Kao 1 Kenny Kao October 30, 2011 Section: LG Essay 4 Consequences of Escaping Reality by Fantasy and Illusion Reality

is made up of societies that have the ability to control our behaviors and actions depending on the factors of the environment. Society can give individuals the choices in one of two ways: limiting ones ability to express oneself by governing rules or to give infinite ability to express one by being the governor. The former being the majority in society creates many controversies of whether the government is doing more damage than good. Due the constraints being pressed of ones perception to handle such a corrupt society, people often escape reality on their own by deliberately creating illusions to create their false reality. In Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi, she talks about her personal experience as a professor in Tehran University dealing the arbitrary rules and managing to live in reality. Living upon of her imagination was not enough to adjust and make an impact in reality. Even sharing ideas and using illusions to create false impression with her students only ends up trapping in other persons imagination. In Immune to Reality by Daniel Gilbert, people regret inactions more than actions because the attempt to make an account on putting the effort is easier to create a positive view of one self. Using illusion is an inaction approach that serves little purpose in reality, sacrificing time and causes confusion. People do not benefit from using fantasy or illusion to deal with their problems and it even backfire them because fantasies are temporarily imaginations, ideas that cannot make permanent changes to solve problems. It causes distortions of ones perception, fooling one into believing a false sense of happiness. Fantasies and illusions also do not change the actual reality as it is only an unreliable artificial view of our mental representation of the reality.

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Temporary/Time consuming Although reality can be based individual perception, the rules governing anyones reality is going to be the same.

Distortion/Confusion Using fantasy will only fool oneself into believing a false sense of happiness. True happiness occurs when the problem is resolve. A student once said to Nafisi that you are more and more withdrawing into yourself, and now that you have cut your relations with the university, your whole contact with the outside world will be mainly restricted to one room (Nafisi 424). Withdrawal into ones illusion can be dangerous because one can be slowly migrate into a fantasy and get addictive. A close example is the usage of abusive substances like drugs and alcohol. These substances give people the adrenaline to boost happiness but

Facing Reality/ No progression/ No Change

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Fantasy and Illusion does not help establish a secure way to solve a persons problem but rather, it is a temporary way to distorts ones perception of facing reality. Although Nafisi and her students isolate themselves in her room in the attempt to create happiness, it does not contribute any major changes to the actual reality. At the end, Nafisi did not make any permanent changes to what she dream of in her illusion and the society gradually reduces the stringent rules over time. Gilbert believes that anticipating ways to escape our problems leads to more limited options and therefore, produces less satisfaction of the future. When problems occur to any given events, one should use time wisely by finding a way to fix it. Examine its cause and concentrate on the situation without losing focus. Fantasy loses ones attention on the problem that one is currently dealing with and it sometime makes the problem worse. It is by that to manage any problems in actual reality, one has to avoid disruptions from the fictional unrealistic ideas of ones mind. Putting the work to be aware of the environment in reality is the ultimate technique to deal with any of the problems we face.