Let’s start in the obvious sort of example. Novels and films. It’s very obvious when you read a novel that what you’re doing is immersing yourself in another reality of some kind.
You know, if you read Little Dorrit or something by Dickens you’re in the 19th century, you’re in the culture of debtors’ prisons, the poorest people in London. And the effect of that, of course, could be dramatic on a reader. It was very dramatic on Dickens’ readers, most of whom were probably people who hadn’t experience debtors’ prisons and who were shocked by what they read and who developed a kind of empathy for the people portrayed there. So they suddenly understood that there was a class of people that they had not seen much of, tended to ignore who, to their surprise, had the same sorts of feelings that they had: the same triumphs and the same disappointments.
So, in that case, you know, the immersion into a world has a distinct social effect. It makes you understand that those other people don’t live in quite the same world as you and to have some sympathy for the one that they are in.
Similarly a novel by, say, Neil Stephenson or Will Self or somebody like that, builds a world that doesn’t actually exist, that never existed. It’s a new world, it’s an imaginary world. Once again, by immersing in that, you are not only increasing your ability to imagine and flex your muscles, your mental muscles in worlds, but you’re also always looking back at the world you’re actually in. Making comparisons. So I think it’s easy to see in those cases books, films, things that have words essentially, what the message is. That you’re being invited to enter a world and enjoy it and learn something from it.
It’s not so obvious in, for example, hair styles. So I like hair styles as an example because we all have them – well not quite all of us. But if you think about what’s going on when you choose to wear your hair one way rather than another, what you’re really doing is saying I belong to this particular world where this kind of hairstyle would exist. You’re broadcasting something, but you’re also very alert to all the other hairstyles that you see around you. So you’re in receive mode as well. And what I think you’re doing then is you’re positioning yourself in all the possible stylistic worlds that could exist, you’re taking a certain position. And that’s an identification for yourself, it’s an identification for other people as well.