I’ve come to believe that the real value of non-fiction consists in burning the bridges to the false world, so that one may set sail on the sea of the Unknown. I think when people try to map out too specifically what "Good" means is when the conceptual trickeries of the mind start getting involved, and you start thinking about trees instead of simply looking at them. On the other hand, you can point out the false world using the mind, but this can create a tendency to only focus on the hellish nature of our world when done improperly.
All that to say, I think non-fiction tends to deal with generalities, which are useful for seeing the limitations and problems of our world, but that Beauty, Goodness, Truth and all the important Qualities are better captured with fiction, because it deals with the specific, even if in the context of a constructed world, because they point to the specific Beauty and Strangeness of our experience nonetheless.
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2024-11-30