Youth and virtual reality.

The hierarchy of escapism 

Children and teens in today's "typical" North American families are submerged in a total electronic media environment from a very early age. They are faced by the reductive mill of MTV (music television), and immersion in electronic media, the droning lectures of liberal pedagogues, and the intense collective pressures of adolescence. Taken together, these probably constitute the most intensive program of indoctrination ever devised in human history. After all that, current-day society disingenuously says that it offers those who reach adulthood "freedom of choice" concerning the values they will hold, and the lifestyle by which they will live.

Those who--despite all the indoctrination thrown at them by the current-day system--emerge as somewhat bright and/or decent teens, come into immediate contact with what could be called "the hierarchy of escapisms." These typically consist of things like "properly steered" volunteer work, and the numerous subgenres and subcultures of science fiction, fantasy, role-playing games (such as Dungeons and Dragons), trading-card games (such as Magic: The Gathering), videogames, and so forth. What unites the diverse field of pastimes is the enormous commitment of time and energy demanded by them--their claim on young people's learning and memorizing huge amounts of minutiae and trivia--usually unconnected to any real knowledge, and still less, to any true religion.

The card-game craze

In current-day North America, grade-school children continue to be enraptured by the Pokemon craze. At a time when knowing second and third languages is ever more important, classes are filling up to learn Klingon. Many bright young people spend several hours a week on role-playing games, where they can pretend to be medieval warriors--or sorcerers or vampires or killers-for-hire. Others--though accused of having short attention spans--spend interminable hours playing videogames.

Pokemon (based on a handheld computer game) and Magic: The Gathering, the leading trading card games (TCG's), are both franchises of Wizards of the Coast, which was recently taken over by toys and games giant Hasbro. In the Pokemon trading card game the goal is to collect hundreds of different "pocket monsters" with varying abilities. There are game-mechanics for combat between the various "pocket monsters," with the winner getting to keep the losing cards. Varied mechanics of combat between cards depicting fantasy and horror-type figures are the central focus of the several iterations of Magic: The Gathering (the original trading card game in America). The representations on the cards are rather more lurid than in Pokemon. There is duelling between card decks through a codified system of combat; rare cards improve one's chance of victory, although a skilful player can be successful with a weaker set of cards.

It is highly important to note that the trading cards are generally bought at a set price in sealed packets of, e.g., ten cards each, without the buyer knowing if any rare, powerful cards are contained therein--so the gambling element is obvious. The simulacrum is extended further through a series of fantasy fiction books based on the various card sets as well as in playing the game in an online version. There are also the Pokemon movies and television series.

Wizards of the Coast is also cornering the market on role-playing games (RPG's), having earlier bought out TSR, the company that pioneered the genre with Dungeons and Dragons. Roleplaying games allow players to explore various, often gruesome milieus based on the roll of the dice and various elaborately quantified skills, powers, and abilities. Role-playing, mediated by a narrator or gamemaster, requires that gamers become experts in the details of their chosen game setting, which has them master encyclopedic volumes describing a fantasy world.

What are often the best and the brightest of our young people are expending their intellectual abilities on things that don't really exist.

Confusion of truth and fiction

In a postmodern educational system, mainly concerned with teaching children to get in touch with their feelings and minimizing objective content, and in a postmodern culture that says that truth is just another fiction anyway, bright children are using their gifts to master content that doesn't matter.

Is there not something pathetic, for example, in the attention lavished on the Star Trek phenomenon (which has its ultimate origins in the electronic media field) among large numbers of young people today? The passion of this attachment, the memorization of every episode down to the last word, the attendance of conventions which strengthen "the faith," and so forth, by vast legions of fans and devotees, strikes one as a too enormous claim on one's loyalties.

It could be argued that the electronic media field has abolished the classical nineteenth-century distinction between fiction and non-fiction. A television show which first aired in 1966 (which, until then, was just an idea in the producer's head) has grown to command a greater allegiance in the hearts and minds of its followers than many "actual" (the word is used advisedly) nations and religions which have existed for hundreds or thousands of years. There is a tendency to see a very recent media construct as one's primary defining reality. While children have always played and read about "make-believe" settings, there was always some point where "the true and really serious things" (such as religious and national identifications) were palpably introduced into their upbringing and outlook. That is often not happening today.

The overpowering nature of the audiovisual and visual media also means that almost any film, television show, or computer game can attract a vast audience, and become the focus of a cult-like attraction for its fans. Films like Austin Powers, a gruesome videogame, or even some obscure alternative comic book, can attract a large number of hardcore fans, with dedicated websites becoming the main forums for fan interaction. Audiovisual and visual media today often create a stronger impression on people than original text. The audiovisual and visual media are then reinforced by interaction such as e-mail bulletin boards and typing-based chat on the Internet, where most of the textual material is derived or inspired from the audiovisual or visual media.

Many young people--and adults--move increasingly in the direction of living in the illusion, without regard to living in reality. A fantasy world seems more interesting. It takes up more of their time and mental energy than the real problems and challenges of life. One should give young people some credit, though: they may have more imagination, curiosity, and mental ability than is being engaged by the contemporary educational system. It has to go somewhere. Perhaps one way to deflect young people away from fantastical pseudo-history is to show them how truly interesting the real world can be.

A choice of escapisms

Some other, more conventionally accessible forms of escapism can include cruises, golf, enrapturing card games such as poker and bridge, frequenting casinos, and rock music, including attending rock concerts. Apart from rock music, these would more typically be escapisms for adults. For many young people, rock music is, indeed, one of the primary aspects of their lives. However, the important thing about such phenomena as role-playing games is that they are often used to captivate the very "best and brightest" of young people, for whom the more conventional escapisms (such as rock music, fashion, and watching sports) would simply hold little appeal. For the more intelligent young person, they often offer a sense of excitement which might otherwise be engaged by the study of real history. It is obvious that role-playing games can only arise in a "post-historical" and irreligious climate, where, for many people, nothing about history or religion is really taken seriously. It could be argued that role-playing g ames are far more a symptom than a cause of the irreligious climate in today's world.

Persons who are more anchored in real religion and history could probably dabble in RPG's with little deleterious effect; however, those persons who have no such anchors could in some cases fall prey to a riot of vain phantasms, leading to real personality difficulties. An overwhelming interest in RPG's might prevent persons from ever becoming interested in certain important aspects of the real world.

It could be argued that the ultimate pinnacle of "the hierarchy of escapisms" (as opposed to pursuing a career in the admittedly more practical worlds of business, medicine, law or technical professions) may sometimes be high-level academic study in the humanities and social sciences. It is possible that it may lead to an academic career, particularly in areas such as philosophy, political philosophy, or political theory. However, it is possible to be almost entirely swallowed up by the prevalent academic ideologies of varieties of left-liberalism and postmodernism, which can hardly be seen as increasing one's sense of reality. In current-day societies, it is often the intellectual who is the furthest out from reality.

While one often finds in the academy a politically-correct critique of the current-day system, it is often of a sort which might actually advance even worse alternatives to current-day society. One is also extremely constrained by one's membership in one's section of the academic community, which often has today a surprisingly powerful, politically-correct "groupthink" that can be challenged only with difficulty.

Such membership also often implies an enervating and virtually ceaseless jockeying for position which can sap one's creative vigour and eat up all of one's time for serious reflection.

Only a very few fish can escape all these layers of nets set for them.

Mark Wegierski is a Toronto-based writer and historical researcher.