I've been banging a lot of This American Life lately between bouts of Frozen Throne. (Yup, I still play. Ten years and running.) The most recent episode--"Show Me The Way"--documents "people in trouble, who look for help in mystifying places." I think the Horde should really hear the first act wherein a young man recounts his trans-American childhood trip to track down his hero--fantasy author Piers Anthony.

I don't want to give the story, but suffice to say the kid found himself in a situation which many of us identify with--product of a divorce, hating his step-father, and hating high school. And so the kid just bounces. The story ends with a short interview with Anthony, in which he still sounds pissed off about his own treatment in high school. I don't have a transcript, but effectively Anthony says something like--"People are dismissive of escapism, but some of us need it."

I thought about that a lot yesterday. As much as I was into nerd things--comic books, video games, D&D etc.--I think my relationship was a bit different with the culture. I spent a year dwelling in escapism, but Baltimore has a way of snatching you out of your dreams and into the real. Besides, whatever my manifold problems, despite my total lack of cool, I was generally well-liked by my peers. I was not great with girls, but neither were most of the dudes I knew. Like one out of every ten of us had game, the rest of us just kind of bumbled around. Moreover, very few of us were obsessed with the head cheerleader. It was more complicated than that.

I think for those reasons, nerd culture's sense of alienation never quite registered with me. I had a relatively brief period of middle-school alienation, but I liked living in Baltimore. I would have stayed, had my parents not forced me out the city. But listening to this piece I got the sense of how fantasy/comic books/video games can be life-savers.

Children have no real sense of how life can flip. School perpetrates an illusion of stasis. If you are 15, and mostly hating the social world of your high school, it is incredibly easily to conclude that your life will always be that way. Childhood is so closed-off and institutionalized. It is a prison. Self-esteem, in the main, comes from three places--school, sports, and the opposite sex. If you fail at those things you are likely to have a harder time. Worse, it's easy to conclude that this is your life, that whatever you're experiencing is somehow a sign-posts for the rest of years. If that is the case, why not end it?

The tragedy is that childhood--and specifically young adulthood--is such a slender, ridiculously small sliver, of the human lifespan. It's sad to think of people who only get to see that. Anyway, just a few really quick thoughts. Check out the episode. It is deeply moving.

English Assassin wrote:'Escapist' became a disparaging term in the 1960s, thanks to the likes of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who popularised the view among the 'educated classes' (whatever they really are) that 'relevance' was the essential criterion of intellectual or artistic worth (this was the era of 'kitchen sink realism'), and that the growth of enjoyable and harmless but essentially irrelevant 'leisure pursuits' was a tool to divide and oppress the masses by taking up their free time and giving them something on which frivolously to spend their money.

Needless to say, Horkheimer and Adorno are full of crap, but this hasn't prevented the 'escapist' tag from enduring as a specific insult to anything nerdy, despite the obvious fact that all pass-times (including non-nerdy ones like sports and 'high culture') are likewise inherently 'escapist'.

It is worth adding, however, that writers (and readers) of sci-fi and fantasy do lay themselves open to this kind of criticism; I would indeed write-off the vast majority of 'genre fiction' as providing nothing other than escapism, without possessing any broader literary merit. It does make me a little sad when self-proclaimed fans of sci-fi eagerly lap up Star Wars spin-off novels, but wouldn't dream of reading literary sci-fi like Margaret Attwood or Kurt Vonnegut, or even classics like Arthur C. Clarke or Philip K. Dick, all of whom enjoy a significant readership and critical appreciation outside of genre fans, regarding them as 'boring' because they don't feature many explosions, laser gun battles or cute robots. Ironically, they are in fact fans of the trappings of science fiction (i.e. futuristic societies and technology) without actually enjoying the genre's fundamental purpose: to address the relationship between human beings and technology.

A lot of people including my nun great-aunt and my grandmothers have quoted this bible verse to me a lot over my hobbies and reading.

