On Escapism · 7:32am Apr 15th, 2021
I run into a lot of people who think that a story can only be good if it has a deeper meaning, is an an artistic expression of one's culture, an examination of the human condition, to tell a message, or has a similar a purpose for existing. I personally find such stories to be a chore to read because of their "greater purpose". I personally believe that while stories written in such a fashion can still be good, they are good in spite of their embedded purpose, not because of it.
Look around you. There's a lot of things about the world that suck, aren't there? Well, guess what. There's just as much positive things in the world (some times even more). It's just your brain evolved to prioritize negative stimuli so you don't die. Thanks evolution, you've ensured that most humans will ignore good things because bad things exist. I swear in 10,000 years when we're all in a science utopia there will be people rioting in the streets over a road with a single lane marker misplaced by 2mm.
J.R.R. Tolkien once said, "I use escapism as its proper sense, of as a man getting out of prison. Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisoned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape? if we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we are partisans of liberty, then it is our duty to escape." Our very minds are a prison of negativity. Stories are one of the few things that can carry us from that prison, even if it is just for a short while.
When you write a story with an intentional message that's clearly and obviously meant to teach the reader something about the real world, instead of simply being a part of a world you have constructed from words and ideas with which to entertain a reader... You're adding more bars onto the cell door. You are demanding that someone confront reality and focus on something of your choosing. We get enough of that from everything and everyone these days. Facebook posts. Tweets. People screaming on street corners. Tumbler posts. YouTube videos. Politicians who don't understand that compromise is what good politics is made of.
The earth is a turbulent sea of people screaming for attention so they can smash problems into your face and demand you care about each and every last little issue that exists or ever will exist. Escapist fantasy is an ever shrinking island that's slowly being swallowed up by the sea of negativity. People, I beg you, stop writing stories that are meant to "teach" or "send a message". You do know that kids in middle school and high school are genuinely depressed, ridden with anxiety, and suicidal all because people want to drown them in issues all day, very day, seemingly because no one understands how the Negativity Bias of the human brain works?
Do you not understand the genuine harm you are exacerbating with your actions? I know it is Ironic to rail against the sea of problems by pointing out that the creation of this sea is in fact a problem, but what is a woman to do? Please. Stop. My home is sinking beneath the sea.
Write about race relations if you must. But do it in the context of a world where the races are nothing like those which exist in reality. Let your lessons be absorbed passively by the reader if you must write for reasons other than to entertain.
But it's more than that. It's more than stories are an avenue of escape for humanity. I truly believe that stories and storytelling is not only what separates us from lower forms of animals, but it's also the only thing in the universe proven to exist which has any right to be called sacred.
Chimps, our closest living relatives, do not possess any form of complex communication. Chimps have a set of about 66 different gestures which they use to communicate with one another, and those gestures mean very very simple things.
"The vagueness of the gesture meanings suggest either that the chimps have little to communicate, or we are still missing a lot of the information contained in their gestures and actions. Moreover, the meanings seem to not go beyond what other less sophisticated animals convey with non-verbal communication."
Dr Susanne Shultz - https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-28023630
the main difference between ourselves and Chimps is language. Specifically: The ability to communicate about things which are happening at times other than now. When our ancestors left the trees for the Savannah, they encountered an environment where without the ability to communicate and coordinate as a team they would not survive. Chimps ancestors stayed int he safety of the trees and needed only to be able to quickly react when a predator began to scale their tree or came near them. They had easy escapes, we did not.
Evolution isn't magic. Things have to develop from other things. It's an adaptation, not creation. Brains do not like to grow bigger to develop brand new structures, those structures are simply repurposed as needed to fit a new environment. The difference between a human brain and a chimp brain is we traded hyper-detailed short-term memory for hyper-detailed communication. There's a trade-off in the biology of great apes, Good Communication for Good Short-term memory.
This trade-off is the key to sapience due to what good communication allows a species to do. We can understand ideas that begin with concepts like "maybe" and "if". Humans can discuss hypothetical and abstract concepts and events, in detail. Because of this, we can plan for the future and learn far more from the past than would otherwise be possible. As far as we know, no other animal is capable of this.
The capacity for imagining the future is unique. It is THE definitive human skill. That is what we do. Snakes poison. Cheetahs run fast. Birds fly. Fish swim. Humans imagine.
Human imagination is the key to everything. It's why while other species make tools, no other species has made such a simple tool as a bow, or an atlatl, or even a proper knife. These are all simple machines, devices so simplistic they are almost a single part, a lever, a wedge, a spring. That's all those things are. Human children playing in the woods can make crude versions of these things, and will if you let them.
Seeing as how the knife is literally just a narrow wedge and you can find sufficiently pointy rocks laying around, chimps relay have no excuse for not figuring that one out unless they lack the capacity to imagine. They have had just as long as humans to work out "Hey, if we make more pointed rocks like this one, we can use them to cut things like logs so we can get grubs more easily." and have been unable to do so.
