“All the works of man have their origin in creative fantasy. What right have we then to depreciate imagination.”
- Carl Jung (1875 - 1961)
In December as the weather gets colder (especially for us in the Northern Hemisphere) and the year winds down, there is the tendency to get somewhat introspective. Aside from the regular balancing act of getting into the “Holiday Spirit” whilst managing year-end business activities, this year many of us in the
Despite efforts of the Obama Administration to curtail this crisis, the
So who, in the long term, will be paying for all of this? Taxpayers like you and me and our children, their children, their children…that is, provided we have jobs and homes.
With all of this in mind, it’s hard not to turn inward and/or introspective when those around us wish us “HAPPY HOLIDAYS!” or “HAPPY NEW YEAR!” when many of us are just hoping we don’t give our loved ones the gift of debt this year.
I, myself, wonder at what point do we take a serious look at what aspects of our plans for economic recovery are real and which ones are not? I believe, wholeheartedly, that for the sake of posterity, we must have a serious discussion about reality and fantasy and their impact upon global sustainability.
Why?
Because I can…in fact, I will attempt in this article and in my next to prove two seemingly paradoxical ideas that are key to sustainability:
- Learning to distinguish between elements of reality and fantasy (this month), and
- Blurring the lines between the two (next month).
The Distasteful Notion of “Fantasy” in an Adult-oriented World
As adults who deal in important things like running businesses, paying bills and taxes, dealing with contracts, understanding international trade, quantifying risk, overcoming objections, finding alternative sources of energy, swaying public opinion, managing projects, curing contagions, driving through traffic, assessing damages, valuating stocks and financing enterprises we don’t have time for such trifling things like fantasy. Fantasy is usually relegated to either children (where it rightfully belongs), the crunchy granola-types who gather in drum circles around a campfire and sing “Kumba-ya”, “geeks” who read comic books, Walter Mitty-esque folks who don’t have a clue, artists or the red light district world of sex, “marital aids”, fetishes, latex, lace and leather. In short, fantasy is looked down upon and has no basis in real world of business.
In fact, in one of my more recent articles: A World Without Money, Part II, I had the audacity to engage you, our reader in a “flight of fantasy” (I thought I had cleverly disguised it as a hypothetical line of reasoning) and would have gotten away with it if not for a comment from Allan Elder, Instructor at University of California, Irvine and Owner, No Limits Leadership, Inc.:
“This idea is so full of impossibilities it's not worth considering even if we can.”
Thank you, Mr. Elder for setting me straight and proving my point as only the Owner of No Limits Leadership, Inc can.
The Importance of Imagination
For kids, on the other hand, it is perfectly legal (and more importantly, accepted) to discuss such issues as which princess is the prettiest, whether Superman or the Hulk would win in a fight, how many pieces of pizza one can consume at a meal, how much of a jerk the Gym teacher is, which Transformer one wants to be when they grow up and what color should one paint the sky today; green or purple? Kids are even encouraged to use their imagination.
So if we really want to prepare our kids for the real world, shouldn’t we be dissuading such abhorrent behavior?
Not according to WholeFamily.com. According to early childhood specialists and child psychologists, children who are encouraged to use their imagination more are:
- Better at solving problems
- Better at dealing with difficult feelings
- Better at handling stress
- More creative on average, and
- More intelligent on average.
One of the best examples of this are when, in movies, TV shows or books, when the heroes of the story are struggling to come up with a way out of their toughest dilemma ever and the innocent child archetype comes up with a “so-simple-only-a-child-could-think-of-it” solution.
But what if a child talks about real world issues or offers a real world opinion? Do we write it off as simply “cute”? Do we discount it? Do we consider them too young to have any say?
When Does Childhood End?
At what point, however, does a child graduate into being an adult?
According to some traditions, it’s thirteen. By law in the
Never at any point in my life do I remember any graduation ceremony in which I was told that I could now:
- Be seen and heard
- Talk to strangers
- Bite off more than I can chew
- Stop using my imagination and face reality.
According to popular psychological thought, we have three major elements of our personality that are developed at various stages in our journey through life: the child and the parent are two of them, and often times, at war with each other. The free-thinking, fun-loving “child” loves to explore, emote and imagine in true fantastic form whereas the “parent” is into rules, laws and regulation thrives in the seemingly-real world. The third personality is the “adult” which provides the more rational and logical means of settling the disputes between the other two and provides balance and a truer sense of realism than the parent.
The need for the human mind to sustain itself implies the delicate balance between these two “worlds”. What this implies is that since fantasy is infinite, it c
One other crucial and applicable point: when “reality” is perceived to be constrained and immutable, the mind changes in ways that lead to introspection, depression, defiance, etc. When these conditions become extreme, the fight or flight response is triggered.
The Upside of Troubling Times
Question: What is the one thing you want to do when you are financially-pressured, stressed and/or depressed?
Answer: Escape
If I had one prediction to make for 2010, it’s that more of the world’s citizens will be looking for ways to escape their current situation. Escapism will be on the rise.
Webster’s Dictionary defines escapism as “the avoidance of reality by absorption of the mind in entertainment or in an imaginative situation, activity, etc.”
Great news for industries specializing in inexpensive entertainment – think of the many ways we escape: sleep, reading, music, games, sports, walking, eating, drinking, hobbies, etc.
