Sunday's New York Times Magazine carries an essay by D.T. Max on literary Darwinism, the use of evolutionary psychology to analyze the behavior of characters in literature. Near the end, it takes a moment to ask, "What can the purpose of literature be, assuming it is not just a harmless oddity?" Some possibilities:
One idea is that literature is a defense reaction to the expansion of our mental life that took place as we began to acquire the basics of higher intelligence around 40,000 years ago. At that time, the world suddenly appeared to homo sapiens in all its frightening complexity. But by taking imaginative but orderly voyages within our minds, we gained the confidence to interpret this new vastly denser reality. Another theory is that reading literature is a form of fitness training, an exercise in "what if" thinking. If you could imagine the battle between the Greeks and the Trojans, then if you ever found yourself in a street fight, you would have a better chance of winning. A third theory sees writing as a sex-display trait. Certainly writers often seem to be preening when they write, with an eye toward attracting a desirable mate.
They've nailed it. I read for the fisticuffs and I write for the females.
The list goes on, but option number two ("fitness training") reminds me of some research on dreaming I read about a few years ago by a Finnish scientist named Antti Revonsuo. One of his abstracts concludes:
Our results are consistent with the predictions of the Threat Simulation Theory: dreaming may have served as a mechanism for the simulation of threatening events and threat avoidance in human evolutionary history...
My dreams have prepared me well for battle. If I'm ever put in a situation where I need to rescue Bjork from a giant robotic turducken, I will be ALL SET.
For decades neuroscientists have debated the purpose of dreaming (most now think it strengthens memories—in an elegant study in 2001, Matthew Wilson at MIT showed that during REM, the hippocampi in rats replayed the precise neural firing patterns that took place when they ran through a maze earlier that day) but last month researchers published a paper in Neurology that bolsters the threat simulation theory. They highlight a disorder called REM Sleep Behavior Disorder (RBD), in which patients have more violent dreams than usual and also tend to act out their dreams. (These patients probably have a hyperactive brain stem, which is connected to dreaming and also movement.) According to the paper, sufferers often dream they're being attacked and have been known to try to jump out windows, fire guns, light their beds on fire, and choke their wives. And yet they're not violent in real life.
I don't think I have the disease (it affects less than 1% of the pop), but I've awoken on occasion from fabricated fistfights by slamming my foot into the bedroom wall.
Oh, and one time in the middle of kicking some guy's ass I grabbed the head of my bedmate and whacked my forehead against hers. The jolt woke us both. I had no idea that I'd just inflicted my dream upon her, but I could see she was upset for some reason, so I immediately tried to comfort her. "It's okay, honey, I'm here." To which she lovingly replied, "Yes, I know you're here--YOU JUST FUCKING HEADBUTTED ME."
Look, why take ultimate fighting lessons when I can get the same results without lifting an eyelid? It seems exercising our imaginations, in all forms, plays an important role in preparing us for survival--which is not always a pretty task. And when it comes to literature, a classic ain't a classic unless a shitload of motherfuckers be gettin MOWED DOWN.
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