The Non-Fiction Faction: Elitism in Writing

I'm always surprised by those people who say they never read fiction. Quite often it's done with a sense of elitism, as if there is something amiss with those who write or read fiction. I think it’s a lack of conceptual theory around how we came to be on this planet, how we came to be where we are today, and the technology and lifestyles we enjoy.

There was a time when nothing existed. We were coming out of the primordial soup, along with all the others, or some of them. And at some point, someone had a thought, decided they would try to make something. Who knows what it was? Fire, shelter, tools, clothing, warmth. What we call part of the Maslow Hierarchy of Needs.

What did this entail? Well it would certainly have meant using that thing we call imagination because before they thought of anything with which to improve our lives, what would it have been?

Fiction.

Everything was once just a story of what if?

The Primordial Soup of Imagination

Not a single thing that humans created existed without a fictional concept beforehand. Once Upon a time there was a woman who found she could take the wool of local animals and make clothes with them. A man who looked at how warm the animals were and decided to wear the skins of those they hunted. All of these are Once Upon a times from the point of clothing, heating, cooking, food, fire, shelter. And language.

In fact, nowhere is the creativity of humans better seen than in our languages. We have thousands and they are ever changing. At some point, someone said, What if we use this sound or word for this? Someone had to do it. What if we made something to cover this wound? Or something to keep this new baby warm? What if we found ways to protect ourselves from storms? What if we experimented by making this rock into something that could cut meat or protect us?

Imagine if ... string theory

No one was talking about string theory or quantum physics. That all came further down the line. And it came from the minds of people who had imagination. The fiction writers. The ones who said, Imagine this, or What if?  And this is something that you can apply to any part of the planet. Whatever was there before, a tree? Nothing to do with us. But what we made with the tree came from a fictional idea. Maybe I could take this tree, cut it, shape it into something I could sit on or put food on.

Everything was once just a story of what if?

Now, it's interesting because less than one percent of the books in my very wide collection are fiction. And although I write fiction and non-fiction, I couldn't understand at what point my reading tastes moved primarily to non-fiction. Looking at my bookshelf, I can see that the only fiction titles are those I've written myself, with a few more that I have collected from the free books shelf in my local charity shop. Otherwise everything is history, physics, politics, astronomy, geography, travel, and lots of philosophy.

I think it’s because I’ve always enjoyed sharing knowledge, and non-fiction books are the best way to curate this.

Will we ever stop writing fiction?

It's impossible for humans to stop writing fiction. It's the core of our identity. We take a fictional idea, and we translate it into music, literature, science, health, philosophy, technology. We would cease to function. Humans are made up of the creative imagination that created AI, the atomic bomb, high speed trains, X-rays, rockets, life-saving vaccines, programmes, and coding. Look around where you are now what do you see? Indoors or outdoors, II we made it, it was birthed from fiction.

What if we could create things with two wheels? Four wheels? What if we could create something that would allow us to fly in the sky or allow us to go underwater? So I think that we have to be wary of thinking that fiction is something down there, when in fact it is the foundation of every single thing we have created. So, let's not knock creativity and imagination. Because without it we might still be staggering around in the primordial soup wondering why we’re so cold and hungry!