Guide What is the Willing suspension of disbelief?

 

Suspension of disbelief or willing suspension of disbelief is something that is unreal or illogical in reality which your try to avoid intentionally. This term was introduced by Samuel Taylor Coleridge in late 1817. He called that concept "poetic faith" which supernaturally awakens the mind. Guide What is the Willing suspension of disbelief?

Coleridge Says in Coleridge, Biographia Literaria, 1817, Chapter XIV

It was agreed, that my endeavors should be directed to persons and characters supernatural, or at least romantic, yet so as to transfer from our inward nature a human interest and a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith. Mr. Wordsworth on the other hand was to propose to himself as his object, to give the charm of novelty to things of every day, and to excite a feeling analogous to the supernatural, by awakening the mind's attention from the lethargy of custom, and directing it to the loveliness and the wonders of the world before us.

Concept:

Samuel Taylor Coleridge gives the traditional conception about the suspension of disbelief in the supernatural not in the reality of fictional characters. It means suppressing the critical abilities of the individual and exposing the real concept of unrealistic ideas.

Example of Willing suspension of disbelief?

1. If you are standing at a bus stop and the bus is late, you say that the bus is late today. And if you wait for the bus the next day and the bus arrives late, you say the bus is late again today. If you stand on the third day and the bus arrives late then you will say that the bus always arrives late even though the bus came on time for the remaining 27 days but you were not there.
2. So it happens that a palmist or an astrologer tells you one thing but you don't like it because it is not useful for you. He will tell you something else but you do not notice it. The third thing that comes out of your work is what you take note of. Doubts and mistakes come out and then one thing comes in handy and you say that what the astrologer has said is exactly right. So its basic law is three out of ten.

Because you don't remember the bad things and you remember the good things with great joy. The name of this law is consent to disbelief. These people are just surviving on guesswork.

In one sentence!

The willing suspension of disbelief is part of human nature but we should avoid that aspect by training our mind and soul.