What is the role of fantasy in our lives?

I propose the role of fantasy is to help us reimagine reality, not suppress it.

In my supernatural history class recently, our tutor ran a question by us: has the world become disenchanted? On one hand, I thought yes; when everything is a commodity and nothing is meaningful on its own, I would call that disenchantment. On the other hand, I thought no: we are arguably living in one of the most enchanted times ever. 

By being plugged into our phones 24/7 we are living in 24/7 enchantment. We worry more about stayed tied to social media news feeds than we look up to tie our shoes! We have less awareness about what’s happening in our own communities, and more awareness on what’s happening on the other side of the world. We have seen a drastic increase in depression and anxiety, stemming from in my opinion, what’s an inability to reconcile today’s fantasies with our real-life’s realities. 

The first years of my adult life were spent working inside the dream machine of Hollywood. Moving to Hollywood felt like I was completing a rite of passage of the West: to go from dreamer to doer; to merge fantasy with reality; and in the most stripped down sense, to reproduce cultural fetish and desire on our screens. 

Working in Hollywood was not only an awakening to the fetishes and images that shape Western culture: it was also an awakening that my ability to stay here, in reality, was unsustainable unless I deeply questioned these perceptions. 

I didn’t realise it as a kid, but I exercised fantasy in my life to understand the divine. I was driven to understand the archetypal nature of our world and cosmos by studying and playing out plays, myths, and movies that gave me a sense of home in the broad, often lonely life of this universe. And in this sense, fantasy is so important. Movies can absolutely transport us to places within ourselves we would have never thought existed. So can a great play, book, or astrology reading! 

Fantasy is supposed to complement, not contradict, our lived realities. The archetypes aren’t here in time and space, but they are observable in time and space, if that makes sense. The ancient Greeks didn’t have organised religion because fantasy and reality were so interlaced. 

What I found in Hollywood is that fantasy rarely complements reality. More of us who stop watching porn and reality TV find this exact same thing to be true. The sex we have, the lifestyles we can afford, the looks we possess, run in an exact contradiction to everything the screen has told us about ourselves.

And while there have been attempts to straighten out representation in media, which I think is wonderful, there is still the indomitable separation of fantasies and realities marked by the physical barriers of our screens, which is a reality that is quickly being forgotten. In other words, these fantasies belong to the screen and NOT us.

In the space between us and our screens, there is tremendous misery. It is as if we are living in two, separated the worlds: the world of glamour and beauty we see online, and the world of misery and mundane we see in our real lives. As a result we feel like failures before we even open our eyes in the morning, because everything we will see in our rooms will never be as much as the next person has in theirs. 

Imagine you are in the ancient world. There is no explicit separation between the fantasy world and the real world. The sun that we all experience has a soul, has an archetypal purpose, has a name. The love we all feel comes from a common god, has an archetypal purpose, has a name. The heartbreak we all feel comes from a common god, has an archetypal purpose, has a name. Yes, these gods are fantasies. My point is they complemented the very real, visceral life experiences we all have. They enriched rather than depressed peoples lives. Daily work wasn’t mundane but was embedded in a larger spiritual context. In this way I would consider the Gods an example of how fantasy is meant to work in our lives: it is supposed to embed meaning and purpose, healing and comfort, in an otherwise meaningless and isolated world. 

I also think practices like astrology and tarot are healthy exercises in fantasy. While there is no scientific basis for astrology and tarot is ultimately a bunch of cards, they present a realm of archetypes and fantasy that works directly in conjunction with our real, lived experiences. Their purpose is not to put us to sleep, but to awaken us to our truest nature. 

The peace we are seeking will no longer come from sleeping, but from waking. And when we wake, we will encounter the greatest fantasy we’ve ever felt; and that is the ecstasy of the real world. The real world, we discover, is a matter of how real we’re willing to be with ourselves. In our most honest state, there is more drama, glamour, excitement, and beauty than we could ever find watching a reality TV show, a movie, or a TikTok.