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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
Do you ever find that your thoughts and emotions are affected by a reading a book, playing a game, or watching a movie that you've seen just now? Right now, I feel like I'm in one of those states. It's not the first time I've felt the effects of another entity's material, and it surely won't be the last. I've seen that its effects are mostly transitory, but deep inside, I know that it leaves a small but lasting mark. Earlier this week, I finished reading Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell (fantastic book by the way). As a result, I've caught myself throughout this week seeing things from the perspective of Gladwell's thesis, and analyzing situations based on his theories. I'm even self conscious of my affected thoughts even as I am in the midst of my train of thought. Now, being affected by literature in this manner isn't inherently bad, but I can see the potential pitfalls of being affected by material of the more extremist kind. I can see how one's thoughts and beliefs can slowly drift towards one extreme through his selection of reading material. I don't think this effect is confined to logic and reason either. Emotions also seem to be captive to such powers. I myself have certainly felt happy, sad, or melancholy as a result of reading a book, watching a movie, or playing a game. Sometimes, the transitory effect can last up to a week. At least a few friends have had similar experiences as well (most notably through a very depressing and tragic story told through a video game). The effect of media on both our minds and hearts seems to fade with time. However, it's hard to believe that its fingerprint completely vanishes; it's more reasonable to think that some small part of its grasp stays with us, almost indefinitely. In fact, along with our own personal experiences, this may be how our persona is molded over time[1]. If that is the case, there is great power in the hands of those who control such mediums, and great responsibility in our choice of consumption of such media. It should be worth spending some time pondering the array of media we have consumed recently, and whether we are comfortable with the potential effects each of these may have had on our minds. A potential negative effect doesn't mean that we should automatically avoid that material (after all, I'm going to be watching Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter this summer). However, being aware of the potential effects of each choice we make should allow us to be in much firmer control of the course our mind takes. This seems crucial, if not essential, in the media-drenched world we live in today.
[1] In this light, perhaps it is completely normal that I wished dearly to be able to fire a Hadouken back when I was in elementary school.
Crossposted from my main blog
  
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I think the mark of a good book is that it leaves that small bit of itself imprinted on your psyche; not every writer can do that, and only the best writers can affect tons of people in that way. For me, Dune always gets me in the same way that you describe; after I read it, I always find myself relating things I see in the real world to events and places and sayings from the Dune universe.
It's not a bad thing, I feel, to let yourself be carried away be emotions evoked by some piece of media; it only becomes bad when you let those emotions work their way out of your mind. Those that don't end up getting labeled as "obsessive" or "crazy", when really, they just lack a measure of self-control.
+ Show Spoiler +I would consider it abnormal, by the by, for you NOT to have wished to be able to fire Hadoukens. Hadoukens are awesome.
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I feel the same way sometimes too. For me, these effects don't affect me that much and don't bring about radical changes in my thought process. The only time when I remember a piece of literature, a film, really fuelled me. The film was 'The Green Zone' I think. It made me become really interested in the Iraq War (I've never actually heard of it prior to the film) and I just did my own research about it. This opened my eyes to the hard to swallow truths about America and utterly smashed whatever illusions I had in my mind built up about America. America was supposed to be this glorious land of freedom and peace and equality. The epicentre of intellectual development (probably is) and where everybody was smart and awesome and stuff.
I guess sometimes after reading a book, my outlook on life changes slightly. Reading books also help me express myself more clearly and efficiently too. Like for professing love in my old girl blogs I gained inspiration from the first 'classic' that I had read - Jane Eyre.
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infinity21
Canada6683 Posts
Yeah I find that the more I become absorbed to the storytelling, the more my emotions and thought processes are influenced. Haven't had that happen in quite some time though, probably because I've distanced myself from such absorbing media and I rarely give them 100% of my attention.
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With music I feel particularly similar, and many times when I want to listen to some of my favorite artists I have to remember that it is their emotions being conveyed, not my own. I say this because I enjoy the deep emotions of a few artists who put out an album during times of their lives when they lost hope in everything (IE John Frusciante of the Red Hot Chili Peppers during the 90s, when he released music for drug money). They are beautiful but it can really strain your day if you begin to take on that emotion yourself. Music has the most power to alter your mood, as it has the power to do so several times within a few minutes with one sad measure or one hot note.
However in books it feels as if I either want to be by the characters side or I am the character itself, which is a very crazy feeling when you observe it in yourself first. In reading "The Life of Pi", a book about a boy shipwrecked and stranded in the ocean, I felt like I was the protagonist so many times it was so sad and had to put the book down to remind myself I am not in the ocean, all alone. In another case, I had read Margaret Atwood's "Oryx and Crake" (A MUST READ in my opinion, great fiction with great not-so-subtle realities about the world today) the protagonist generally feels alone, if not physically but emotionally. Several times I just wanted to leap through my imagination and tell him I understand what is going on with him.
I suppose one of the things I want to say is that you must be aware of your emotions when reading, watching, or intaking any kind of abstract of another's thoughts so that you can protect your own and change them if you so desire. I don't want to be mopey all day when I listen to one of my favorite artists, so I make sure I stop myself while still enjoying the music. I do want to feel on top of the mountain if I'm watching a film of a man/woman achieving their dream, so I allow the film to affect me more directly. You must do this dynamically, or else you may lose a sense of self in the world. Almost everything that happens is something someone else does/has done, and you must retain yourself in order to pass your stories and thoughts along for a reader. (Hint: We do it all day in the forums  )
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I don't read a book if it doesn't affect me.
