Re literature

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I've always held that literature was important, the emotions it can evoke are necessary in a world of coldly calculated mathematics. After all, what would be the point of living if we were to just to toil for all our lives? The way a good book is crafted, it holds beauty.

But to call them timeless teachers? That seems a bit grandiose.

Children can take morals from a story because it transforms a complex concept in a simple analogy that they can understand. Even so, we see many children indoctrinated wrongly in youth and it carries with them for the rest of their life. Literature fails even as such a rudimentary teacher because under many layers hides multiple meanings. I don't even mean that in an "everybody needs to find their own meaning" kind of way, I mean it in a "by an absence of such and such, we can infer the author to actually mean this" kind of way (see: deconstructivism).

Besides that, just because a work is well crafted does not validate it as a legitimate argument. For instance, take the Sistine Chapel, does it inspire in us the majesty of the Lord? Perhaps. Does it make a compelling argument to go out and convert? I would hope not. I don't trust such a person so easily swayed by rhetoric to make good decisions in life. After all, I too, can concoct a hypothetical scenario to support whatever arbitrary claim I wish to make.

The other issue I have with literature is that whoever is analyzing it seems to put on their shoes as a scientist, a philosopher or a psychologist at their convenience. No. You sir, do not have the credentials to discuss psychology at any depth; you sir, took your major in English. Alternatively, you can analyze everything only within the context of the work itself, but then nobody really cares except for other English majors, and at that point it's all just a big incestuous circle jerk anyways.

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edit: I realize I've made a post before where I claimed English uses fallacy as rhetoric, that's not mutually exclusive with this post, I'm just expanding my view this time instead of just "English sucks lolol".