According to a study by Deloitte on the entertainment industry in 2009, “the last two times the economy experienced a downturn, movie ticket and DVD sales went up. It is likely that people will continue to indulge themselves in the small pleasures of DVD consumption, interactive game-playing, online entertainment, books, social networking and television while eschewing big-ticket items such as cars, refrigerators and computers.”
Furthermore, a quote found by JP Morgan beverage analyst John Faucher in a 2002 report on DUI.com: Alcohol Consumption and Recession stated that “People are drinking more, because people tend to drink more during tough times,”
My Conclusion
If we truly want to change our collective reality of a global economic crisis, we must ultimately be brave enough to change our collective minds. Ideally, a reset button would be wonderful but would be highly disruptive in ways that might be catastrophic. Of course choosing to do nothing would lead to such a conclusion anyway. One thing is for sure, our current solutions of debt-financing are just ways of prolonging the inevitable.
At what point do we recognize the fantastical elements of our grand designs through diminishing returns, continue to defend them and call them “reality”?
My suggestion is to measure the increase in time (not dollars) spent in escapist activities amongst the population. Certainly, there will always be a “healthy” level as young adults and youthful adults live, but to establish a suitable threshold would be crucial. If more people look to escape as a means of dealing with/avoiding “reality”, then why continue to create it?
Collectively, we have the ability to create a healthy, sustainable reality for ourselves and generations to come. We owe it to ourselves.
Because we can, and more importantly, because we must.
Next month, I will be looking at the ways we have found healthy ways to marry reality and fantasy to achieve sustainability. “See” you then.
Adam J. Kovitz is the Chairman & Founder of The National Networker Group of Companies, which publish The National Networker, provide member services and consulting as well as branding and social media domination.
Hire Adam to speak at your next conference by emailing info@thenationalnetworker.com.
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3 comments:
One analogy I would like to use in regards to our economy and fiscal policy would be the "old house in debt" reference.
In the real world, a home owner of an old beat-up house who's heavily in debt would do the reasonable thing - save money, spend money wisely, and if absolutely necessary borrow money to decrease debts or invest in an investment that would ultimately lighten your debt ratio, if not eliminate it (e.g. borrow money to purchase widget to be resell at X profit).
However, in this fantasy world we live in, we are borrowing even more money to fix the floor (shovel-ready jobs), purchase expensive air filters (Cap and Trade), and use more of these borrowed money to pay for our neighbors' entitlements when the money doesn't even belong to us (bailout)!
Worse yet, the "too big to fail" mentality leads many of us to believe that our creditors will continue to let us spend their money irresponsibly without any serious consequences - borrow money that will only increase to our debt, while not generating anything of fiscal value in return.
I guess ideally, one may argue regarding the "global value" of having cleaner air, cooler summer, etc., but not keeping in mind that our creditors do not accept carbon credit as a real form of payment! Furthermore, some of the exact same policy not only does not help us to make money, it further handicap our ability to generate the money needed to repay those payments. Imagine spending ten thousand dollars on an air-filtering system in your house that costs $100 additional dollar to maintain to decrease your CO2 - While it is for a noble cost I seriously doubt you will get many takers for the house, even if you give the filtering system away!
Keep up the good work in educating the general mass - one blogger/reader at a time!
I don't think it's any secret that throughout history, human beings in any number of distressing situations from which they cannot physically escape have sought mental escape as a means to cope. The difference is that today, through the power of the hyper-consumerist, non-stop advertising society that we live in, we are bombarded with the notion that we must possess any number of products or services that will provide this escape to us: TV, Movies, Video Games, nationally televised sports, clothing and fashion accessories, electronics, going to theme parks or bars and clubs...the list of high-profile, in-your-face "fun" things or experiences that we are told we need in order to improve the quality of our lives is seemingly endless.
On the other hand, encouragement to seek such escape from within via the creative arts or religion/spirituality/meditation come across far more weakly, sometimes with hardly more fanfare than a low-budget Public Service Announcement, or even to the point of being marginalized as applying or pertaining to only a specific or extreme segment of our population. Even when such activities are encouraged, their advocacy is all too often a thinly-veiled attempt to push "stuff": to make the best music, you must buy "THIS" guitar; to reach the highest levels of enlightenment, you must attend "THIS" yoga class; to draw the most beautiful sketches, you need "THESE" pencils.
It's paradoxical that more and more, we involve ourselves in the "rat race" and society rewards those who work the most and the hardest, while at the same time encouraging the attitude (even present in the culture of higher education) that fun and leisure are paramount. How is this possible? Simple: Those who would have us consume their goods know in order for us to blow all our money on them, we must earn it first (unless you've got a credit card, but that argument could fill another few pages). What better way to produce a recurring cycle of escapism than to extol the hardest workers, who are indeed encouraged to make work the center of their lives, then step right in and provide an escape from those same conditions? Is it any wonder that escapism seemingly at an all-time high?
If Marx was ever correct in insisting that religion serves as an opiate to the masses, he is no longer; our new deity is entertainment.
The way I see it, this has less to do with the fantastic world of childhood vs. the “real” world of a grown-up, and more to do the fact that manufacturers and sellers of consumer products will exploit any perceivable chink in human armor in order to make money off of us.
You might try rebranding escapism as socialising, volunteering, personal development or similar. And then think of a way it could be taxed - then governments might encourage it.
Dave Marsay
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