Reality Bites

I want the life promised me in the movies. A life of drama and adventure, of true love and the happily-ever-after. It is not hard to see why Plato banished the poets from his Republic, movies and television offer us grand expectations with no guarantees of attaining them.

For much the same reason the Puritans banned theatre during the Commonwealth because they believed it told lies and, at least in part, they were right. We cannot always be living in a state of ecstasy as our entertainments whisper seductively to us. Those who try to match the intensity of the world they see on film will only wear themselves to a shadow and lose all sensitivity to the little joys.

It is largely due to this indoctrination from an early age in Romanticism, that we are left with a feeling of anti-climax when at last we attain our liberty, only to learn that liberty carries a price of its own. T.S. Eliot reminds us that: “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” We are always wishing to escape from the life we know to one we think would be so much better. “Amor fati.” Said Nietzsche, love your fate. That is, love the life you have been given and build the best with what you have.

This is an injunction that is hard to except, and the desire to dull our senses is at least understandable within limits, but the current state of the world is not inclined to moderation. Romanticism is about the past, or rather, reclaiming an idealized past. When Hitler came to power, it was on promises of a return to the good old days.

Even now, and in not so different a form, politicians use a similar rhetoric when they evoke family values. One wonders how much this should alarm us. The Japanese writer Yukio Mishima had all his life venerated the ideal of the Samurai, at last reached a state in which he could no longer go on without his fantasy. Reality had grown too stale to hold the ideal at bay---and so--- he cut out his entrails.

Such an example is extreme but points to the dangers that can develop in a mind so disenchanted with this world that one would do anything to bring about another. I have in mind specifically religious fundamentalists, some of whom are so taken with the idea of apocalypse they would quite happily sacrifice the human race to bring about the return of their messiah.

The concept of otherworldliness brings us again back to Plato, whose idea of a hidden perfection behind all things would lead the early church to denounce this as a fallen world, and so, disposable; a suggestion that is even now having disastrous repercussions for the environment. Thus, when we turn away from the harsh realities of this world to seek another, we may in the end lose both altogether.

Reality cannot be circumvented by material goods or passionate denunciation; it must be met on its own terms and excepted as it is, or do our best to make it better. We have only ourselves to blame if we feel a poverty of incident in our lives since it is only we who can enrich them. On the other hand, perhaps there is something to be said for the romantics of this world after all. If life were truly so wonderful there would be no need to invent stories and, as one who enjoys telling them, at least one soul might be worse off for that.

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