Poets

Three years ago, I used to think that, similarly to Plato, I had an argument against the poets, or rather, against fiction in general.

The basic idea was that fiction is not limited to what has happened in the real world, and therefore contains distortions. So, if someone spent a large proportion of his time reading fiction, the distortions would probably begin to affect his expectations about reality, and he would become a less reasonable person. This would be worse, I reasoned, with more poorly-written fiction, since it would probably be more distorted than well-written fiction.

I actually still believe this argument, but I no longer think that it suffices to recommend that people not read fiction. The reason is that I have come to believe that works of history and science are not faithful representations of the world either, and they are just as likely to mislead someone. So it makes no sense to avoid fiction exclusively. And since nowadays, it is more or less impossible to live without news, history, scientific reporting, and so on, it makes no difference to read fiction too.

I noticed then that it is ridiculous when some people constantly compared real events to events in Harry Potter. But now I also notice that it is no worse to have one’s worldview shaped by certain news outlets.