Save the Fantasy, Save the World

This guy right here.

I never really thought of Terry Pratchett as a fantasy author. Pressed to describe his genre I'd call him a satirist: his worlds to me were as real and human as the one we're in now, just better annotated to give insight to the cosmic joke we're all a part of.

But my sister doesn't read fantasy (excepting the Bible, I'll playfully rib her), and doesn't like Terry Pratchett. When I asked her to just give it a shot and showed her an excerpt that had been in a newspaper advertising his then newly-released Going Postal, she giggled, but then pushed it away and reaffirmed that she had no interest in reading anything so silly. Silly, folks, not because it was funny, but because it's part of the fantasy genre. To my sister—and most people I know—what isn't real is nonsensical and impractical.

She certainly isn't alone, and there's a certain phrase that I've heard time and time again from so many sources that it just makes me die a little inside every time recognise it anew, with all it implies from a new acquaintance:

'I don't read fiction.'

Or its subtle, condescending, 'I've outgrown your childish phase because I'm a Serious Grown-Up™' variant:

'I've stopped reading fiction.'

As it happens the last one makes me die a lot rather than a little, and forces me to undergo a Fawkesian metamorphosis mid-conversation if I'm to continue with a big fake smile and a wide-eyed stare that doesn't too obviously say: 'You're crazypants,' but that has the side-effect of making me look like one instead. Fortunately by the time we've reached that point, it's likely been in response to me professing my love for fantasy and science-fiction, or I've foolishly answered a passerby's inquisition of 'What are you reading?' with something other than, 'Book.'

How Fawkes feels inside you say the phrase, 'I don't read fiction.'

Explaining the plot of any book that contains wands, spaceships and/or dragons is usually enough for most Serious Grown-Ups to classify you as 'special needs', by which point you're past the point of no return. Ideally, you should instead at all times be carrying a detachable cover of The Art of War or Who Moved My Cheese and master the art of swiftly drawing them from your sleeve to conceal what you're actually reading with something that will both impress and avoid awkward conversations. Both of these are rather thin volumes, though, so if you absolutely must read a doorstopper you should resort to a detachable Crime and Punishment instead. They'll be so astounded and terrified that they'll flee the conversation at their earliest convenience and recommend you for immediate promotion via the next available ape in a Serious Grown-Up suit.

But this world we live in makes me sad, just like it made poor Terry angry. I don't want to have to keep pretending I've read Crime and Punishment, though I promise to get around to it eventually, so instead in Terry's honour I'm going to make a last-ditch attempt to convince whoever's reading this (hey, Sis!) to shed some biases. Or if you're one of those people who's been saying to yourself, 'Golly, I really ought to stop rereading Harry Potter and get around to some "better", more Serious Grown-Up books like this inspiring business mogul's trifling, ghost-written autobiography where he says the same thing every other inspiring business mogul has ever said,' I'd like you to stop beating yourself up right now and follow your Disney dreams.

Why? Because I believe that the fantasy genre has the power to save the world. Really. But maybe I've just read too many fantasy books.

I thought all I had to do was save the cheerleader.

Let's put it in Sir Pratchett's eloquent words:

"Fantasy isn't just about wizards and silly wands. It's about seeing the world from new directions."

Thanks, Sir Pratchett. We miss you already.

To many Serious Grown-Ups who've stopped reading fiction, fantasy is a particularly heinous genre which is to be avoided at all costs, but there are variants of fiction which may at times be forgiven if approached with care and the correct protective gear: namely, a closed mind. Gone Girl is sort of okay, The Da Vinci Code is sensible as long as you aren't an offended Christian, and I suppose if you're a female applying for a job in journalism you're allowed to read Jane Eyre too. Excess frivolity and fantastical elements are to be dismissed, since goblins and demons are inapplicable to the real world and have no bearing on your life. Which is exactly the point.

