We Are Programmed To Fantasize
As I use the term here, fantasy is "imagination unrestricted by reality. Thus, fantasies are not restricted to deliberate creations of our imagination but include unfounded assumptions and unwarranted beliefs whether consciously created or lurking in our subconscious.
Fantasies are prevalent throughout all known cultures, ancient and modern. They are deeply embedded in human nature; they cannot be disentangled from our sensory experiences and our sensory experiences cannot be disentangled from our fantasies. A personality without fantasies would be as interesting as a movie without a plot. Fantasies explain what we can't understand, add spice to dull moments in our lives, and motivate us to change behaviors.
The evolutionary process engineered humans to fantasize. The human mind and body automatically react appropriately to those things that affect our ability to survive as a species. Our natural reactions to threats are mostly involuntary-- our heart beats faster, our muscles prepare for flight or fight, and our senses become selectively focused. When we, as a species, encounter a potential mate we, like many other species, are sexually aroused and our mental and physical reproductive mechanisms engage.
Fantasies trigger similar responses. Fiction in the form of books and movies offer packaged fantasies. Romantic novels, horror movies, and role-playing stimulate hormonal responses that mimic those experienced in real-life versions of like situations.
This musing started after a house party where I met a number of strangers from a variety of cultures. I was surprised by how frequently my first impressions of my new acquaintances turned out to be incorrect. Prior to this epiphany, I hadn’t fully recognized how durable were my first impressions woven as much from fantasy as from verified observations.
As I began researching the subject the first thing I learned is how difficult it is to use search engines to find answers to my query. A full 90% of the search results from entering fantasies or fantasize into Google’s search engine returns salacious descriptions of sexual fantasies and virtually no information about how pervasive human fantasies are and how they affect our daily behavior. It took a lot of modifiers and Internet search restrictions to dig out information about the prevalence and role of fantasies in the spectrum of human behavior. Here is what I found.
What We Fantasize
Fantasies can be indistinguishable from what we normally consider to be real. If one is raised to believe things that have no verifiable basis in our direct experience, they can become as much a part of “reality” as sensory experiences. Examples are dogmatic religious beliefs; a self-image that has no basis in actual abilities or accomplishments; believing all of an identifiable category of people (men, women, people in uniform, people of a specific ethnicity) behave stereotypically, and so forth.
I was fathered by a pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church. As a child I had no doubt that: Catholics changed the biblically-mandated day of worship from Saturday to Sunday and therefore don’t believe in the bible; only 144,000 people, all SDA members, would go to heaven; dancing and wearing jewelry were sins on par with lying and stealing (I should mention that these were things I believed growing up, not necessarily the current doctrine of the SDA church). To me, these “truths” were as real as dogs and cats and I was genuinely afraid of the consequences of behaving otherwise. I was entering my teenage years when I was able to clearly separate these childhood fantasies from reality.
Fantasies are evident everywhere in our personal environment. Our family room surrounds us with aboriginal art and artifacts purchased in tiny villages in the Australian outback, each telling a story or a legend related to an aboriginal tribe or its cultural history. Four bark paintings tell a story of creation: two Wagalak sisters who followed the morning star to Arnhem Land and populated Australia with indigenous aboriginals.
We speak of our deceased pets "waiting by the river" based on a Mesoamerican myth that tells of a land where deceased pet dogs play waiting to take their loving owners across a river to live happily ever after. It is a fantasy, albeit one that is comforting and masks some of the grief.
A recent study examined the flow of neural activity while imagining an activity compared to seeing a video of the same activity. They discovered that seeing an activity involved predominant signal flows from a “lower” level of the neocortex (the occipital lobe) to a “higher” level (the parietal lobe). Imagining the same activity revealed the reverse flow from the higher lobe to the lower. This suggests fantasies are created higher in the hierarchy of lobes and affect the lower levels while the reverse is true with sensory experiences. I speculate that there are similar “top-down” flows of signals all the way from the neocortex down through the most primitive "reptilian brain", allowing fantasies to impact one’s emotions and physical responses in the same manner as do our senses.
Why We Fantasize
Escape: We fantasize to escape, enhance, or change reality. We fantasize about winning the lottery, finding something valuable, or otherwise stumbling upon good fortune and living a more privileged life. Most often these fantasies are unproductive but entertaining fictions, but they also can help us to explore alternatives to reach higher realistic goals. Fantasies can help escape pain; Helen and I both can tolerate pain by mentally drifting into a serene memory, thanks to an uncle who was adept at using hypnosis and self-hypnosis while performing dental procedures.
Motivation: We motivate ourselves by watching travel shows, listening to motivational speakers, reading a novel that inspires us to do something productive or enjoyable. Violent video games or movies can motivate harmful or destructive behaviors. The recently reported school shootings surely had their roots in fantasies.
Creative inspiration: Works of art and literature arise from fantasies. Creativity is not bound by the laws of physics or the rules of logic. Human imagination is a place we can go to be and do anything we choose for good or for evil. Of course, we get in trouble when we fail to distinguish between fantasy and the sensory world that insists we abide by physical and social laws; even pigs know they can’t fly, but a few humans (unaided by wings) have tried and failed.
Self Improvement: We mentally revisit problems and imagine alternative actions and decisions to do better in the future. When good things happen, we fantasize about behaviors that might lead to more good fortune. We mentally try out behaviors before experiencing the social consequences of our actions. Being an objective third-party witness to one’s own behavior can be good counsel.
