Escapism And Conscious Living

• You can escape your reality, but you must always return back to it.
• Alternate realities can have a positive or negative impact on your life.
• The desire to escape reality is increasing in society.

The life you are currently living is your main reality. However, virtually everyday you escape from that reality, either for a few minutes or a few hours.

So for a quick example to demonstrate this imagine your life as your main reality, and the time you have been reading this article you momentarily slipped into another reality.

You still exist in your original reality, but because you have slipped into a new reality (by reading this article) your consciousness is focused in the new reality, which means you are unconscious (unaware) in your original main reality.

Returning To Reality                                 

Whatever reality your consciousness has been diverted to, one thing will always remain the same. You must return back to your original main reality (your life), and when you do you will bring back with you what you learnt from the reality you just visited, and either apply it to your life or ignore it.

Now the trouble with escaping from reality is that by doing so you leave your main life in an unconscious state. This means that whatever reality you escape to, will either have a beneficial or negative impact on your main life.

For example, if you have an exam tomorrow and are bored of working, but you know you need to keep working, you could do 2 things. 1) escape your main reality by watching TV or 2) Stay in your main reality and continue working (in the truest sense by working you still slip into another separate although related reality).

Whatever choice you make will either have a beneficial or negative impact on your main life, which in this case will be your exam performance.

This is an extremely important point to recognise, because as you saw in a previous article, people often choose to escape from their main reality (their life) in order to hide from, or disown, feelings of pain, discomfort or anxiety it may be causing them.

Whilst this escape may provide some temporary short term relief, ultimately they find that by escaping from their reality they have only postponed the inevitable, and made things much worse than they originally were.

Is Escaping Reality A Bad Thing? 

Slipping into other realities is not necessarily a bad thing. It’s sometimes nice to escape from your main reality, and watch a film, read a book or play a computer game. It’s like taking a holiday away from your “life”, and the things you may not like about it.

However, where this becomes a problem is when living in other realities becomes more appealing than living in your main reality. When this occurs people are often said to have “no life”.

This is an interesting remark, because by living in other realities your main life automatically becomes unconscious (although still active) until you return to it. So maybe there is some truth behind that expression?

The Future Of Reality?               

Another point worth making is that this desire to avoid reality only seems to be getter stronger as technology progresses. For example, there have been several cases where people have actually died playing computer games.

These people had played computer games for several days without a break, only stopping to go to the toilet, or take short naps during their “marathon gaming session”.

Apparently the appeal of a new reality (the video game) was so desirable that they preferred living in the computer generated reality, rather than their own real life. In the end they spent so much time in their alternate reality, they died in real life.

This seems to suggest two things 1) there is a time limit you can spend in another reality before your main reality collapses, and 2) when your main reality collapses so do all the other realities that stem from it. Therefore in order to support new realities you must support your main reality.

Escaping Further…  

I suspect this trend towards escapism will continue to escalate as the general population feels more and more inadequate with who they are (the primary motivator towards escapism), and the richness and realism of technology increases.

In particular I think virtual reality and true 3D TV (technologies that will create worlds that seem almost as real as our own) will pose the greatest temptation, and therefore the most problems.

With these new technologies (which will be arriving very soon) people will be able to create their own perfect worlds. But as we have already seen, this may ultimately come at the expense of their own real life world.

One example which demonstrates this point well is a programme called “Second Life”. This Internet based “reality game” allows participants to live in a virtual world.

In Second Life they can control the way they look, get virtual jobs to earn money, go shopping, build themselves houses, have sex and even get married.

It truly is a second life as the name suggests, and has been extremely popular since it was released. One of the main reasons for it’s popularity, is that it allows people to escape from the reality of their life.

Whatever they may not like about themselves, or their lives, can be changed in Second Life. They can become the person they always wanted to be, and have the things they always wanted to have, and forget, at least momentarily, about their everyday life.

However as you can imagine, this level of escapism can be extremely addictive, and can have serious repercussions on a persons “real” life.

For example, as a result of Second Life there have been people loosing contact with friends, parents neglecting their children, affairs, divorces and even a murder. 

Escaping Through Time

I think that overall the important point here is that alternate realities in themselves are not bad, and can be both beneficial and enjoyable.

In fact people have been escaping to alternate realities for centuries, throughout all cultures of the world.

This was usually done via a herb or special plant with psychedelic properties, although these “trips” as they are called, were carried out for spiritual reasons, rather than for recreation which seems to be the trend today.

These “magical herbs” have now been replaced by other types of drugs, alcohol and technology. Although in essence they still serve the same basic purpose, an escape from one reality into another.

Dangers Of Escapism

The only time escapism may pose a problem is when alternate realities become preferable to, and used as a replacement for the original reality.

When this occurs there can be very serious consequences to a persons life. Second Life provides a good example of these potential consequences, and also an indication of some problems advanced future technologies may bring.

As technology advances and life like virtual reality technology becomes mainstream, “addiction” to alternate realities is likely to increase exponentially.

Those most at risk of becoming “virtual addicts” will likely be those who feel inadequate with themselves, and the life they lead. Consequently these feelings will make future Second Life’s seem very appealing.

This is something that everyone should be aware of, as today we live in an entertainment society where escaping reality is actively encouraged.

So if you are unhappy with your life, be careful in using alternate realities to escape from your worries or problems. Whilst they may seem tempting, they may ultimately have very real and undesirable consequences.

The only way to truly overcome your problems, and lead the life you would like to live, is by understanding and improving your own level of self esteem, accepting yourself for who and what you are and living your life consciously. Anything else is just an unsustainable illusion.

So do as Freddie Mercury once said and just, “Open your eyes, look up to the skies and see”.