Every age, it seems, has its own tools for escapism. For most of the history of mankind, one of the tools to escape the reality was to go somewhere in the middle of nowhere and just “be” until realizing, one has to make something in order to be sheltered from the wilderness around, and to hunt or gather in order to sustain oneself, thus entering reality once more. If that wasn’t an option and one was wealthy enough to have books, one could escape into the worlds created by those books. Especially in the last two or so centuries, when great fiction by George MacDonald, J. R. R. Tolkien, C. S. Lewis, and subsequently by others, gave the minds of man some truly magnificent fictional worlds where one could imagine being.
Aye, living a lifetime whilst reading words, but not seeing the words anymore: only beautiful, sometimes terrifying, always wonderous moments that your mind creates as you read those stories of great heroes and incredibly rich characters. Sometimes one can’t tell if one is observing the character in the book or embodying that very same character, and feeling what they are feeling, seeing what they are seeing, even smelling what they are smelling. But when you decide to ignore that urge to read “just one more chapter” and retire to bed, it’s still just you, yourself, and the mire of your thoughts before you. For some hours, which felt like eternity, you had indeed escaped into a wonderous new world in some book. You had indeed been embedded into that story, and the story for those minutes became embedded into your whole perception of time and space.
Reading books can indeed be escapism. So too can music. In the past people gathered and sang and played those tunes of old. Concerts of nowadays still at times invoke some of that beauty of collective singing, as can worship in church. Escaped one could into music for a short duration… Especially first with records, then with Sony’s Walkman, then with CDs, then iPods, and now with wireless buds in every ear, probably listening to some heavily curated Spotify playlist, with all of these one can indeed escape into something that is not really the real world. One can even “plug themselves” (or not even that if wireless) into the matrix of soundscapes whilst walking the streets, and the tech on their heads can now even seamlessly pause their escape for the temporary interaction with filtered-through nuisance of reality until going back to their track that they had been listening to. Arguably, one is still mostly in reality though.
Not so long ago, TV also becomes the central “thing” in nearly every sitting room, nay, in nearly every living room. Today almost in every room in some dwellings… Shelves of books cease to be, and as even CDs and DVDs are phased out, a room becomes bland and soul-less. A concrete box with something to sit or lie on, to consume content on bright pixels on a panel of one of those walls. And so you essentially escape, this time not into worlds created by your imagination and shaped by words on a sheet of paper, but into a carefully constructed world that was written by one, designed by many, played by some, and directed by another. You escape into the imagination of someone else entirely. You don’t see the world through a character anymore, as you might in a book. You see yourself as a part of that group of people, or worse, a voyeur who is observing a fictional (or real, albeit recorded) world explored by someone else. You put yourself into someone’s shoes. You try to understand them, and sure, you may feel a part of their struggle, their pain, their awe, their joy… however it’s always distant and unreachable. You want it to become real, but deep down you know it can’t. The world you’re looking into is a world you want to enter, and sometimes you convince your friends to join you in mutual exploration of that now jointly fictional world. But, unless you are a recluse without friends, you eventually turn the screen off, and go to work. Even if you repeat your escapes daily, the reality is still there, around the corner.
When I was a boy, we got a first computer at home. It had MS-DOS games. I loved playing those games. But I was wee and we didn’t have smartphones just yet, so my brother and I still enjoyed roaming around the block, cycling, rollerblading, or playing in the mud. I did love to read books, but not to escape there. Only after we moved, and I was in the last third of elementary school, did I start escaping into TV shows sometimes into some computer games. I’m sure you relate with some of this. Especially if you didn’t have friends to hang out with. And I often didn’t.
Aye, computers ushered in worlds one could escape into, that got better and better. Graphics are almost as good as movies are. Sometimes better than many movies and many TV-shows, even nowadays. In many ways worlds generated in digital realms are much closer to books than to TV, perhaps a mix of both. Many games exist, where one may indeed create their own buildings, landscapes, entire universes, if one so chooses. If you’ve ever fallen into rabbit holes of Minecraft or Fallout 4, you had noticed that people spend hundreds, nay, thousands of hours in their creations within those digital realms. They have, and I have at times too, escaped into the digital realms to not only explore, but to build and create things one can’t possibly ever imagine building in real life anymore. The world has become so over-regulated that many beautiful things, especially beautiful buildings, aren’t even legally allowed to be built anymore, even if you tried getting all the otherwise mandatory permits. If one should acquire land, one may not build, or many times even renovate, much less buy a castle (for example). And yet, people spend thousands of in-game hours to build magnificent structures. Sure they aren’t real per se, but they are as close as one can get to real.
Can you imagine, how beautiful the world might have been, had individuals who build gorgeous creations within the limitations of games, especially games like Minecraft, been allowed to try to do it in real life. Merely design them to build them.
But I digress. As there is one more technology that coupled with the rest of abilities of modern internet-connected world, may allow people to escape into the digital, nay, VR realms, almost indefinitely. Today some people either because they don’t have to have a real job due to their parents being wealthy, or because they are influencers/content creators, or for some other reason, they don’t even have to exit the concrete box they are in. A connected fridge may order food on it’s own when the stock goes down. Money is after all also just ones and zeroes and is digitally taken off automatically from your bank or PayPal account; and when you get enough eyeballs watching you, money magically lands on that very same account that you didn’t even have to step into a brick and mortar bank to open. Your room likely doesn’t even need a kitchen, perhaps a microwave though, because food is delivered to your doorstep ready-made. You have a tv or not even that, a computer and a console in one corner of the room, perhaps even without a screen, as your VR headset does the trick. Aye, Apple’s new “special reality headset” or whatever is called, makes it so that if the battery is charged you don’t even have to put the bloody thing down in order to walk around the otherwise real world, but only interact with it as much as it is absolutely necessary. Otherwise you’re in your room with four cubes that are tracking your every move so that you can navigate in the virtual reality that feels so real, that you forget about the real world. If something moves through you, your brain convinces you that you just got hurt. And as haptics get better the (virtual) reality of pain will get better too. Possibly the only few things that you need in the real world at this stage are to pee, poop, take a shower and eat. Almost the ultimate form of escapism.
The only thing that allows more “real” escape is a technology that we thankfully don’t (yet) have: devices embedded in our brains that make us see what ain’t there, feel what ain’t there, do what we’re not really doing, and you will think it’s an actual reality. Matrix will become reality.
But, with all of these instances, every form of escapism, one has to ask themselves: Am I real? What makes me real? Why live in reality? What’s the point.
The ultimate forms of escapism are really only two, when you think about it. Sadly if a person has escaped into whatever other form of escapism, including consumption of drugs, alcohol, or any listed above, and found no meaning, no relationships, no reason to live, many escape into the world where there is no turning back from, they escape the actual reality and cease to exist.
But, there is also reality created by God, under His wonderful rule. You may want to think about escaping the damnation of your mind that could consume you, or you might want to escape the eternity that is void of meaning by coming into the reality that is so much better than merely existing in the realm here and now. You may want to walk this reality with the Creator who saved you through His son, who sent you the Spirit to guide you and be your refuge, and be reminded of all of that by his bride, the Church, which is full of people who live in reality that is much more meaningful than anything that the world can ever give. It’s not really an escape, is it? It’s an invitation to life.