Aphrodisiac: It is no accident that such a high percentage of Internet searches on fantasy mostly return sexual fantasies. Sex is strongly linked with hormones, and given the “top-down” flow of neuron signals caused by fantasies, it is not surprising that fantasies can enhance the physical and mental pleasures of sexual activity.
So dream on and get the most out of life, plus a bit more, thanks to the gift of fantasy.
As I use the term here, fantasy is "imagination unrestricted by reality. Thus, fantasies are not restricted to deliberate creations of our imagination but include unfounded assumptions and unwarranted beliefs whether consciously created or lurking in our subconscious.
Fantasies are prevalent throughout all known cultures, ancient and modern. They are deeply embedded in human nature; they cannot be disentangled from our sensory experiences and our sensory experiences cannot be disentangled from our fantasies. A personality without fantasies would be as interesting as a movie without a plot. Fantasies explain what we can't understand, add spice to dull moments in our lives, and motivate us to change behaviors.The evolutionary process engineered humans to fantasize. The human mind and body automatically react appropriately to those things that affect our ability to survive as a species. Our natural reactions to threats are mostly involuntary-- our heart beats faster, our muscles prepare for flight or fight, and our senses become selectively focused. When we, as a species, encounter a potential mate we, like many other species, are sexually aroused and our mental and physical reproductive mechanisms engage.
Fantasies trigger similar responses. Fiction in the form of books and movies offer packaged fantasies. Romantic novels, horror movies, and role-playing stimulate hormonal responses that mimic those experienced in real-life versions of like situations.
This musing started after a house party where I met a number of strangers from a variety of cultures. I was surprised by how frequently my first impressions of my new acquaintances turned out to be incorrect. Prior to this epiphany, I hadn’t fully recognized how durable were my first impressions woven as much from fantasy as from verified observations.
As I began researching the subject the first thing I learned is how difficult it is to use search engines to find answers to my query. A full 90% of the search results from entering fantasies or fantasize into Google’s search engine returns salacious descriptions of sexual fantasies and virtually no information about how pervasive human fantasies are and how they affect our daily behavior. It took a lot of modifiers and Internet search restrictions to dig out information about the prevalence and role of fantasies in the spectrum of human behavior. Here is what I found.
What We Fantasize
Fantasies can be indistinguishable from what we normally consider to be real. If one is raised to believe things that have no verifiable basis in our direct experience, they can become as much a part of “reality” as sensory experiences. Examples are dogmatic religious beliefs; a self-image that has no basis in actual abilities or accomplishments; believing all of an identifiable category of people (men, women, people in uniform, people of a specific ethnicity) behave stereotypically, and so forth.
I was fathered by a pastor of the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) church. As a child I had no doubt that: Catholics changed the biblically-mandated day of worship from Saturday to Sunday and therefore don’t believe in the bible; only 144,000 people, all SDA members, would go to heaven; dancing and wearing jewelry were sins on par with lying and stealing (I should mention that these were things I believed growing up, not necessarily the current doctrine of the SDA church). To me, these “truths” were as real as dogs and cats and I was genuinely afraid of the consequences of behaving otherwise. I was entering my teenage years when I was able to clearly separate these childhood fantasies from reality.
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| Aboriginal Story Of Creation |
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| Waiting By The River |
We speak of our deceased pets "waiting by the river" based on a Mesoamerican myth that tells of a land where deceased pet dogs play waiting to take their loving owners across a river to live happily ever after. It is a fantasy, albeit one that is comforting and masks some of the grief.
Why We Fantasize
Escape: We fantasize to escape, enhance, or change reality. We fantasize about winning the lottery, finding something valuable, or otherwise stumbling upon good fortune and living a more privileged life. Most often these fantasies are unproductive but entertaining fictions, but they also can help us to explore alternatives to reach higher realistic goals. Fantasies can help escape pain; Helen and I both can tolerate pain by mentally drifting into a serene memory, thanks to an uncle who was adept at using hypnosis and self-hypnosis while performing dental procedures.Motivation: We motivate ourselves by watching travel shows, listening to motivational speakers, reading a novel that inspires us to do something productive or enjoyable. Violent video games or movies can motivate harmful or destructive behaviors. The recently reported school shootings surely had their roots in fantasies.
Creative inspiration: Works of art and literature arise from fantasies. Creativity is not bound by the laws of physics or the rules of logic. Human imagination is a place we can go to be and do anything we choose for good or for evil. Of course, we get in trouble when we fail to distinguish between fantasy and the sensory world that insists we abide by physical and social laws; even pigs know they can’t fly, but a few humans (unaided by wings) have tried and failed.
Self Improvement: We mentally revisit problems and imagine alternative actions and decisions to do better in the future. When good things happen, we fantasize about behaviors that might lead to more good fortune. We mentally try out behaviors before experiencing the social consequences of our actions. Being an objective third-party witness to one’s own behavior can be good counsel.Aphrodisiac: It is no accident that such a high percentage of Internet searches on fantasy mostly return sexual fantasies. Sex is strongly linked with hormones, and given the “top-down” flow of neuron signals caused by fantasies, it is not surprising that fantasies can enhance the physical and mental pleasures of sexual activity.
So dream on and get the most out of life, plus a bit more, thanks to the gift of fantasy.