In chapter X of "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding", John Locke gives several instances of how words are abused. He states "He that imagined to himself substances such as never have been, and filled his head with ideas which have not any correspondence with the real nature of things, to which yet he settled and defined names, may fill his discourse, and perhaps another man's head, with fantastical imaginations of his own brain, but will be very far from advancing thereby one jot in real and true knowledge.(826)" When I read this, I instantly read it as an attack on fictional writing. I would have to argue with Locke on this idea.
I think that there is just as much knowledge to be gained from reading works of fiction as there is from reading non-fiction. While J.R.R Tolkien has stated many times that Lord of the Rings was not written as an allegory to any real world political situation, the fantastical story can be analyzed in a multitude of ways that show the benefits of different races (humans,elves, hobbits, dwarfs) coming together to fight evil forces in the world. Or Brave New World, which can be read as a warning about the dangers of mass production, and genetic engineering. Both of these works of fiction, while entertaining, offer ideas about how the real world could be advanced, for better or for worse. Locke's theory of knowledge seems to say that through our sensory perceptions of reality, we reflect on the external input to form ideas. I think an argument could be made that because fiction is an idea produced from someones mind, it exists as knowledge because the author himself produced the ideas based of of sensory stimuli. The even deeper question would be whether the fiction could constitute reality itself upon creation, which is an idea i gleaned from the end of Micheal Hanneke's Funny Games. Here is the clip if your interested (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i4U7l91kBe8).
Anyway I may be misinterpretting Locke's ideas here, but i'm sure he expected that to happen.
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I love watching reality TV, and I love my imagination. I don't want reality TV to abuse it! However, I'm still not convinced that it is...
You're interpreting Locke's words as an attack on fictional writing. I think I see how you've come to that conclusion. I've never read Tolkien, so I'll use Harry Potter as an example. I think Locke is saying that if somebody reads Harry Potter as if they're reading the newspaper, and if that somebody really has no social interaction outside of reading Harry Potter, then his reality is severly skewed. When this person talks to others, he is using a slightly different vocabulary. He may call us "muggles" instead of people. Other readers/watchers of Harry Potter may know what he's referencing, and other non-knowers may figure out what he means through context, but it would be a confusing conversation.
On the other hand using literature as reference points is a great tool. I think you were pointing this out by saying that works of fiction can "offer ideas about how the real world can be advanced". I think we try to make sense of fiction through our knowledge of the real world and how it functions. We don't submerge ourselves so deeply in fiction that it is our basis for knowledge, thus applying ourselves in the real world as a fictional work would delegate. I don't avidly hate Slytherin, because I want to be a brave Griffindor. I must admit that there are people like this! Perhaps those are the people that Locke was talking about. These people know magic spells by heart and wear cloaks and have only recently been able to say the word "Voldemort" (but they may shutter in doing so). Their imagination has taken them too far from reality, thus their ability to communicate with someone from the real world would not be such a clear communication.
And talking about the real world, I'd like to bring this blog back to reality TV. Are you saying reality TV is reality? I'm not so sure I agree with that, but the majority of it is real. There are real places and real people, but some events or situations that people are put in are not so common/natural. Furthermore, I don't know many people that watch the same reality TV shows that I do, which makes it impossible to talk to someone about events that happen on those shows if they don't watch it. However, I can talk about relatable things that I see on the show. I can talk about some cute shoes that one of the girls was wearing, or I can talk about parts of San Diego based on what I saw on the reality show.
I guess I'm not quite sure how you were trying to tie in reality TV to your conversation about Locke attacking fiction. To me, reality TV is a non-fiction canvas that has fictionalized elements. I think some hinderance to one's imagination may come from believing that reality TV is reality, but I don't know if that would abuse someone's imagination. Instead I would hope that it would open up one's imagination.
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