Literature works as a Psychological Default Human Range state because hunter gatherers valued storytelling. As with most of the examples so far, narratives are important yet again. Howevern the Literary Arrow is less about constructing a narrative about one’s own life and more about reading fiction. So I will call it a Reading Arrow rather than a Narrative Arrow.
Although one requires a book in order to enjoy literature, books are relatively cheap compared with many other life circumstances and require no other human contact in order to enjoy them. For this reason, I would classify books as intrapersonal.
Literature is also helpful because it tells the story of how someone dealt with difficult circumstances and (often) ended up gaining some net positive pleasure. Alternatively, it may help the reader find pleasure in spite of a tragic circumstance (Romeo and Juliet’s death brings their families together). Thus, literature is not only valuable in that reading intrinsically provides pleasure, but in that reading provides a lesson in how to find (or how not to find) pleasure.
To use literature as an arrow, it helps to read about characters who are wrestling with your same narrative. An example of therapy in poetry is Emily Dickinson’s poem “Perhaps I Asked Too Large”:
Perhaps I asked too large—
I take—no less than skies—
For Earths, grow thick as
Berries, in my native town—
My Basket holds—just—Firmaments—
Those—dangle easy—on my arm,
But smaller bundles—Cram.
This poem addresses a narrative that is presumably difficult for the poet: should she be taking on very “large” topics in her poems – or should she confine herself to smaller issues? More generally, should we take on large challenges? The Earths and Firmaments represents large challenges that Dickinson wants to attempt, while the smaller bundles are too small for her to care about. It’s likely that Dickinson feels some pressure (from herself or others) to care about smaller issues instead of the larger ones. Perhaps this means that she is caught in a sink state (or a narrow narrative) where she is concerned about large vs. small issues. By reading Dickinson’s poem, we can get help if we too are caught in a similar sink state. A general value of literature is that it can help us if we share a sink state with the protagonist or other characters.
By starting the poem with a query (are her poems too “large”?), Dickinson wants to inquire whether the reader, too, experiences this sink state. Dickinson then connects to a religious framework by naming the word “Firmament,” implying that religious people already accept the need to consider large ideas. Dickinson spends much most of the poem explaining her position as a too-large-asker. Her goal, it would seem, is to help herself renarrativize the criticism or pressure she has received.
All of this is hardly a special property of Dickinson’s poetry – many or most poems renarrativize a difficult narrative of some kind. Frequently, a poem ends with Mystery – without having found a clear reframing. The goal, perhaps, is to help the reader deal with Mystery in everyday life. One common Mystery is simply the reader’s difficulty in understanding the poem.
Learning
Another kind of Reading Arrow involves learning something non-fictional. One could learn about history or psychology, for instance. Hunter gatherers certainly valued learning.
Nexus State Theory 