Fantasy

What is fantasy?

In the previous post I wrote about a preliminary definition of Man, or at least three components of Man. To recap, the Instinct is the drive that pushes man to preserve himself. The Intellect is the drive that pushes him to see universal categories of existance. The Imagination is the tool that takes all collected data and categorizes it into essences and accidents for intellectual and instinctual uses.

Fantasy is a result of the three components that we already mentioned.

When Man uses his senses and comes to the Intellectual realization that he has a natural place in the Universe, he is immediately thrown into conflict. This conflict arises from the fact that the Intellect percieves that he is quite literally a very small fish in a tremendously large pond.This intellectual recognition poses a threat to the instinct, the part of Man that is concerned with self preservation. The instinct cannot abide by the fact that Man is not in control of his surroundings.In order to remove this pain the Man constructs scenarios and acts in such a way that will prove he is in control. The fantasy is a defense mechanism. The man cannot accept that he is vulnerable so he constructs an alternative view of the Natural order in which he is supreme.

This was best described by my friend Sean in a post at Matt's blog which can be accessed here:
http://kankanchadash.blogspot.com/2008/08/sean-on-architecture-and-fantasy.html

Man percieves that he is weak. He is vulnerable to the forces of Nature, a mere chill can layway him forever. What is man's response? He builds shelter. Shelter is necessary for him to survive the elements. How though does man relate to the shelter.Instead of viewing the house as a testament to his own weakness, he places the house in an alternative reality. The house is the fortress that protects Man from all harm. It is a testament not to weakness but to strength. My what a strong and beautiful bulding this is, surely it bears witness to the power and glory of its owner. This is fantasy at its clearest. The man has seen his weakness and responded to it by creating a monument to his strength, something that allows him to deny he ever was weak.