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." First Corinthians 13:11.

Elemental wrote:

A lot of people including my nun great-aunt and my grandmothers have quoted this bible verse to me a lot over my hobbies and reading.

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." First Corinthians 13:11.

But on the other hand, what's more childish than always wanting to prove how grown-up you are?

To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. C.S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952)

English Assassin wrote:

Elemental wrote:

A lot of people including my nun great-aunt and my grandmothers have quoted this bible verse to me a lot over my hobbies and reading.

"When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things." First Corinthians 13:11.

But on the other hand, what's more childish than always wanting to prove how grown-up you are?

Indeed, as C.S. Lewis - not just an author (and certainly not just a children's author, read The Screwtape Letters if you need proof, but Professor of Mediaeval and Renissance English at Cambridge - put it:

To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. C.S. Lewis, "On Three Ways of Writing for Children" (1952)

YotsubaSnake wrote:I've lived a bit of the life that most people my age consider "normal". I find it incredibly amusing that some of these guys sit around and talk all day to no end about cars, guns or girls then make fun of people who have "nerdy" hobbies.

Actually, my hobbies have made me more social. I go out to the game store and play games with people because otherwise I'd be shut up in home on my PC or similar, doing nothing productive and getting no valuable human interaction at all. It's a whole new feeling to hang out with people who share your interests. I've met more friends in my life through traditional gaming than anything else and I wouldn't have it any other way.

chromedog wrote:It's my relief vent, not my life.

I've known some people who got very into the minutiae of their chosen nerdy hobby - and weirded everyone of their friends out - and alienated most of them in the process.

Some people have issues drawing lines. This much and no further. This is just as true of nerds as alcoholics, junkies, 'roid junkies, or any other group.

I wasn't good at sports at school. I wasn't interested in chasing the girls. I WAS good at chemistry and electronics, and found a few other friends who were into SF as well. We were our own little world in that school. I shudder to think what it might have been like if we'd had access to social media on mobile devices back then (1980s).

matphat wrote:

English Assassin wrote:'Escapist' became a disparaging term in the 1960s, thanks to the likes of Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer, who popularised the view among the 'educated classes' (whatever they really are) that 'relevance' was the essential criterion of intellectual or artistic worth (this was the era of 'kitchen sink realism'), and that the growth of enjoyable and harmless but essentially irrelevant 'leisure pursuits' was a tool to divide and oppress the masses by taking up their free time and giving them something on which frivolously to spend their money.

Needless to say, Horkheimer and Adorno are full of crap, but this hasn't prevented the 'escapist' tag from enduring as a specific insult to anything nerdy, despite the obvious fact that all pass-times (including non-nerdy ones like sports and 'high culture') are likewise inherently 'escapist'.

It is worth adding, however, that writers (and readers) of sci-fi and fantasy do lay themselves open to this kind of criticism; I would indeed write-off the vast majority of 'genre fiction' as providing nothing other than escapism, without possessing any broader literary merit. It does make me a little sad when self-proclaimed fans of sci-fi eagerly lap up Star Wars spin-off novels, but wouldn't dream of reading literary sci-fi like Margaret Attwood or Kurt Vonnegut, or even classics like Arthur C. Clarke or Philip K. Dick, all of whom enjoy a significant readership and critical appreciation outside of genre fans, regarding them as 'boring' because they don't feature many explosions, laser gun battles or cute robots. Ironically, they are in fact fans of the trappings of science fiction (i.e. futuristic societies and technology) without actually enjoying the genre's fundamental purpose: to address the relationship between human beings and technology.

This was the EXACT thought I was constructing while reading the OP and previous posts.

Wagguy80 wrote:Well if you label it you can always find a connection if you look for one.

But I'll simplify it if your wondering "Is this me?"

Hobby - Something you do in your spare time for a distraction.

Escapism - Something your mind stays focused on no matter where you are, or what you are doing.