The Love of the Marvellous and the Disbelief of the True

By Nazirull Safry Paijo

Of Fiction

One of the French New Wave pioneers, Jean-Luc Godard once said, “If you want to make a documentary, you should automatically go to the fiction and if you want to nourish your fiction you have to come back to reality.”

The Canadian psychologist and writer, Jordan Peterson said, “Fiction is not the opposite of fact. Fiction is hyper-real. And the deeper the fiction, the deeper is the distillation, the more real it is.”

What is distillation? It is the embodiment of real ideas, for example, the Joker in Batman, which is the distillation of everything pathological into one character. But what happens in the movie Batman is not real. It is not real in the sense that it is not a videotaped representation of an actual sequence of events. Rather, it is real because it is a profound abstraction. 

And what is abstraction? An example of abstraction in the context of literature is when an author does not tell about every detail of a character’s life. He only takes the happenings that would capture the audience’s interest and contributes to the story. What triggers my curiosity is when he said that great literature including mythology and religious accounts are the deepest form of abstraction. And the trouble begins when abstractions and distillation has been taken as something real, and worse, missing the whole point of the story.

Paul Schrader, who wrote Taxi Driver (1976), said when writing a story, you must first understand the problem. Then, transform that problem into a metaphor. He transformed the problem of being broke, alone, disconnected from the world, into a guy surrounded by people, only to be separated by the windshield of his taxi. Similar to the Batman case of distillation earlier mentioned.

Joanne Gardner, a Mythologist from the Joseph Campbell Foundation, said that we should take myths seriously, but not literally. It means paying attention to the metaphorical meaning it could be suggesting. Interestingly, she said the same thing about movies. Movies should be taken seriously, but not literally, paying attention to their metaphors and archetypes as well.

Of History

How about history? In the opening of the movie Braveheart, the voice said, “…history may say that I am a liar. But history has been written by those who hanged heroes.”

Dr. Azly Rahman, a doctorate in International Education Development from Columbia University, and holds six Masters Degrees in education, international affairs, peace studies communication, fiction and non-fiction writing says, “…no such thing is a historical fact. History is a perspective and narrative. Whoever owns history owns the destiny of a nation. We must understand that history is a mirror to our lives. We must confront history whether it is hurtful or not”. And he further warns about the danger of falling into one single story.

That single story, where questioning it is a cardinal sin and a taboo. A book written by Dr. Farish Noor entitled What Your Teacher Didn’t Tell You reveals some different views of Malaysia especially during the pre-colonial period. For example a different phase of Hang Tuah’s life, including some of his world views and becoming an ambassador, among others.

Prof. Dr. Tajuddin Mohd Rasdi, in a podcast, was asked why the local education system includes a doctored version of history and he cheekily answered,”…some people will not ‘naik pangkat’ (promoted).”

That is probably the reason why William Shakespeare categorised his play into three genres – tragedy, comedy and history.

The Madness of Crowd

The mass has to be dumbified. The obvious act of indoctrination and brainwashing have created a group of people who are stuck in a loop of dogma, to the extent of sympathising with the guilty party. It is what we call The Stockholm Syndrome. Wikipedia defines it as, “…the tendency of hostages to develop a psychological bond with their captors. It is named after an attempted bank robbery in 1973, in stockholm.”  It is the danger of the illusion of being in the right side with numbers.

Irving L. Janis, a Yale psychologist, introduced Groupthink. In his 1972 book Victims of Groupthink he writes, “…a psychological phenomenon that occurs within a group of people which the desire for harmony and conformity in the group results in an irrational or dysfunctional decisions making outcomes. Cohesiveness or the desire for cohesiveness, in a group may produce amongst its members to agree at all cost…”

This ties directly to Charles Mackay’s 1841 classic, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which includes a chapter titled “The Love of the Marvellous and the Disbelief of the True.” While it is innate for humanity to turn to tribalism for survival, acting in large numbers has also driven the majority of human conflict.

As the American comedian George Carlin himself said about his love of individuals but hates it when they start to group up, wearing hats and armbands and have a list of the people they hate. The level of intelligence goes lower as the condescending group gets bigger. And ultimately he said, “Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.”

This eerily mirrors one of Arthur Schopenhauer’s infamous quotes: ‘If you want to reach a large audience, appeal to idiots.’

The ultimate product of this agenda is what another American comedian, Ricky Gervais said as the culmination of the ‘average’ society, which in the end votes the same group of people to govern a country. Thus so does every other things produced to the same ‘average’ level. Comparing that to the original version of the ancient Greek Democracy, where they have the ‘Rule of the Intellect’ – which directly means only the intellects could vote.

Today in Malaysia, the vote of a scholar carries the same weight as the vote of a mat rempit. We live in an era where comedians speak the truth, while politicians have become the real comedians.

It is perhaps the result of misreading and misinterpretation (of fiction or reality) that has led people of the same religious faith to kill each other for thousands of years. But that is a topic for another day.

The writer is a digital artist for 25 years, self-taught art lover, and writer.