Non-fiction books—by extension, fiction books set in the real world too—are cheating. They're telling you what to think, not working to convince you how. It isn't clever to read a book about the Holocaust and think, 'Gosh! Those Nazis sure were bastards,' or a book about your favourite business mogul and think 'S/he's so inspirational!' when that's exactly what you thought beforehand. This is a pretty easy way to sell, but that doesn't make it good. If you've been thinking to yourself that The Art of War is the progressive kale to The War of the Worlds' juvenile junk-food, think again.

Reading fiction forces you to:

• empathise
• experience
• and learn

...from a story that is outside your mental comfort zone. Don't take my word for it, there's research links right there, and here's a video for your convenience too:

There is nothing more exciting (okay, maybe a few things, but within this context...) than going up to a fantasy fan and saying, 'Hey, do you think Tolkien's portrayal of the orcs and the dwarves was sort of racist? Do you think the fact that hardly anyone's noticed says a lot about how we naturally dehumanise other cultures and view war politics in black and white?' Watch the argument ensue; I know diehard fantasy fans who could argue about the social implications of their favourite books for days. Try going up to someone and starting a debate about Hitler where you don't both solemnly nod your heads and concur, 'Yes, yes, awful,' and see how far that gets you.

Fantasy lets us view our world without bias. None of us were born Lannisters or Starks: we have no natural tribal affiliation to either house. When you see a fantasy nerd proudly sporting a shirt that reads, 'The North Remembers!' It means that nerd right there has given the events of A Song of Ice and Fire (or realistically, just Game of Thrones on telly) independent thought and decided for themselves which ideology speaks to them the most. The same may not be true when you see a hat that reads 'Jesus take the wheel,' or when someone posts something political to their Facbeook. Like this:

When I was in school I was made to read An Inspector Calls. 'This makes a lot of sense,' young me thought to myself, or was told to think to myself. 'How sad that poor Eva committed suicide because of these selfish capitalist pigs.' It wasn't until years later that I thought to myself, 'Wait, hang on, that's completely ridiculous—you can't just blame everyone around a victim for their depression, regardless of politics.'

If there's really a genre that's heinous, absurd and should be avoided at all costs, I declare it to realistic-setting fiction that tells you what to think. If there's indeed any kind of book that should be banned from schools for indoctrinating children into cult-like thinking, it should be An Inspector Calls, not Harry Potter.

Saving the World

Alright, theoretical mumbo-jumbo aside, how does preserving the fantasy genre actually save the world? And from what?

To the impatient pragmatist reading this (hey, Sis!), for starters let me say that I think having a world of more open minds qualifies in itself as saving it. Stories we read, movies we see, shows we watch, even the music we listen to—every pop-culture icon in history—has an impact on the world around it. If it didn't, the concept of propaganda wouldn't exist. Telling people what to think about the real world is pretty much the definition of propaganda (but here's a link to the Oxford for you sticklers), whereas peeling back the biases and letting them draw their own conclusions about various tribe-free ideologies is the opposite. Even though I think Tolkien's evil race of orcs is a racist and dehumanising way to look at an opposing culture your people are at war with, I don't actually have a stake in the matter which could cloud the debate. This puts me better on guard when I see politicians doing the same thing, and if everyone was more on guard against it, we might not have wars. Imagine that. (As a spoiler alert: It's never going to happen. But hey, we can dream.)

Let's actually talk about dreams. What did you dream of doing when you were younger? Where are you now? If these mesh, congratulations, you either weren't very ambitious or you're uncommonly accomplished. For me, these dreams always have been and always will be bigger than what I can actually accomplish, for which I blame the fantasy genre. And yet, I'm here to tell you that's healthy.

Not every fantasy fan does this. For some it's just escapism, where for a bit they get to immerse themselves into a good dose of world-saving, heroism, fair maidens and all sorts of other nonsense that they could never actually do in the real world. Except... says who? If you can identify the deeper appeal the fantasy genre has for you, you can actually utilise that story and decide to live it. If you don't dig fantasy at all, your dreams may not stretch as far as they could to begin with.

