Universalist Unitarian Church Santa Paula, California

Fact and Fantasy in Our Lives
by Reverend John Alexie Crane

In 1980 she was one of eighteen chosen from a group of 2880 applicants for the space shuttle program. This was, however, not the first time she had applied. She had first applied in 1967, right out of high school, but was rejected.

She did not give up her dream. She persisted. She went to college, and earned both a bachelor's and master's degree in engineering, finishing up in 1975. Bonnie then worked as a research scientist in England, as an engineer with the space division of Rockwell International, then as a flight controller at NASA.

Thirteen years after the rejection of her initial application, she was, in 1980, one of a dozen and a half people chosen from among the nearly 3000 who applied for admission to the astronaut training program. Five years later, fully trained, she flew with an international crew of seven other astronauts into outer space.

It is true, of course, that not all of us realize our childhood fantasies. We human creatures have this remarkable ability to fantasize, to dream of things that might be, of what we might become. It is a gift, is a creative dimension in our being. It is also a hazard, a potential trap that may loosen our hold on reality. For every Bonnie Dunbar, there are millions who live in a dream world that serves as a shelter, a diversion from the task of dealing constructively with the hard issues of life.

II. Linus as Dreamer
What set me to thinking about fact and fantasy was an encounter with Linus and Lucy, those famous and fantastic American children. Linus is a very small boy and Lucy is his older sister. Linus is a dreamer, an idealist, an intellectual, is sweet, gentle, anxious, and agreeable. Lucy is his polar opposite: strong, bull-headed, single-minded, practical, realistic, quick to use violence as a tool in conflict resolution.

In the first box in the comic strip, we see Linus in the foreground chomping contentedly on a jelly sandwich, with Lucy in the background reading. As he chews on a mouthful, holding the sandwich in one hand, he finds himself looking reflectively at his free hand, held up before his face. "Hands are fascinating things," he observes to no one in particular.

Then he turns to Lucy and says, "I like my hands. I think I have nice hands... My hands seem to have a lot of character... These are hands," he observes, holding them up for examination, "which may someday accomplish great things. These are hands which may someday do marvelous works!"

Warming up to his subject now, Linus faces Lucy, arms outstretched, giving power to his presentation. These hands "may build mighty bridges or heal the sick, or hit home-runs, or write soul-stirring novels!" Growing passionate now, Linus says, hands uplifted, "These are hands which may someday change the course of destiny!"

Lucy is by this time standing close to Linus, facing him. She looks down at his hands, and observes tartly, "They have jelly on them!"

Whereupon Linus is left standing with a blank look on his face, as Lucy walks off in smug satisfaction.

There is something of Linus in each of us, isn't there? I suppose that hardly a day goes by, especially when we are young, that we do not find ourselves fantasizing about the great things we may do or be or become or achieve. This characteristic of ourselves is at once an extraordinary gift and, at the same time, an inviting trap which may cut us off from life's highest rewards.

III. Must We Have Illusions in Order to Live?
We are creatures who live a lot in fantasy. We have rich and alluring dreams, awake and asleep. We organize our experience and understanding by systems of myth, of stories that explain the world to us in ways that are deeply satisfying. Fantasy, myth, dream — they meet needs that we know in the depths of ourselves.

Many of these fantasies, no doubt, are illusions. Bonnie Dunbar's dream led her forward into life, into self-realization and social achievement; but for every Bonnie Dunbar there are, I suppose, millions whose dreams remain illusory.

Human nature is limited in its powers. We are limited in what we can do, what we can be, even in what we can think. We are limited in life span. But we have unlimited horizons. We can imagine, can fantasize, can dream of possibilities far beyond our actual capabilities.

We are not programmed, as spiders are, to spend our lives spinning webs in order to trap insects, in order to sustain ourselves, in order then to reproduce ourselves. I have never known a spider who had philosophical problems, who fantasized, who worried about the meaning of life.

Some of our thinkers (such as Ernest Becker and Otto Rank, as well as a great many others) contend that, if human beings are to be effectively alive, they must have a set of illusions that assure them of their importance in the scheme of things. They argue that humanity is a frightened, anxious animal that must lie to itself in order to live, that we need a set of reassuring illusions in order to be able to face the facts of life.

When Linus waxed eloquent about the great achievements he might make with his hands, he was reassuring himself of his own personal powers and potential, his own importance in the cosmos. He was bolstering up his own courage to be, working up a head of existential steam. He needed these fantasies about himself in order to be fully alive, the argument goes.

Unfortunately, there is always a Lucy around to puncture our illusions. As a result, we humans fight a lot. We fight with those who do not accept our system of illusions, who do not affirm our importance.

My own understanding of the matter is that the illusions, the fantasies generate not only a pattern of meaning, but, on the downside, a fiercely destructive ethnocentrism in human life that, if we do not correct, may do us in as a species.

It is not the illusions that we need but the meaning. We cannot live without meaning, and the need is so profound that millions of people will satisfy it with illusion, if that is what comes to hand, if that is what is generally accepted in society.

Bonnie Dunbar's fantasies related her effectively to the real world; but fantasy more often plays the opposite role in human life. It separates and shelters people from the hard demands of real life. It took Bonnie at least thirteen years of stressful work to fulfill her fantasies. Most people find it easier to use fantasy to create an alternate world to live in in their minds.

It is possible to live in a verbal, conceptual universe that exists only in our heads. It is possible to live in books and ideas, in symbols and myths, in fantasies and dreams, seldom coming to grips with the real nature of things.

