I've believed for a while that writers who go on about the power of stories are telling a self-serving lie. Just how self-serving can be seen in how the chap who told us fiction teaches us empathy can't understand consent, power dynamics, basic human decency. Literature is an amazing product of
You can read every myth ever written and more than 2/3 of the imaginative literature in existence and still be a shitty little careerist who only cares about his bank balance, his career, and his prick. Stories are what we tell. Behaviour is who we are.
It's important to remain humble about oneself and your contributions. Most professions seem to fall prey to self aggrandizement, but writers have their own particularly potent elixir. I find it rather nauseating.
People with no moral compass will always find it easy to pretend for profit & success
People who make stories for a living are going to bang on about how stories are vital. People who make baked beans will do likewise. I love stories & baked beans, but I have never believed that either of them is what makes me human.
Perhaps through stories we are the best version of ourselves; the people we want to be... This about the NG thing? Not fully made up my mind, but something can be legal and still dodgy.
