This is a slightly revised blog which survived the 3 blog crashes of the past. What is escapism? Supposedly, the desire to escape the real world. Check out the real world. What’s to like? What’s the intrinsic appeal of a nuthouse with built-in politicians, psycho bullies and criminals? What’s the appeal of a restrictive, obsessively materialistic society, based on endless acquisition of essentials which ought to be easily accessible?
I suggest to you that anyone in their right mind would be trying, hard, to avoid such a world. It’s ugly, it’s dangerous, and the only “reward” is another day in the same situations. Escapists in this sense are ultra-realists, survivalists par excellence.
In practice, escapism is no more or less than going to a preferred mental state and situation. It’s the difference between having a broken leg and wishing you didn’t have a broken leg. You prefer affluence to poverty, so you think that way. It’s natural, and a lot healthier than the alternatives in each case, giving a sense of preferred direction.
As a matter of fact, you can’t be “escapist” without a legitimate desire to escape from something which you dislike. You don’t try to escape from things you do like. It’s a realistic approach to real issues- Find a way out.
The only real objection to escapism per se is that most of the escapes are temporary/theoretical. They tend to be distractions from the sewer-like world in which humans unwillingly participate. A real escape from money problems is provided by money. Escaping an unpleasant society is achieved by moving to another society.
It’s this lack of ability to get out of unwanted situations which is the real issue. Societies in general don’t provide many options for remedial escapes to better environments. They tend to spread the problems, rather than the solutions. The result is human misery, well documented since the beginning of recorded history.
Exactly why anyone thinks they have the right to criticize “escapists” simply for doing what they prefer to do isn’t even debatable. It’s hypocrisy on a gigantic scale. Everyone, without exception, does what they prefer to do, given the slightest chance.
The ultra-real world advocates will demand attention to any and every material or social situation as “living in the real world”. They’ll then talk your ears off about their favorite movie, something fictional which even by their own standards, doesn’t exist in the real world. They’ll rave about their holiday, a physical departure from their own normal reality.
Even hyper-successful people in the lottery of the “real world” tend to succeed, then spend the rest of their lives in pursuit of quite literally nothing. They’ve won the game of Monopoly, and that’s their straitjacket. They know nothing else.
Materialism isn’t “wrong” simply for being materialistic. It becomes wrong when it buries all else in people. Materialism isn’t the only game which must be played. The other game is personal. Can you “win” yourself? Are your emotions protected by your obsessive need to buy a new widget?
Hardly.
It’s difficult to imagine a less relevant approach to living.
After all, who’s doing the living?
Who’s feeling the feelings?
Some people are so “personally dyslexic” they can’t even read their own emotions.
Some trip over major psychological conditions when they suddenly realize they don’t even have feelings when they should.
This “emotional illiteracy” is actually quite common. The environment imposes a different range of priorities, so the person simply adapts to those priorities, rightly or wrongly. You’re supposed to grow out of it, but many don’t.
The real world includes a lot of possible personal disasters. The personal game is very hard to win, for most people. Arguably, those whose personal game is a third class citizen in their minds are the typical losers. Money-grubbing can’t make up for catastrophic personal situations. All the money does is minimize the possible impacts of other problems. It can’t undo catastrophic emotional damage. It can’t kiss it better. It can’t be “Muuuuummmmmmmy!!!!”
Psychologically, there’s a huge irony here:
Materialists, basing their existences entirely on objects, could be said in some ways to be effectively escaping from their own personal lives. A brain could be said to be a material thing, but its products and processes, when articulated, or in the processes of articulation, aren’t. Emotions are physically generated, but the feelings on the personal level aren’t, in terms of their effects.
Denying the realities of one’s own existence in so many ways, particularly in the name of “realism”, is an argument comprised largely of holes. It’s absurd. Equating yourself with the furniture is also wrong by definition. However much you may want to be a deckchair, you’re not one.
OK, that’s the obvious described.
Now- Another view of escapism.
If the human race had a single working brain cell in its entire media-addled carcass, it’d encourage escapism. Escapists are also the people who find a way out of situations. It’s their natural forte, something they’re good at.
You’d need an ethical, emotional and spiritual generation of Houdinis to find the way out of all the situations with which humanity inflicts itself on a minute by minute basis, but it’d be worth doing.
I should know. My books, particularly the Threat-Hamster books, are all about situations nobody’s ever been in before. Escapism? Not really. People are often trapped in situations of their own making. Writers, of all people, should know that.
Fun, yes. In Mimbly Tales there’s an issue: How do you find an escaped symphony? Obviously, you use a kid, an Scottish wildcat, and Autumn. How do you escape from a world with seas made of packaging while besieged by phone sales people? You uncover the war between cheeses and biscuits, naturally.
If you’re getting the idea that the logic of escapism is a bit different from anything materialism is able to produce, I’ve made my point.
Ask yourself-
What/who is escaping from what/who?
Can your emotions escape from themselves?
How much escaping from materialism’s nasty little hobbies do you do on a routine basis?
If “corporate” is the definition of uber-reality, how “corporate” are your wildest desires?
Which do you prefer, your wildest desires, or “corporate”?
If you answered “corporate”, get a close friend to introduce yourself to yourself. You may not have met before.
You may also have to escape from yourself, to achieve either preference.