Meanwhile, here I am, a human, and I am using an extremely complicated geometric pattern etched into a special kind of crystal to channel a fundamental universal energy in just the right way to turn my finger's moments into letters which you can read anywhere in the world. Our species have had the same amount of time on this world, and are nearly identical in every single way, and yet they are not even in the stone age while we are literally wizards who don't understand we perform magic every single day.
We are gods when compared to every other animal, and yet most of us don't even realize this because our abilities are so mundane and normal to us. I do not speak in jest. Humans can move rivers, bring untold devastation to any region of the globe we choose, slip free from the bonds of gravity to fly from place to place without wings of our own, voyage among the stars, and speak to people too far away to hear our voices.
All of this, thanks to language and the capacity to imagine the future, so we can prepare for the dangers of tomorrow.
Imagination does another thing aside from keeping us safe and allow us to live more comfortably. It allows us to be entertained. We can understand the concept of a story, that something being said is not real but is a fantasy meant to entertain. No other animal can do this. They cannot understand hypothetical scenarios. This ability is, so far as we can tell, uniquely human.
Or rather, uniquely a feature of hominids. Some of the very first ancestors of the human species to split off from Chimps must have been capable of this. We are the only surviving hominids, but we know our extinct brothers and sisters could communicate too. We have found Neanderthal paintings. We have found non-human hominid artifices which show they had a culture, produced art, and had societies which are like our own. They too had the gift of language, imagination.
In short, storytelling was almost certainly the very first art form. Ever.
This makes stories even more special than they already are. They are not merely a form of entertainment but are arguably the very first form of entertainment hominids developed. They are uniquely the product of sapient minds, which in the modern world makes them uniquely human. No other life form known to us possesses the capacity to understand something isn't real and isn't supposed to be, as it is meant simply to entertain.
The fact that humans can distinguish fantasy from reality is one of the most primal and basic parts of our very species. Storytelling is an art form and tradition that is not only older than civilization, not only older than our species but is actually the key to sapience itself. It is what makes us human. The capability to tell and understand stories IS humanity.
And most people seem to think this sacred art is to be used to pick humanity's soul to pieces in a time when we all desperately need something to cling to as a beacon of joy and contentment.
Shame on you.
A good story lets you take your own meaning, and only steers your mind by the author's own lens.
I'd say blame the Moral Guardians, who meddled in the late 20th Century, claiming that kids' entertainment needed to have a lesson to learn lest the kids' brains "decay" (figuratively) from a lack of genuine stimulation.
The Wheel Of Morality from Animaniacs pokes fun at this.
5498118 I know it's an old problem... I happen to be depressingly old (not to say I think old people shouldn't be a part of this fandom. I'm just sad I'm almost 30). Old problems are the worst problems. People learned to live with old problems. They rarely ever see solutions.
Well Said.
5498119
Younger than me, I'm already 30.
5498121 I hope you don't already randomly hurt for no reason :c I do.
I am 36 I may not be part of your fandom. But I don't see the point of forcing moral problems on stories in here. Heh, there is nothing Moral with how I have been writing my FOE story that is beyond the norms of a pony being the hero. But I can always remember that old Simpsons saying.. Will someone please think of the children?!
Well, then adults stop invading and let things be for kids.
I don't like Cold in Gardez or his fanboys either.
Very well-written piece there, Meep. Held my attention from the first paragraph.
Whenever I write, if there is a deep 'meaningful' message in there, it is all subconscious. To me, problems are to be overcome, bypassed or ignored. My real life is a mess, so when I write, I make things not quite as messy, and solutions can be found. They may not be obvious, but, how does that saying go? A blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while? Something like that.
Yeah, writing is my escapism. I do it because I LIKE to, I can have fun with them (the Hal Sleet line mainly, and whenever I can get a laugh or two in others) because I know that laughter is the best medicine. If I can't find it IRL, I'll find it here.
I'm twice your age (plus a little bit. Real little. LX type little). I've seen a lot, done a lot, I try to let some of my experiences guide some of the stories (R.T. and Sky Hook, mainly) because I can remember the foundations and embellish as necessary.
Deep meanings are there to be seen, just don't be blatant. Let your deep thoughts guide your fingers to put a deep meaning into tales. Just don't force the issue. When that happens, the storytelling becomes forced and readers lose interest.
I hope I stayed on topic. Meep, I'm one of your biggest fans. You is a wonder, lady!
5498160
For a few years now, but that's my fault, not my age's.
5498254 Wow, you know a problems' bad when you don't mention it directly but people still know what happened and who did it.
5498259 a subconscious message is impossible to avoid putting in, but that's fine. The point of a story is to show the readers something as seen by the author's eyes. But when the author stares at one thing while screeching like a chimp for the whole story, that's a problem.
5498603
Aye, I can agree with that.
hugs
Hope you like a spontaneous hug!