Escapism

In the past, both near and far, life used to be a lot harder. Everybody knows the Marx quote, “Religion is the opiate for the masses.” I’m sure in many ways, life was horrible and insufferable, which is why people back then needed religion to help them through it. To help them bear the pain and give them hope. To keep on keepin’ on.

I think that, now, popular culture is the opiate of the masses. Because life is “too good,” or perhaps, “too normalized” is more accurate.  Meaning that we don’t really have any hardship, but we also don’t have any of the adventure and grandeur that we imagined we would have (and were told we would have) when we were kids.

Now, people have to constantly self-medicate themselves with TV shows like Heroes and 24, which make up extraordinary situations where only extraordinary people with extraordinary abilities can save them and thus, save the day in an extraordinary way.

So, then maybe it isn’t accurate to say that pop culture is an opiate, because an opiate is something that “soothes or stupefies” and dulls away acute pain. Maybe pop culture is actually a stimulant that allows people to feel again, because modern lives have become so banal.

It makes sense, right? All of these kids addicted to games like World of Warcraft? I asked a friend of mine, who happens to be a kid, why he loved WoW so much. And he said, “Well, duh, it’s way more interesting than normal life.”

He (and many other kids) are addicted to a game where there is a world they can dominate, with rules to break and systems to game. I mean, how would you go about getting that sort of excitement and challenge, that intense, visceral struggle for life and dominance, in a scheduled, supervised, sedated play date with some kid?

I find all of this is fascinating in the context of Emerson:

“I have no churlish objection to the circumnavigation of the globe, for the purposes of art, of study, and benevolence, so that the man is first domesticated, or does not go abroad with the hope of finding somewhat greater than he knows. He who travels to be amused, or to [get somewhat which he does not carry,] travels away from himself, and grows old even in youth among old things. In Thebes, in Palmyra, his will and mind have become old and dilapidated as they. He carries ruins to ruins.

Travelling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places. At home I dream that at Naples, at Rome, I can be intoxicated with beauty, and lose my sadness. I pack my trunk, embrace my friends, embark on the sea, and at last wake up in Naples, and there beside me is the stern fact, the sad self, unrelenting, identical, that I fled from. I seek the Vatican, and the palaces. I affect to be intoxicated with sights and suggestions, but I am not intoxicated. My giant goes with me wherever I go.”

Escapism is still escapism. It takes on different forms through the ages, but whatever means one uses, the purpose remains the same.

February 25th, 2009

 

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