How do you handle it when a controversial philosophy is an essential part of your story?
What do I mean? Well, teleporters:
"Every room resets. Remember I told you that? Every room reverts to its original condition. Logically, the teleporter should do the same. Teleporter. Fancy word. Just like 3D printers, really, except they break down living matter and information, and transmit it. All you have to do is add energy. The room has reset, returned to its original condition when I arrived. That means there's a copy of me still in the hard drive. Me, exactly as I was, when I first got here, seven thousand years ago"...
..."How long can I keep doing this, Clara? Burning the old me, to make a new one?"
-snippet from the transcript of the best Doctor Who episode in existence
Now, something similar is going on with a particular civilization of my setting, enter the Angels:
Borderline immortal, even if you "kill" them, they'll likely just load one of their RAID 999 saves, get out of the nearest transmat and proceed to obliterate you. Obviously, this will invoke the Spaceship of Theseus. The solution:
"Your brain cells are constantly dying, do you feel yourself dying? The greatest illusion is that there is a self which is unique and cannot be replaced. Bollocks, the universe is not your wish-fulfilling fairy. There is no one to protect us, no God, no Richard Dawkins, no Soul. And you know what, I don't give a fiddle about it."
Let's see, how many groups agree, at least partially,with this idea:
- Christians X
- Fidesz X
- Buddhism ✓
- Kurzgesagt✓
- The terrorists X
- The atheists✓
- Everyone else X
- The universe: Request is still Pending...
How should I take this deep, philosophical concept and make the reader immediately accept it?
This post was sourced from https://writers.stackexchange.com/q/31807. It is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.
1 answer
A useful way to think about this is to recognize that all stories are experiences, not propositions. A philosophy is a proposition, so it is not the matter of stories.
But living with the consequences of a proposition is an experience. You can write a story about living with the consequences of believing in, or experiencing people who believe in, a proposition.
People encounter and have to work and/or coexist with people who believe radically different propositions on a daily basis. Turn on the news and you will find accounts of conflicts arising from believe in different propositions.
Since people are used to encountering such situations, they are interested in what that experience is like, so a story about the consequences of living with a particular or unusual proposition can appeal to many people.
Of course, even if the story is an experience, not a proposition, the author's own adherence to and advocacy of that proposition may start to show through, and this may turn off the reader.
This does not mean that it cannot be done. CS Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia are Christian parallels (I think allegories is the wrong word). Millions of people who read them have no idea and are sometimes quite surprised when informed of this. You can enjoy the experience the story gives without recognizing an proposition being slipped in there along with the story.
So, if you focus on the experience your story creates, you won't turn off readers who disagree with the propositions of a philosophy that plays a role in the story, unless they detect that you are really trying to preach that philosophy. Then you will be left only with those readers who agree with that philosophy.
Of course, if it is a popular philosophy, particularly one the imagines itself to be more radical and avant garde than it really is, this can be a significant audience. Some writers make careers writing for an audience that enjoys having a particular prejudice confirmed and celebrated over and over again.
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