It is possible to live in an idealized, conceptual, fantasy world, and to reject in despair the world as it is, for not measuring up to our ideals.

It has appeared to me that traditional religion is best understood, not as a description of reality, but as an alternative to reality in which people may live in their minds, an alternative that conforms more closely to human wishes and needs, that allays the fears and anxieties of human beings.

It is an empirical fact that death looms very large in human awareness. It is a threatening presence that hangs over life. For almost every human, it generates an abiding, primal fear. The traditional religions that took form in the ancient world (Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism) had as a central concern the task of allaying this crippling fear. If people lived in constant fear of death, they could not be fully and effectively alive.

These religions each developed a system of myths that assured believers they would live forever, that death was only apparent, not real. Heaven and hell were conceived as realms on the other side where we would live (in bliss or in agony) for all eternity. Reincarnation served a similar function in Eastern religions.

In the myth-fantasies of these ancient religions, people rise from the dead (as Christ did on his Resurrection), miracles happen repeatedly, the baby Jesus is born of a Virgin, and dies in agony on the cross as a sacrifice for our sins. By believing in him as our Savior, we may live forever in a state of bliss, in the presence of God.

This system of myth-fantasies created a verbal, symbolic, conceptual world in which people might live in their minds, an alternative to the real world, so full of suffering, fear, violence, injustice. It was a warm, comforting, sustaining alternative.

These fantasy systems were a highly creative invention people in the ancient world. They clearly helped our species to survive. They enabled millions of humans to deal with the tensions, the puzzles, the anxieties of existence. It may be that our species desperately needed this fantasy world to live in as a shelter from the terrors of existence in the ancient world.

This may well be so. Unfortunately, this initially creative solution to human problems had (and still has) a fiercely destructive, negative side as well. If your fundamental security in life is supported by a system of myth-fantasies that is not believed in by everybody in the world or even by everybody in your own society, then the unbelievers become a serious threat to your basic security.

For century after century, believers all over the world have persecuted, oppressed, battled, beaten, bloodied, tortured each other in bitter, violent conflict. Endlessly. This dynamic is a major source of the destructiveness that has persisted in human life.

There is an additional difficulty with founding our fundamental life security, the meaning of our lives on these ancient myth-fantasy systems. With the rise of science, with the spread of mass education, with the proliferation of the mass media, these ancient fantasy systems no longer work effectively, except for a substantial and powerful minority of fundamentalists.

The systems no longer have the center of the stage in human life, but must take their places beside dozens of other similar systems. As long as people were ignorant, innocent, submerged in the system prevailing in their society, as long as the systems were confirmed consensually, as long as their beliefs were everybody's beliefs, the fantasy systems could effectively work their magic. It appears to me that this is rapidly ceasing to be so.

We must, as a species, now find more real sources of security in life. We must deal with our fears of life and death in less destructive ways. We must root our security in truth, love, community, and the common bond of our humanity.

If, for example, people would cease to see Christ as the one and only Savior of the world, and instead persistently explore the implications of one of his central teachings, namely, that we must love our enemies, it would go far to relate us to reality rather than fantasy. It would point our attention in a healing direction rather than a divisive one.

IV. Fantasy in World Affairs
There is an even more serious side to this role that fantasy plays in human life. It cropped up during the Cold War in the relations between the US and Russia. It was a tense time. The threat of mutual assured destruction hung over us for many years.

Most of the people in this country were aware that the state-controlled press in Russia gave their people a distorted image of the reality of life in the US. We were much less aware as a people of how much fantasy there was in the prevailing American view of Russians.

The fact is we knew very little about the reality of life among the Russian people. A New York Times correspondent, David K Shipler, returned to America after spending eleven years abroad, four of them in Russia. He found, on his return, that there was a heavy component of fantasy in our understanding of life in the Soviet Union.

The Times ran a survey at Shipler’s urging, to assess the knowledge Americans had of the Soviet Union. Forty-four percent did not know that the two countries had fought on the same side in World War II; twenty-eight percent thought that they had actually fought against each other.

We thought then of the Russians as working far longer hours than Americans. We saw them as aggressive, competitive, disciplined, insensitive and mean. Only three percent of Americans thought Russians were cheerful, fun-loving, having a sense of humor.

This, Shipler said, is "a dramatic misimpression of the Soviet people," is sheer fantasy. The eight-hour day and the five-day week are "normal features of Soviet life, as are holidays and vacations, of course.... To the extent that one can generalize about a nation more diverse than we care to realize, Soviets are warm and compassionate, more complacent than competitive, more unruly in their souls than disciplined."

This is not to say that the Russian government was innocent and harmless. It was an aggressive, formidable, and ruthless adversary. It practiced oppression on a large scale, not only within its own borders but in eastern Europe as well.

But in religion and in international relations, it is far better that we relate to reality, rather than allow our thoughts, feelings and actions to be determined by fantasy. It is exceedingly important that we strive to grow closer and ever closer to reality in all realms of existence. The fantasies, to be sure, do empower people, energize them, but they can be massively destructive as well.

It is good, is creative for creatures made as we are to dream. It is bad to dream dreams that serve only to separate us from the real world. Dreaming, fantasizing will be a stimulus to creativity if we keep alive in ourselves an awareness of reality, if we stay in touch with the world as it is. With ourselves as we are.

As Bonnie Dunbar did. As David Shipler did.

In personal life, in public life, our fantasies are both a wondrous gift and, at the same time, a serious hazard to our well-being individually and as a species.

Dr Alexie Crane
2880 Exeter Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 682-3476

Lex1304@aol.com