Out of the Cell
&gt; As a little boy in Oxford, I was encouraged to worship the mind. I and my friends, often sons of professors, were being drilled in French and Latin and Greek before we turned seven,<p>&gt; ...<p>&gt; Marcus Aurelius had given me all kinds of wisdom for dealing with loss – impeccable in theory – and Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar had taught me about the fury of the irrational. But when I thought of texts like that, I was back in the mind of my schoolboy days, and that was the structure that now lay in rubble.<p>&gt; ...<p>&gt; As a writer, I’ve come to feel that the best thing I can share with readers is not dazzling argumentation, or references to the classics, but those moments we all know when we sit, helpless, before ravenous flames, or sense that we can only bow before those turns along the road, harrowing and uplifting, we will never begin to understand.<p>Is the author really claiming that all that fancy book learning is overrated because it didn&#x27;t emotionally prepare the author for having his house burn down?  Does he really think reading the sorts of emotional retrospectives like the present one would have prepared him?<p>I hear this argument all the time from artists: &quot;Oh you analytical types, you spend all this time with sophisticated theories and discussion, but you don&#x27;t really understand X because you haven&#x27;t experienced it.&quot;  Which is fine insofar as they only argue that analysis cannot fully replace first-hand experience in some human affairs.  Duh.  But very often they continue by arguing (either explicitly or implicitly) that <i>consuming art</i> somehow prepares you better. This is something that I&#x27;ve just never understood.  Of the dramatic emotional experiences I&#x27;ve had, I&#x27;ve never thought art prepared me.  Rather, I&#x27;ve very often thought &quot;Wait, <i>this</i> is what they were talking about?  This is what all those love songs (or whatever) were written about?  It is <i>completely</i> different than I expected.&quot;<p>If artists were serious about accurately communicating experiences (either to prepare the viewer for ones they would later have, or to allow the viewer to know about something they could never experience), the practice of art would look a hell of a lot different.  For instance, there would be much more effort made to <i>check</i> to see if various artistic works actually communicated things accurately by (say) studying whether viewers who had an experience were surprised by aspects of the experience despite having previously consumed the relevant art.  (This is useful even if most viewers never  have the true experience.)<p>Instead, the practice of art looks much more optimized for giving viewer intense compelling experiences <i>without</i> trying to maintain accuracy at all.  And that&#x27;s fine if that&#x27;s the end goal.  But they shouldn&#x27;t pretend it&#x27;s somehow about preparing you for life.