Escapism

"Chorus: Let not thy love to man oerleap the bounds Of reason, nor neglect thy wretched state: So my fond hope suggests thou shalt be free From these base chains, nor less in power than Jove. Prometheus: Not thus—it is not in the that thus These things should end; crushd with a thousand wrongs, A thousand woes, I shall escape these chains. Necessity is stronger far than art. Chorus: Who then is ruler of necessity? Prometheus: The triple Fates and unforgetting Furies. Chorus: Must Jove then yield to their superior power? Prometheus: He no way shall escape his destined fate."

"Men cannot, for Nietzche, escape time. It is the effort to remove oneself from history which Nietzche sees at the root of the various attempts at redemption: Hegel, Kant, Schopenhauer, along with the Christians before them and science after, all maintain the existence of a world of transcendental concept(s) (be this God, theoretical reason, the Geist, the laws of physics), as the source for a solution to the problems of earthly being. "Redemption" consists of escaping from this world to that one, or, conversely, having that world take this one over. Given, however, Nietzches general hostility to such notions of transcendence and two-worldliness, it is unlikely that he would assert the possibility or desirability of escaping the reality of time."

"All literature, but especially literature of the weird and the fantastic, is a cave where both readers and writers hide from life. (Which is exactly why so many parents and teachers, spotting a teenager with a collection of stories by Lovecraft, Bloch, or Clark Ashton Smith, are apt to cry, “Why are you reading that useless junk?”) It is in just such caves—such places of refuge—that we lick our wounds and prepare for the next battle out in the real world."

"It is all escapism to feel dependent. By such an attitude you just lame yourself... The right way is your own way, and you should make yourself go on that way."

"Shakespeares final Exeunts order us out of the theater because the unfinished business they leave us with cannot be transacted there. ... What stage death offers the hero is an escape from this verbal dying into the rest that is silence. ...a critique of this commitment to stageable closure as an escape from meaning. ... This critique speaks to the ethical limits of such notions as Aristotles circumscribed concept of courage, the courage that thinks to prove itself by facing death in battle as "the most terrible thing of all." ...Aristotle limits the range of the term according to the doctrine of the mean: "to seek death in order to escape from poverty, or the pangs of love, or from pain or sorrow, is not the act of a courageous man, but rather of a coward; for it is weakness to fly from troubles, and the suicide does not endure death because it is noble to do so, but to escape evil." But the interest, pathos, and poignancy of Shakespears warrior-heroes is produced by ignoring this distinction."

"It is Schopenhauers argument in his essay "On Suicide," that the possibility of easy and painless self-destruction is the only thing that constantly and considerably ameliorates the horror of human life. Suicide is a means of escape from the world and its tortures—and therefore it is good. It is an ever-present refuge for the weak, the weary and the hopeless. It is, in Plinys phrase, the greatest of all blessings which Nature gives to man," and one which even God himself lacks, for "he could not compass his own death, if he willed to die." In all of this exaltation of surrender, of course, there is nothing whatever in common with the dionysian philosophy of defiance. Nietzches teaching is all in the other direction. He urges, not surrender, but battle; not flight, but war to the end. His curse falls upon those "preachers of death" who counsel "an abandonment of life"—whether this abandonment be partial, as in asceticism, or actual, as in suicide. And yet Zarathustra sings the song of "free death" and says that the higher man must learn to die "at the right time." .. Schopenhauer regards suicide as a means of escape, Neitzche sees it as a means of good riddance. It is time to die, says Zarathustra, when the purpose of life ceases to be attainable..."

"Neither life nor happiness can be achieved by the pursuit of irrational whims. Just as man is free to attempt to survive by any random means, as a parasite, a moocher or a looter, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment—so he is free to seek his happiness in any irrational fraud, any whim, any delusion, any mindless escape from reality, but not free to succeed at it beyond the range of the moment nor to escape the consequences."

"The urge to escape our real self is also an urge to escape the rational and the obvious. The refusal to see ourselves as we are develops a distaste for facts and cold logic. There is no hope for the frustrated in the actual and the possible. Salvation can come to them only from the miraculous, which seeps through a crack in the iron wall of inexorable reality. They ask to be deceived. What Stresemann said of the Germans is true of the frustrated in general: "They pray not only for their daily bread, but also for their daily illusion."

"The people of Israel. One of the spectacles which the coming century holds in store for us, is the decision regarding the fate of the European Jews. There is not the slightest doubt that they have cast their die and traversed their Rubicon: the only thing which remains for them is either to become the masters of Europe or to lose Europe, as they once, ages ago, lost Egypt, where they had to face a similar dilemma. But in Europe they have gone through a school of eighteen centuries, such as no other nation can boast of, and the experiences of this terrible time of probation have benefited the community much less than the individual. In consequence whereof the resourcefulness in soul and intellect of our modern Jews is extraordinary. In times of extremity they, least of all the inhabitants of Europe, try to escape any great dilemma by a recourse to drink or to suicide—which less gifted people are so apt to fly to. Each Jew finds in the history of his fathers and grandfathers a voluminous record of instances of the greatest coolness and perseverance in terrible positions, of most artful cunning and clever fencing with misfortune and chance; their bravery under the cloak of wretched submissiveness, their heroism in the spernere se sperni surpass the virtues of all the saints."

"A horse is the projection of peoples dreams about themselves - strong, powerful, beautiful - and it has the capability of giving us escape from our mundane existence."

"Bhikkhus, this Kassapa is content with any kind of almsfood, and he speaks in praise of contentment with any kind of almsfood, and he does not engage in a wrong search, in what is improper, for the sake of a almsfood. If he does not get almsfood he is not agitated, and if he gets it he uses it without being tied to it, uninfatuated with it, not blindly absorbed in it, seeing the danger in it, understanding the escape. ... Therefore, bhikkhus, you should train yourselves thus: We will be content with any kind of almsfood, and we will speak in praise of contentment with any kind of almsfood, and we will not engage in a wrong search, in what is improper, for the sake of almsfood. If we do not get almsfood we will not be agitated, and if we get it we will use it without being tied to it, uninfatuated with it, not blindly absorbed in it, seeing the danger in it, understanding the escape."

"They constantly try to escape From the darkness outside and within By dreaming of systems so perfect that no one will need to be good. But the man that is shall shadow The man that pretends to be."