Every person in the history of the universe (or rather, the little fraction of the history of the universe during which we puny humans have been around) who has ever been labeled 'extraordinary' has done extraordinary things. This should be considered intuitive, except for some reason it isn't. Let me repeat that in a way that sounds patronising (you can punch me later): They have done extra ordinary things. They have gone outside the ordinary.

People sit there reading Richard Branson and Steve Jobs and Nelson Mandela's autobiographies (ladies, I apologise for lacking representation, but mainstream media isn't there with you yet) and think to themselves, 'Wow, amazing,' and then they go on about their ordinary lives. Some read the story of a humble Hobbit who left the Shire on a quest for adventure, who used bravery and cunning to (sort of) save the world (actually he kind of just fucked it up for Frodo, but we'll let that slide) and yet when children in the school system voice revolutionary ideas or big pipe-dreams, they're given a pat on the head and told to focus on their algebra for now. That 'now' that becomes then and forever, until you're sitting in an office cubicle with no clue how you got there and your dream to go to outer space condenses into 'Ibiza with mates over Summer'.

I'm flabbergasted, ladies and gents, so let me be annoying again and repeat that phrase one more time:

If you want to be extraordinary, you have to do extraordinary things.

Maybe you don't want to be extraordinary, and that's fine. Read Richard Branson's autobiography and move on with your life. But I'm here to advocate saving the world, which is why I'm saying read fantasy novels and then live them. If your favourite heroes are martial arts badasses, go take a Kung-Fu class. If you've always wanted to explore the jungle, go look into a job, internship, study course, anything, and find out how to get there. There are a million fantasy things that you can decide to do that will enrich your life: join a political party, sign up for fencing or archery classes, picture that you're Bilbo and go backpacking dirt-cheap around Europe, or even stand up for what you believe in through a blog that no one will read. (Hi, Sis!)

So I decided to save the world. It's not as dramatic as it's been for any of my favourite fictional characters, but it's little things. I'm very passionate about environmentalism, and when I do my bit to reduce my impact on the planet or spread some advocacy, I feel a bit like a superhero saving the world. I'd like to imagine that I'll one day publish a good book or two that will change the world a bit for however many or few people end up reading it, too. My dreams are all ridiculous, but that's fine, because people said the same about the small ones I've already fulfilled. Fantasy is what drove me.

So what's your dream?

Creative Problem-Solving

Never underestimate the value of imagination. Thinking outside the box is a valuable skill, and that includes thinking outside the realm of the possible, too. Within reason, of course; I don't advocate believing in ghosts, because you should maintain a balance and cognisance between the Subjective and the Objective Reality.

But it never hurts to think about the absurd, about 'what if' scenarios, about inconceivable problems. Those are always the ones that stump you, after all, so it's good to get some practice in there. I'll leave you with this uplifting PBS Idea Channel video telling you why your dirty secret penchant for D&D prepares you better for life than most of your peers are, and drop another quote of one of my favourite, sadly gone authors:

"Fantasy is an exercise bicycle for the mind. It might not take you anywhere, but it tones up the muscles that can."

Rest in Peace, Sir. Like something out of fantasy, you've become an immortalised God through your works, and are an inspiration to us all.

The Purple Pill: Objective vs. Subjective Reality

We're going to start with primary colours.

Life as you know it isn't as you know it. Life is perception.


Depending on yours, for instance, you might now be picturing me as either a wise guru or as a scruffy-haired stoner with dilated pupils, dispensing paranoid platitudes shakily from its perch. The rest of what I say is going to be coloured through that perspective, and will continue to be as you suss out where else I stand with or against you on your existing perspective on life.


