Escapism is a phenomenon that represents the individual’s isolated and conciliatory tendency to slip away into an illusory universe, hiding from reality. Simply put, the phenomenon under consideration, escapism, lies in the desire of a human subject or part of a social association to move away from the generally accepted model of social life. The basis of escapism is uncertainty about the reasonableness of generally established norms that form the basis of the ideas of society. The result is a critical rethinking of such norms. For the phenomenon of escapism to arise, it is necessary for society to reach the peak level of its own development, at which social disadaptation and detachment from society do not lead to death, as in primitive society, when ostracism was often chosen as a punishment for offenses and criminal acts.
What is escapism?
Escapism is the desire to escape, hide, or withdraw from reality by engaging in illusions or intense activities. The term “escapism” is derived from the English word escape (“escape”, “to run away”), which is familiar to every computer user, since it is present in an abbreviated form on any modern keyboard.
There are different forms of manifestation of escapism. A person can immerse himself in books, films and TV series, television shows and computer games . Sometimes escapism manifests itself in more active (and often very productive) activities, such as sports, handicrafts, creativity and all kinds of hobbies. But much more often it is some kind of “pseudo-activity” that gives a person a feeling of movement, but does not lead to any result (and, therefore, does not take him out of his comfort zone).
Many authors argue that in the modern world, many more people demonstrate a penchant for escapism. This is explained by the fact that living conditions are now quite comfortable and carefree. Every person knows that he lives in a relatively safe world, and in order to feed himself and his family, he only needs to do his job well and responsibly. At the same time, he has a lot of time left for hobbies and entertainment, allowing him to escape from reality, which is often far from ideal.
The term "escapism" has appeared relatively recently. In 1939, this word was included in Webster's dictionary. And the phenomenon itself manifested itself very clearly after the end of World War II. This was the heyday of the creative activity of many writers who wrote fairy tales and stories in a style that allows the reader to be completely immersed in the world of the main characters, distracted from reality.
For example, Tove Jansson showed in her fairy tales a world over which some terrible threat always hangs, but everything always ends happily. And adults liked her books no less than children, because Moominvalley was a reflection of the real world before, during and after the war. And Astrid Lindgren came up with Pippi Longstocking to show that a person can have great strength (that is, power), but not abuse it. Reading such tales is a form of escapism that many adults resort to.
In the post-war years, books by John Tolkien (Tolkien) became incredibly fashionable. His work is notable for the fact that he created an entire universe with a finely developed mythology , in which the actions of his books take place. This allows fans to be completely immersed in this universe, reading one story, and then move on to other stories without leaving it. Today, immersion in Tolkien's fairy-tale worlds is one of the most common forms of escapism.
Examples of escapism
The most common example of escapism is the immersion in works of art described above. It is also worth noting that the writers themselves, for the most part, are escapists (in particular, the aforementioned Astrid Lindgren, Tove Jansson and John Tolkien themselves talked about how they immersed themselves in the fairy-tale and fantasy worlds they created ). This is not surprising, because creating a literary masterpiece really requires the author to immerse himself in a fictional world.
In the modern world, an increasingly common example of escapism is immersion in various forms of virtual reality. If a person does not have some of Maslow’s basic needs met, he can find solace in the world of online games, where he will have a high level and the most expensive weapons, and his name will occupy the top lines in the game rankings. Or he can spend time on social networks , where he will look successful and happy to everyone, because he publishes only the best photos there.
The peculiarity of both situations described above is that a person not only pretends to be a successful person, but actually feels successful. Coming home in the evening and logging into a game or social network, he is completely immersed in this world, distracted from life’s problems and enjoys the significance of his virtual achievements.
Sometimes escapism manifests itself in much more active activities. People facing personal problems try to find a way to distract themselves. They throw themselves into work, immerse themselves in hobbies, and play sports. Probably, everyone knows the situations when a guy or girl, after a painful breakup, dramatically changes their lifestyle, becomes an adherent of a healthy lifestyle, and starts going to the gym (this behavior is typical for those who have been dumped, but not for those who have dumped).
Life in virtuality
Life on the Internet is life without unnecessary difficulties and problems, without challenges and unwanted contacts. And most importantly, there are practically no contradictions in it. Everything is simple and clear there. Despite the fact that the Internet is a colossal source of information, it is also a place where you can abstract from it by simply selecting the segment that interests you: a game, a community, a social network. Information outside the scope of immersion practically does not reach the child.
