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GROUND_FLOOR

                                             March 31, 2021
                                             April 21, 2022
                                             May   11, 2022

This is a story I've told before,
but let me try again:

   Fiction is often spoken of as an inferior, minor art-form--
   mere "entertainment", "escape", "relaxation"...

   I would argue that fiction/stories/narrative are actually
   at the core of our existence: they're the main way we:

      o  view the world
      o  organize our experience
      o  record and communicate what
         little wisdom we can achieve.



Fiction is often held up in opposition to "reality",
but there are always connections between the fictional
and the real... though the connections aren't usually very tight.

You sometimes see people suggest that fiction can be 
a guide to living, a rehersal for reality, but it's 
rarely that simple.  It's well understood that 
stories contain exaggerations and fantasies, they often 
intentionally deviate from the real usually in a 
way that can't be termed a "lie" because everyone 
is expected to know it's "just a story".

There is however something profoundly strange about the
insistence that we should learn to live without stories, 
to overcome our need for them.  


I propose instead that we need to explore what our stories
can do for us, to use our stories to explore what kind of
people we can be...

  We need to develop a fiction worthy of what we are,
  We need to become something worthy of our stories.




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