You already don't remember most of what I've actually said. Perhaps less so when you're sedentary at your computer, but the brain is bombarded with information at an alarming rate. You can't and won't take most of it in, filtering it to the back of your mind to focus on what actually matters. Rather than absorbing this post as the isolated string of characters it actually is, you interpret this little semi-circle-shaped squiggle as 'c' and a collection of its kind as a word with the definition you've been taught for it. This post becomes a sentiment that reflects not only my intent, but your interpretation, and it will gradually degrade with each recollection. In other words this post, to the fullest extent of which you are capable of knowing it, doesn't exist.


But of course it does exist, doesn't it? It's here, you can link to it, you can provide evidence of it as an objective fact. As such there are at least two versions of it: the fuzzy one in your head; and the one that's right here and still will be even if, Flying Spaghetti forbid, you suffer a cardiac arrest in your seat right now and your memory fizzles out of existence. Until that happens you are living in two realities, an Objective one that exists outside of your biases and a Subjective one that exists within.


People like to think they're more in tune with the Objective reality than they really are. Daniel Kahneman's research on cognitive biases turned a lot of that on its head, and he won a Nobel Prize in economics for proving what irrational goons we all are and how to make money by exploiting that. (Or averting that, supposedly.) Ask most people and they'll assure you that they're paragons of reason and good sense, whether or not their beliefs and attitudes actually make any. Making good sense is hard, after all, and requires a level of filtration that no one can consistently do on the spot even if they dedicate their life to rigorous self-examination for the more important issues. You can't tune out your emotions, instincts and upbringing fully all the time, nor control your degrading memory of what occurs even as it is occurring.

Sensible people right here. Just ask them.

What I'm saying isn't particularly novel. Fervent philosophers have been saying that life is perception for over a millennia, gathering around to stroke their... beards, shall we say, over semantics to determine the best and most accurate way to view it as such. They soon degenerated into the scruffy-haired stoner standing in for me above, and Ayn Rand soon arrived with her Objectivism to say, 'No it isn't,' some time after that. Gestalt psychology persists to insist that we know not what we see, as does the conventional neuroscience distinction between sensation and perception. Then there's some physics involving a cat that's both dead and alive in quantum mechanics, while the internet can't even agree on the meaning of a dress that's both subjectively white and gold and objectively blue and black.

#thedress, the most news-worthy confoundment the internet could come up with this week.

Your whole life is a lie. Alright, that's a bit dramatic, but I'll present you with a choice: Red Pill or Blue Pill? In which reality do you wish to dwell? In comfortable illusion, or in the thrill of hard truth? This is a choice you've been presented with many times before, both in the Matrix—where you're clearly meant to support the Good Guys' choice and not let yourself be oppressed by the evil robots controlling society that the late 90s were so fixated with (see Equilibrium, Fight Club, the same general theme of bored, middle-class white male protagonist)—and every time someone has told you something you didn't like. There's no heaven, for example. There's no hell. Life is just this and you probably won't end up rich or famous in it. The universe doesn't care about you. You're privileged. As an obnoxious bird who takes great pleasure in telling people these things, let me tell you: most people prefer the Blue Pill. It is usually swallowed with insults and anger.

Unfortunately, life is apparently always a binary choice.

How deep does the Rabbit Hole go? You probably won't like it. At the very least, I'm upfront enough to admit that I don't like it.

The Red Pill: Breaking down free will, the soul, love, God, and who you are.

I am an atheist. No one else in my immediate family is, at least not to the same clear-cut degree, and I became one at the age of six upon learning for the first time—to my great chagrin—that God was not a scientifically proven fact. I expect a fair portion of people reading this to be religious, and my point here is not to alienate so much as it is to illustrate my commitment to objective scientific reason. Disillusionment with the concept of free will, the soul and everything else came later on for me (with both self and institutionalised education), and I owe the first part to Sam Harris.

Thanks a lot, Sam Harris. You've ruined everything.

