Furthermore, as Joseph Campbell has shown, the enactment of fantasy has always been with us.. Many forms of fantasy have provided human beings with compelling mythic structures since time immemorial. Fantasies are afoot even today. we need only point, as Campbell did, to the Star Wars series or the Marvel comic series to find mythic heroes embarking on a heroic journey, fighting off dreaded enemies. There is no ambiguity, contradiction or uncertainty. We know what is good and what is bad. There are no contradictions. Everything is predictable and positive outcomes are assured. Volatility doesn’t stand a chance. Nothing dances (other than the bullets or an occasional musical number). Things are straightforward. Complexity is also asked to leave the room (or at least the play, movie or TV series). If there are complex and contradiction-filled characters in our fantasies—then they are usually assigned to ”art” theater movies and plays that we occasionally imbibe for our “character building.”
Play
For many years, psychologists couldn’t make sense of human play—a type of activity that seems pervasive in human society. This led Johan Huizinga to offer his insightful analysis, declaring that humans are homo ludens – the playful ones. Why do we engage in play? This seems to be an autotelec (self-energizing) activity. Some psychologists suggested an “arousal jag” that human beings find to be enjoyable: we get scared or excited and then find relief from this fear or excitement which is reinforcing. More recently, the research conducted by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi suggests that we live for the opportunity to experience “flow” which is to be found at the threshold between anxiety and overwhelm (on the one hand), and boredom and underwhelm (on the other hand).
When we do engage in play, the mundane (boring) or challenging (anxiety-filled) world in which we operate most of the time tends to melt away. We enter the temporary state of flow and a short-term threshold of flight from both boredom and anxiety. While we might not engage regularly in something that could officially be called play (such as organized sports or community theater) or enter into play with our kids or grandkids (“playing house”, dressing up or wrestling on the living room floor), we do engage frequently in play according to Csikszentmihalyi. He notes that we engage in little playful activities such as twirling our pen or engaging in a quiet quest for a different word in writing an essay (such as my use in this sentence of the phrase “quiet quest”). He identifies these temporary playful moments as “microflows” and believes these are often primary motivators for us during a typical day. We are engaged in brief “quiet quests” for the moments of threshold between boredom and anxiety.
Festivals
While flights of fancy and moments of microflow are personal matters, there are also many collective moments of a temporary nature. During the Medieval era of European history, we find various versions of the “Feast of fools” when the poor or the women or the insane switch roles with those who are rich, who are men or who are “sane.” Today, we find something similar being enacted in the Mari gras celebrations held in New Orleans and in many European countries. These are brief episodes that exist in societies that are firmly structured with clear lines of authority and privilege. Yet, for a few moments the residents of these highly structured communities can glimpse an alternative reality.
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