what is fiction?

Fiction, like all art, is primarily an emotional endeavour, and it succeeds or fails on the basis of its emotional sense.

The past is a canon we are all entangled with. Whether we know it or not, our combined human history is the reference we all share, and it is emotionally complex beyond any corpus of texts imaginable. Of course structural powers and systemic forces matter, of course political systems and expediencies matter, but power is concentrated in individuals, and individuals have emotional histories. 

We all intuitively understand this. Even social scientists — I’m biased, but I’ll say the best social scientists — know the limits of social science. There is a point where institutional, social and economic power ends, and psychological power begins. We know people go against their own incentives and defy external forces for emotional reasons; or they conform when they shouldn’t for emotional reasons; or they do what they should do, but for emotional reasons. Sometimes we do things that are unexplainable. That, too, rends us in some manner — we want to be explainable, but we all know we aren’t. That’s what it means to be lonely. We don’t have to like it, in fact we mostly hate it, but on some level we can’t escape it. Our primary experience of ourselves is emotional. The more logical you think you are, the more chillingly true that is. 

Notes: if you know the source, just let me know.