That would be wasting time and effort.
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It's like inception hahaha - the most resilient parasite is an idea!!! 
I notice a lot of the same things you said originally - most of the stuff that I read to completion really has an effect on my daily routine. For example, the last book I read was Josh Waitzkin's The Art of Learning and now I'm going through Garry Kasparov's How Chess Imitates Life, both of which are amazing seminal works on the realization of philosophical ideas through chess. The most interesting idea that I've pulled from both of those books is the idea of a sort of "universalism" between all things, where you can learn things about X from studying something completely different. Something only tastes sweet because you understand that other things taste bitter, etc etc...
A lot of it applies to starcraft, since it's so much like chess in a lot of aspects.
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I think I let these things affect me too much. When I read a story or watch a movie that really inspires me, I just can't seem to get over it. In an age where technology and mass media are the main forms of entertainment, It would be rather surprising if someone who browsed TL didn't have their emotions affected by a book, movie, or videogame that they have just read, watched, or played. I grew up in a household where reading was encouraged a lot, so much of my childhood was spent in fantasy land fully submerging myself into the experience
This is probably a terrible comparison to make, but sometimes I think about it like a relationship. Someone that you meet and has a profound effect on you over a certain period of time, and more often than not, it fades, but there is still an everlasting mark. You make a good point on how we should be looking through the array of media we have been experiencing and I feel that the comparison stays true. Each relationship that you experience changes you in some way and will definitely change the course of thought that your mind takes.
Additionally, I think it may be good that you are cogniscent of this lasting mark that it will have on you showing you that you are beyond the "average joe" of society who doesn't find meaning out of anything, only wanting thrills of an action movie and paying no attention to media that may acquire additional thinking. I don't actually have any science or real facts in any way to back this up, but as anecdotal evidence, a ton of the meatheads that I work out with will not spend more than 5 minutes trying to understand something before they decide that it is stupid and move on to the next immidiately fulfilling activity.
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On March 30 2012 01:14 HwangjaeTerran wrote:
I don't read a book if it doesn't affect me.
That would be wasting time and effort.
^ this
I read a lot, but if I'm not personally interested in knowing what will happen to all my favourite characters on the next page, then there is no flow, no importance.
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I really like the direction you took this blog.
I have long held the belief that knowing how various pieces of the world around us can affect the way we think and feel is vital knowledge, not so much in forming the world around us, but in forming our perspectives of ourselves in a realistic way.
However, as (almost) always I wanted to add a couple points.
Critical thinking and the knowledge of the ways in which we are vulnerable (of which influence over our beliefs is and has always been one), gives us an appropriate way to combat this - through reason and research. I've watched a number of Michael Moore films, and because I'm distanced from the objects of his documentary, I am impressionable to the belief that they are out specifically to do us harm. Yet at the same time, if I am aware that I am impressionable, and am able to continue to think critically about the claims of the film, I can avoid lending unquestioning belief to the author's vision. Informed viewers cannot have their beliefs so melded as uninformed ones.
Also, most people will always allow their experience to take precedence over the media. Noting the Michael Moore example above - I couldn't agree wholeheartedly with what he said even before I did my own research, simply because the notion that people were doing others harm by their own discretion, willfully and behind closed doors with full knowledge of what they were doing did not jive with my beliefs on human psychology. So, there are ways even those ignorant on certain topics can spot someone who's trying to feed them a line of bull.
And yeah, there is an emotional effect, but we're people - EVERYTHING has an emotional effect - that's seldom entirely the fault of the object of our emotions. I mean, look at how people act in traffic.
Anyway, I could probably write a blog itself about responding to your blog, but I think the above suffices.
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Haji, your essays are always exceptionally written, js . Also I'd like to put in my two cents that I don't feel this way in the fear department with video games and movies after they end, but sadness and happiness tend to carry over from books and movies. I remember reading Night (Ellie Wiesel) and My Dog Skip (forgot the author) and both had profound effects on my psyche for that night.
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thedeadhaji
39489 Posts
On March 30 2012 01:53 Brandish wrote:
This is probably a terrible comparison to make, but sometimes I think about it like a relationship. Someone that you meet and has a profound effect on you over a certain period of time, and more often than not, it fades, but there is still an everlasting mark.
The analogy might not be accurate, sure, but I like it
On March 30 2012 00:52 TG Manny wrote:I suppose one of the things I want to say is that you must be aware of your emotions when reading, watching, or intaking any kind of abstract of another's thoughts so that you can protect your own and change them if you so desire. I don't want to be mopey all day when I listen to one of my favorite artists, so I make sure I stop myself while still enjoying the music. I do want to feel on top of the mountain if I'm watching a film of a man/woman achieving their dream, so I allow the film to affect me more directly. You must do this dynamically, or else you may lose a sense of self in the world. Almost everything that happens is something someone else does/has done, and you must retain yourself in order to pass your stories and thoughts along for a reader. (Hint: We do it all day in the forums )
so very very true
On March 30 2012 03:12 docvoc wrote:Haji, your essays are always exceptionally written, js .
Thx
What's js though? ;(
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EPT
