Fictional Realities

Stories are gateways to alternate realities?! Wild! (I knew it all along, don’t tell anyone). This interesting article from Jonathan Gottschall, author of The Storytelling Animal:How Stories Make Us Human, talks about the science behind how our brains make fictional things seem so real. Gottschall says “When the protagonist of a novel is in a bad fix we know it’s all pretend, but our hearts still race, we breathe faster, and stress hormones spike our blood. When fictional zombies attack, we feel sick with real fear; when Old Yeller dies we are floored by real grief.” I guess that explains why I feel the way I do about the end of Infinity War…

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-storytelling-animal/201302/the-holodeck-is-real