This is sad. Are people really so very afraid of what it is to be human, to imagine, to experience complicated longing. It is different than acting on it, that is the whole point, to recognize all that goes into being human and to be at times messed up, to understand what internal forces are at work, and to then choose to act in a way that reflectes your actual values. Psychoanalysis talks about “the return of the repressed” - if you are always afraid of yourself and repressing so much, you will be even more likely to act out in some way at some point.
I have no double that this era of purity culture has had a hand in recent bouts of anti intellectualism. So many people will only interact with something that they can fully align their morality with, ignoring the fact that fiction imparts lessons onto is that can affect or change our own understanding of morals.
Facsim doesn’t want to test your morals, it wants to tell you what your morals are and stick to them.
You cannot tell an anti-war story without depicting war, you cannot tell a story about equality without first depicting inequality. But now that people aren’t interacting with moral challenging media they cannot tell the difference between a story deconstructing a social problem vs a story promoting a social problem. Which leads to people becoming susceptible to propaganda.
Of course there are stories that depict gratuitous, uncritical, unhealthy themes, but you will not know that unless you read it. One of my least favourite books of all time due to its racism and misogyny is also one of my favourite books to deconstruct and analyze, I could go for hours about how so many of the harmful themes go over people’s heads under the guise of ‘pro mental health’, but I would not have be able to have that conversation unless I had read the book.
(via salmonking)