The biggest danger of the Internet is “addiction”. The search for salvation in the vastness of the global network makes children dependent on the virtual space, the only question is the degree of this dependence.
It is believed that online games are the most addictive; they bind children to them faster than other “shelters” and there is a logical explanation for this. The psyche of adolescents is not stable enough and is easily influenced. The games are developed by psychologists and are aimed at providing users with pleasure and positive emotions.
In general, games provide what an individual needs to gain satisfaction. In addition to the desired bonuses and rewards, games provide communication with other like-minded people and allow you to create your ideal self.
Types of escapism
The best way to understand what escapism is is to understand its basic forms. There are a huge number of different manifestations of this psychological phenomenon, which are not limited to the examples above. Moreover, depending on the initial reason, three main types of escapism can be distinguished:
- Avoiding discomfort. This is a common and fairly harmless form. If some circumstances are unpleasant for a person, he tries to occupy his thoughts with something else so as not to think about them. Sometimes he may even “close himself off” from people he finds unpleasant, with whom he is forced to communicate regularly (for example, at work).
- Escape from problems. This form of escapism is common to almost all people. For example, if a person is very tired from work or is faced with some problems that put a lot of pressure on him, he can find some kind of distraction for himself: take a day off, go to the cinema, play a computer game. After this, having rested slightly from the problem, he returns to it with renewed vigor and solves it.
- Escape from reality. This form is the most severe and dangerous. If some difficulties in life seem insurmountable to a person, he begins to distance himself more and more from reality. As a rule, this is accompanied by addictive behavior. He begins to drink alcohol or more dangerous psychotropic substances, and sometimes suffers from severe forms of gambling addiction. Often the behavior of such a person changes so much that it begins to cause serious inconvenience to his loved ones.
Reasons for escapism
When explaining what escapism is, they usually always clarify that it is an attempt to step away from reality in order to avoid some kind of discomfort or make up for the lack of pleasant emotions. However, if you dig deeper, you will find that there are several main reasons that occur most often:
- Diffidence. If a person feels that his social status is not high enough or that he lacks some important resources, he tries to make up for this lack in other areas. Most often this is virtual escapism, but it also happens that people try to increase their importance in real life (for example, by making a large number of friends or participating in some kind of social project).
- Family crises. Situations in families are very different. These could be conflicts, problems with raising children, toxicity of close relatives or problems with their health. A family crisis may well become a factor that will lead to the most severe form of escape from reality if a person suddenly seems to have made a mistake that can no longer be corrected.
- Career problems. Each of us, entering adulthood, makes certain career plans. These plans may or may not be very detailed, but over time, most people have to face the fact that not all their ambitions can be realized. Realizing this, a person begins to escape from reality, devoting all his free time to watching TV series or playing computer games.
- Dissatisfaction with personal and social life. Each of us has a natural need for personal happiness and a rich social life. And very often, dissatisfaction in one of these areas leads a person to start communicating a lot online, thereby compensating for the lack of social or romantic communication. Often social phobes “escape” to online communication, thus satisfying their need for society.
- Loss of interest in life. Sometimes this happens to people. They cease to understand what they are striving for and what they want, they lose the opportunity to dream and make grandiose plans. All they experience is boredom. And trying to find some new meaning in life, they begin to experiment, immersing themselves in social networks, online games, and sometimes even start using psychoactive substances.
Where is the exit
The situation seems hopeless. Fleeing from neuroses, we “escape” into another reality, so that at the exit from it we encounter the same neurosis, only in a more severe form. But it is impossible to refuse escapism - it provides at least some protection from stress, the level of which is constantly growing in the world around us. We just need to make the transition from the virtual distance to our world less painful. A good method for this is to consider our so-called real world as illusory as the one to which we escape. Perhaps then it will be possible to discern romance, beauty, magic in him - everything that we are looking for in the realm of fantasy.
Escapism is inherent in the behavior of many people who find themselves in a situation of real threat to health and life. They accept reality in all its details, except for one factor that they refuse to notice or acknowledge. After the accident at the nuclear power plant, many evacuated residents returned to the Chernobyl zone, and some did not leave their homes at all. They were told about the deadly effects of radiation on humans, and every day they observed the liquidators of the accident, dressed in protective suits. But they were convinced that what was happening did not concern them personally. And the fact that they carefully cleaned their houses, “washing away radiation,” and serenely rejoiced at the harvest and the size of the mushrooms, is not explained by illiteracy alone. Rather, it was a kind of self-hypnosis that protected the reality they had invented.
