What literature and movies teach us

Imaginative fiction has two basic modes. One is to look at the past and interpret or reinvent it. The other is to speculate, to make up possibilities. If you follow the history of literature and the movies you will see clearly that much of what first appears in the imagination of authors eventually becomes reality.

One could be forgiven for thinking that is because entrepreneurs always recognize a good thing when they see it, or read it. But the phenomena is much greater than that. Much of what appears in literature eventually appears in the apparent 'real' world in some form or another without any obvious connection between invention and manifestation. For instance, one would often think that professional criminals busy themselves watching movies and reading books in order to get their ideas. Usually they don't, although probably there are some who do. And it is amazing how often science fiction, called speculation fiction in the old days, could be more rightly called predicative fiction.

But the people who write this stuff are not by trade the same group who eventually bring it all into being. That happens more organically than that. It happens because the writers imagined something, and replicated the imagining by getting a whole lot of people to read, view and talk about what they conceived of or retrieved from the soup of possibilities out there.

In other words, it was dreamt into being.

This fact should clue us into the fact that the American obsession with murder and mayhem in their movies and in their literature, is in fact partially at fault for the absurd pre-occupation with personal armament, the mass murder that seems to happen at an increasing rate, and the endless wars America becomes embroiled in.

The imaginal world of night and day dreaming, and the fact of replication resulting in real world phenomena is obvious to anyone who studies it. Perhaps we should learn how to use our speculative powers in more productive ways, more often. The facts of American culture clearly show that our dreaming is diseased.

Fortunately, this is easy to change. Refuse to consume the excessive violence, and do consume more interesting, hopeful forms of speculative fiction, or that which is instructive. There's lots of it around.

For instance, there is a Canadian police drama called FlashPoint about a strategic response team in Toronto. It is as well written and as dramatic and suspenseful as any police action flick out there on T.V. However, hardly anyone ever gets killed. When it played in the United States it was very popular. But when it got out that the show is a Canadian production the network pulled it and replaced it with an American version, full of....well....you know what.

One day as a civilization we will all realize the power of imaginative speculation and change our habits. Until that day comes, and those who profit so hugely by peddling the American obsession with guns and violence are finely ousted from power, it is up to individuals to choose, and choose what to replicate in the world.