Moved by Fiction

I believe the best explanation for our capacity to be moved by fiction is a Darwinian one. Walton provided a brief reference to this in Footnote 15 (p. 271). It has been well documented that young (and often mature) mammals play using objects or living creatures within their environment in representational acts. They manipulate themselves and others within their environment in ways that appear to simulate future potential experiences. The response to the imagined prey or predator is characteristically similar in nature to what their normal response would be if the situation were real. Engaging in fiction allows mobile and/or social beings the opportunity to practice and hone critical life skills in a safe environment, where errors of timing, nature of response, perception, and choice, are not fatal. The capacity to empathize with others is necessary for the formation and maintenance of healthy relationships between intelligent, sentient, social beings. From an evolutionary perspective, social skills are survival skills. Empathizing with fictional characters is a normal emotional and physiological response for intelligent, sentient, social beings.

Physiologically, we absorb virtual images from visual mediums. We construct virtual images from descriptive verbal and written communications. The more elaborate our constructions, or the sensory intensity and completeness of virtual mediums, the more intensely we experience and respond to them as if they were real in the physical sense. In this way, like other young mammals, we are playing within a range of “possible” albeit improbable encounters of objects or others within our environment. This fictional play can be preparatory in nature, an exercise in imagination, a safe opportunity to express emotion, or simply the enjoyment intelligent creatures find in playful activities.

The neurochemical pathways in the brain are the same for an image experienced in reality or one seen, or inferred from, within a virtual 3-D world. The virtual world is alive and real in some of the pathways of our minds. Our emotional and psychological responses parallel those that we would experience if the virtual images and inferences were a physical component of our existence. Our mind blurs the boundaries between the physical images perceived and the virtual images constructed in response to that which we are/have experienced. The greater the degree of submersion in the virtual imagery and our inferences, the more intensely our mind and body will respond to the experience as if it were physical.

My Questions:

1. Does your body suffer from exposure to traumatic fiction?

2. Does your body suffer from exposure to traumatic non-fiction?

3. What is gained from exposure to virtual fictional wanton violence?

4. What is lost from exposure to virtual fictional wanton violence?

5. Do the gains from exposure to virtual traumatic non-fiction outweigh the losses from
that exposure?