5 Famous Escapists
- The Roman Emperor Diocletian abdicated power in 305 and settled in Salona (present-day Croatia), where he peacefully grew cabbage.
- In 1891, the French artist Paul Gauguin, misunderstood in his homeland, went to Tahiti in search of solitude, only to find syphilis and an early death.
- Hollywood star Greta Garbo left cinema at the age of 35 and hid from the public. They say she wanted to remain young in the audience's memory.
- American billionaire Howard Hughes spent the last ten years of his life (by the way, he participated in the development of the Spruce Goose aircraft; the film “The Aviator” was based on his biography) spent locked up in his hotel in Las Vegas, fleeing from germs.
- In 1952, 28-year-old Frenchman Alain Bombard, leaving a promising career as a doctor, was the first to sail across the Atlantic on the Heretic inflatable boat.
Interesting fact. Oxford professor of philology John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (1899-1973) is not only the founder of the fantasy genre, but also the largest theorist of escapism in the 20th century. In his essay “On Fairy Tales” he wrote:
It is no coincidence that it was Tolkien who gave rise to the movement of “role-players” - people who seriously take on the roles of elves and other heroes of The Lord of the Rings.
The Negative Impact of Escapism
It is impossible to say for sure whether escapism is harmful, since it greatly depends on its scale. If this is a moderate withdrawal from problems for the purpose of a little rest and emotional recharging, then it is rather useful. We all do this regularly, whether we're immersed in a book, playing an online game, or pounding away at a punching bag at the gym. This helps you forget about problems for a while, and then return to solving them with new strength and fresh thoughts.
But sometimes escapism goes too far. In such cases, it can cause serious inconvenience to a person, reducing his productivity and preventing him from doing important things. Feeling that problems are accumulating in some area of life, a person falls into procrastination and devotes less and less time to solving them. And escapism taken to the extreme helps him not to think about these problems. Need I say that such tactics are destructive for any area of life?
Sense of self-importance
It would seem that responsibility and the Internet are incompatible concepts. Didn't get along in one place, moved to another. But no, it happens the other way around. Despite the virtuality of the space, people online are real. And online games are spaces where you need to constantly be in a team. They replace the child's missing components such as communication, trust, responsibility and significance.
When playing in a team, the child has no choice but to trust his comrades. At the same time, he also understands that this trust is mutual, he and the team are connected.
This gives rise to responsibility and the need to be on par, not to lag behind and not to let the team down. This same aspect instills in a teenager a sense of self-importance and necessity in the virtual world, which further draws him in and takes him away from reality. Naturally, this has a detrimental effect on studies, live communication and family relationships.
How to get rid of escapism?
If you think that escapism is preventing you from living, preventing you from solving problems and making them worse, then you need to get rid of it. A few simple tips will help you with this:
- Understand what you are “escaping” from. Above we examined the main reasons leading to the development of escapism. The first step is to localize them. You can write down the reasons on a piece of paper to make it easier to look at them and analyze them.
- Understand where you are “running away”. It is equally important to understand what exactly is consuming your thoughts. If it is something too intrusive, it makes sense to completely get rid of it or at least greatly limit it.
- Stop pretending. People suffering from escapism eventually develop the habit of pretending in all areas of their lives. But any pretense greatly exhausts a person, robbing him of the energy necessary to solve important problems.
- Limit your time on the computer. You don’t have to completely give up your favorite computer game or social networking right away. But it makes sense to greatly limit these activities.
- Treat yourself. Give yourself some pleasant surprise, have fun with friends or make a purchase that you have long dreamed of. Pleasant emotions give a good boost of energy and help you return to reality.
- Learn to be grateful. This popular advice is also useful in the fight against escapism, because it teaches us to attach less importance to life's problems and difficulties.
- Talk to your loved ones. If you discuss the problem with a loved one, it may turn out that there is no need to run away from it.
New ideal “I”
Whether it's a game, a social network, or a community, the Internet offers the opportunity to “reinvent” yourself, hide something you don't want, and expose something that might bring you “recognition” in the circles you're interested in. It would seem that behind each account there is a living person with his own first and last name, but often this is the only thing that unites a real person and his virtual life, and often these simplest and obvious things are far from reality.
In games, in addition to the ability to create an ideal psychological image, you can also create a physical image. This makes the situation worse.
The child begins to perceive himself as a character in the game. Over time, reality is erased and the reflection in the mirror no longer seems familiar to the child. He becomes the character he plays for, and the game becomes the second, if not the first, main reality. This is escapism in its purest form.
