ThirstyFish

I have to admit, this photograph is a little forced in matching the title. The title is inspired by a written exchange with a friend who stated: "...people are claiming that they want to be destitute anarchists while they walk around with the latest, most ritzy cellphones..."

Up until recently, I used to think that there was a relatively clear distinction between fiction and non-fiction. Not any longer. The only difference is in the way they are structured and labeled. They both cross into each others realm, and they both can give a true or a false account of what they are describing. One is not more valuable than the other.

Whether it is science, philosophy, psychology, religion, fiction, non-fiction, an opinion piece or any other "study", we value works that "analyze or explain the existing" in a more refined way. These refined explanations regularly contradict each other, yet, every so often, some of them mobilize us individually or socially in a whole new direction. The same can be true for works that "predict where we are heading". There, we are in a fictitious realm since mathematical models such as chaos infer our limited ability to predict the future. Additionally, we also value works that more delicately "generalize, synthesize or instruct"; works that put things in perspective. Rarely, but sometimes, we come across a unique piece of work that concurrently associates all three; it explains, it synthesizes and it predicts...

Most of us are iPhone Anarchists. We are floating in a tide of influences that we have no or little understanding of, and no such desire to do so. Others do it for us; The Analysts explain the phenomenon that we have become, The Synthesists generalize and categorize us, while The Prophets foretell where we are heading. Whoever does these in a more refined, more accurate, more sensational, more intellectual, more emotional way, receives the star. Writers or artists are just that; it does not matter whether they are writing scientific papers, newspaper columns, results of social studies, theories of philosophy, history or fiction. What matters (to them) is how unique their work is and how much and in which direction they change the tides.