your country.

It lets you speed up time: in order to see the arc of a life from childhood

to old age

It gives you the keys to the palace, and to countless bedrooms,

so you can assess your life in relation to that of others.

It introduces you to fascinating people: a Roman general, an 11th century French princess,

a Russian upper class mother just embarking on an affair...

It takes you across continents

and centuries

Literature cures you of provincialism and, at almost no cost, turns us into citizens of the world.

Literature performs the basic magic of showing us what things look like from someone else’s

---

point of view.

It allows us to consider the consequences of our actions on others in a way we otherwise wouldn’t.

And it shows us examples of kindly, generous, sympathetic people

Literature typically stands opposed to the dominant value system, the one that rewards

money and power.

Writers are on the other side, they make us sympathetic to ideas and feelings that are

of deep importance but that can’t afford airtime in a commercialised, status-conscious

and cynical world.

We are weirder than we’re allowed to admit.

We often can’t say what's really on our minds.

But in books, we find descriptions of who we genuinely are and what events are actually like,

described with an honesty quite different from what ordinary conversation allows for.

In the best books it’s as if the writer knows us better than we know ourselves.

They find the words to describe the fragile, weird, special experiences of our inner lives:

- the light on a summer morning - the anxiety we felt at the gathering

- the sensations of a first kiss - the envy when a friend told us of their new business

- the longing we experienced on the train,

looking at the profile of another passenger we never dare to speak to

Writers open our hearts and minds - and give us maps to our own selves so that we can travel

in them more reliably and with less of a feeling of paranoia and persecution.

As the writer Emerson remarked: ‘In the works of great writers, we find our own neglected thoughts.’

Literature is a corrective to the superficiality and compromises of friendship.

Books are our true friends, always to hand, never too busy, giving us unvarnished accounts

of what things are really like.

All of our lives, one of our greatest fears is of failing, of messing up… of becoming,

as the tabloids put it, a ‘LOSER’.

Every day, the media takes us into stories of failure

Interestingly, a lot of literature is also about failure. In one way or another, a great

many novels, plays and poems are about people who’ve messed up, people...

...who slept with mum by mistake

... who let down their partner

... or who died after running up some debts on shopping sprees.

If the media got to them, they’d make mincemeat out of them.

But great books don’t judge as harshly or as one-dimensionally as the media.

They evoke pity for the hero and fear for ourselves based on a new sense of how near we all are to destroying our own lives.

But if literature can really do all these things, we might need to treat it a bit differently to the way we do now.

We tend to treat it as a distraction, an entertainment (something for the beach).

But it’s far more than that, it’s really therapy, in the broad sense.

We should learn to treat it as doctors treat their medicines, something we prescribe in

response to a range of ailments and classify according to the problems it might be best

suited to addressing.

Literature deserves its prestige for one reason above all others: because it’s a tool to

help us live and die with a little more wisdom, goodness and sanity.