If you too consider yourself to be a person committed to objective scientific reasoning, at a certain point you may ask yourself where it is you must draw the line. You're hardcore if you don't; I admire you. Certainly, the answer should be that we never draw the line, because with every lie and bias peeled away you should be uncovering another underneath. Learning is or should be a lifelong process, but more frequently overlooked is the necessity of also unlearning to make way. The world is never the same one decade to the next, in culture or in knowledge, which is why my first post on this blog about my generation's inadequacy ought to have set off your pretentious bullshit detector.

The problem with never drawing the line is that you can strip so deep that you grow to question the value of what it is you're trying to expose underneath. Religion was an easy concept for me to unlearn, but I expect free will is harder for most, along with an attachment to the concept of a soul; that being the idea that there is something mystical about you that is 'uniquely you', an essence that is more than just a fleeting and temporary perception of signals in your cerebral cortex. Those who have loved may find it difficult to think of romance as more than a predictable chemical reaction based on hormonal compatibility, and so on. In the end, are we really sure of any concept being objective other than 'matter and energy', as a friend of mine likes to put his reality? Are we more than meaningless specks of carbon doing our weird little thing in the tiny little petri dish of life we're floating in through the Milky Way?

Yes, is my answer. But that's because I can openly acknowledge my desire to swallow the Blue Pill—not as a preference to the Red Pill of Objective Reality, but as an accompaniment that I thrive on, and love wholeheartedly and equally.

The Purple Pill: an alternative.

The soul is real. Forget what I said. So is free will and love. If you want and need him to be, God can be too.

They are real because you make them real in your mind. When I talk about the Objective and Subjective realities as a plural, I earnestly mean that they are both real, simply in different ways. The sensation you might have when reading the dialogue of your favourite character in a favourite book is similar; if you're like me, you might picture them walking in your mind, might begin to see and know their face and feel it become intimately a part of you. Why is your subjective perception of Bilbo Baggins less real than the image you have projected onto your favourite celebrity or politician? And were they to step down from their pedestal, what level of familiarity would be necessary for them to be thought of as real people? To relegate the very real experiencess we associate with equally real concepts to the realm of 'not real' is to me an arbitrary semantic, lacking purpose or use.

I think this is what many atheists mean when they describe themselves as spiritual but irreligious, so I hope putting it this way helps. A soul doesn't have to come from a God or exist outside of my imagination to be real and have meaning.

And so back to the original choice:

Do you take the Blue Pill of Subjectivity and stay in Wonderland, or do you take the Red Pill to see how deep the Rabbit Hole goes?

I advocate the cognitive dissonance of the Purple Pill. The only thing that exists in neither reality, for me, is the presented choice itself.

The Experiment

I don't have a particularly high opinion of bloggers. The sorts of people who think their lives and opinions matter, who believe they've something to say that hasn't been said before, or that their menial day-to-day activities differ in dramatism from the average and need to be shared, drawn in, immortalised on the interwebs.

Don't they know we're all just lost souls swimming in a fishbowl? Don't they know there's no such thing as an original idea or line? It's this Me-Me Generation, I tell you, crying out to be heard above the racket they themselves are making. They're so busy talking themselves up they forget to talk to each other. They've made the digital world so crowded that they've turned the real one empty. Where's my yard stick when it needs shaking?

Anyway, so I've decided to start a blog. I'm special, you see, not a fish but a bird. I think I'm about ten years too late for the trend, but I'm going to make it work.

A good blog needs a purpose. While it's true no one's life is interesting enough to be shared, people will read a blog if it appeals to a specific interest of theirs, like fitness, dating advice or conservatism. As it happens I intend to explore none of these—though for the record, my opinion on all three is generally 'no thanks'—and instead I'm going to disobey my own advice and just write about what I'd like to write. Maybe I'll find a purpose in it as we go on, maybe I won't. Maybe finding that purpose is going to be what this blog is about. Isn't that what we all want, after all? This is an experiment that I expect none but my most dedicated stalkers to follow, but maybe I'll be surprised. It may fizzle out after a few weeks, or this may in fact be both my first and last post. Let's find out.

xoxo,

gossip girl
(I'll figure out a better sign off as we go on.)