avevale_intelligencer | Point to ponder

Um. Well, if the 'truth universally acknowledged' line hadn't been written by a writer you wouldn't have been able to ask this question.

Though whether you 'needed' to is a whole other kettle of worms.

I rather suspect that the US media industry is finding out right now how much they 'need' writers to survive. Admittedly we are not talking about a subsistence culture in Hollywoodland itself, but they have to get the necessary coffee and stimulants from somewhere.

I could have found another way of saying it. But then, I *am* a writer.

Of course they need a writer.

Who else is going to be the main course?

You can transmit a lot more survival related information more reliably through writing than through an oral tradition.
Do you ever need a writer of fiction rather than an oral storyteller who can use written non-fiction? Maybe not.

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Well, it's arguable that the mental escape hatch afforded by fiction is made both necessary and possible by our advanced civilisation, which gives us time for leisure and stresses us out the rest of the time, and which has raised our expectations so that now we think we're entitled to waste time doing things that aren't concerned with survival.

(original comment)
I suppose if that postulate were to be verified we wouldn't have a need for a mental escape hatch and therefore bookstores, libraries, and Amazon-dot-com wouldn't have any purpose at all.

Sorry about that...I was trying to edit and *poof* it was gone!

Anyway, said escape hatch is a necessity for higher life forms in much the same way a cat has a need for a branch or a piece of twine as a diversion or a bird will build a nest even with no potential mate for miles. But if you're talking the very basics, food sleep and shelter, namely, then no. There isn't need for a writer any more than there is need for companionship or clothing or fire.

"Anyway, said escape hatch is a necessity for higher life forms"

So non-literate people are not "higher life forms"? I agree that higher life forms do generally need some form of non-work activity to keep sane, but people through millenia have managed to do that without books or writing. People were making music and telling stories long before either was written down.

Yes, a complex social structure is easier to manage if things are able to be kept in permanent form, and information is easier to spread. But that doesn't necessarily mean writing (unless you also define visual and auditory arts as writing). Indeed, many parts of current society seem to be slipping away from the written form as other forms of communication and storage of information become easier and cheaper.

I'm sure you know that that was not the intended meaning. Let's keep the rhetorical daggers peace-bonded, please.

Edited 2007-11-13 18:46 (UTC)

Okay...complex life forms. As opposed to amobae, bacteria, and anything that has no brain or central nervous system. Please forgive my snobbery as I will work on considering E-coli to be on the same evolutionary scale as whales and dolphins. ;)

If the point is pure survival, you can survive without any artistic stimulation. It may make for a short and uncomfortable existence if previously exposed, but it is possible.

In general, people can survive without external artistic stimulation because they can make it themselves and get it from others without needing writing. That's my point, all through history most of the people have survived without forms of written entertainment. No bookstores, no Amazon.*, no libraries, for most of the people most of the time. They sing, they tell each other stories, they may get the occasional wandering bard or a preacher who tells them stories about some religion. Or for the lucky few they had captive entertainment employed by the local aristocracy. And if they are all alone they can still think and dream (and find 'art' in nature).

Access by the general population to written fiction, or to written materials at all, is a very recent thing. For most of the time it has been the province of the rich and those they favour. And for much of the world this is still true.

Whether one "needs" a writer or not would depend on where you're hanging out on Maslow's hierarchy of needs, wouldn't it? And, of course, there's a difference between technical writing and creative writing...

I would say that your first sentence is false - I, for one, do not acknowledge that no one will ever be in need of a writer, hence it is not a universally acknowledged truth.

Writers are professional liars.

dduane said so. And, of course, I don't acknowledge it as a truth myself. (It is, in fact, about as "universally acknowledged" as the statement originally attached to that tag.)

But it is hard to justify creative writing (which is of course what I'm talking about) in terms of need. Even in Maslow's hierarchy, creativity is only mentioned at the very top of the pyramid, and only in terms of self-actualisation and maximising potential and problem-solving and so on. All very sober and worthy, and not much to do with Right Ho Jeeves or Xena Warrior Princess or anything I might turn out. Comes right down to it, we seem to be more of a want, not a need at all.

I'm pretty sure she wasn't the first to say it. I've seen religious tracts which proclaim that all fiction is evil because it's all lies, and heard non-religious people say that giving fiction to children is bad because it teaches them to believe in untruths. It's a hard argument to refute, because looked at in that way it's true. Of course it loses some of its punch when those people lie themselves (how does that verb decline? I am economical with the truth, you prevaricate, he is a liar?)...

Is there a need for professional creators (I'm using the term to include all forms of communicative art, not just the limited writing)? I think there isn't, there are so many amateurs who can do it. There is a demand, yes, but then there is a demand for all sorts of things which aren't actually necessary, because they are wanted or (as you said elsewhere) so common now that people expect them as a 'right', and in particular they are wanted "right now" rather than "when they fit it in with their regular work". I can think of several people I know who create music and visual art as well as writing without pay whose works I enjoy as much and more than most of the professionals in the field. I'm writing in the journal of one of them *g*...

I think it was Sir Philip Sidney in his Defense of Poesy (where "poesy" is being used to refer to the broader field of fiction in general) that the poet cannot possibly be called a liar, since he never affirms anything he says to be true.

Giving fiction to children only teaches them to believe in untruths if you teach them to believe anything they read.

"Oh, reason not the need..."

To quote some writer or other....

Michael Cule

Well, if we're only talking "need" in terms of survival, I can't think of very many professions one might "need."

Doctor, dentist, EMT, firefighter, search-and-rescue worker, police officer maybe. There aren't that many people who work at the bleeding edge between life and death.

Of course, if we count all the people who make it possible for the above people to do their jobs--people making surgical instruments and drugs, people training dentists and EMTs, people fueling firetrucks and helicopters, people growing and preparing food for search and rescue operations... hmm. Pretty soon we're back to needing most people. Including fiction writers, who, IMO give everyone concerned a well-earned sanity break.

Um ... before I pick this one up, I want to know just what we mean when we say "people whose primary concern is survival". Everybody's primary concern is survival.

I also want to know if we are defining "writer" as "one who can read and write" or "one who is skillful with words" or both.

I'm talking about "writer" as meaning "creator of written fictions." I can see a possible need for scribes, or for technical/legal/etc writers. I'm talking about what I do.

And yes, everybody's primary concern is survival, but we've created a support network in parts of this planet where, for quite large sections of the populace, it isn't their only or constantly predominant concern. And the point I was trying to encapsulate in the statement above is that it's only in that kind of hothouse climate that writers of fictions have any place.

I would disagree pretty strongly if you hadn't specified "written".

As your definition stands, though, you're probably right -- mostly because you only need a relatively brief respite in the struggle for survival to tell or hear a story, but you need serious leisure time to develop mass literacy.

We've needed storytellers for pretty much as long as we've been human. But writers are only of any use to us if we can read.

Point to ponder

Recursion

Re: Recursion

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