The escapist consciousness has been characteristic of humanity since its inception. Mythological images, ideas about the afterlife, legends about the “golden age”, legends about magical lands inhabited by amazing creatures - all these are fruits of escapist consciousness. On the one hand, it was an attempt to cope with the fear of the incomprehensible, the unknown: an attempt to rationalize the inexplicable. That which is beyond the bounds of the possibility of knowledge is transformed into a myth, into an artistic image, into a fantasy. But on the other hand, an attempt to get rid of the fear of the unknown led precisely to escapism - in this case, escape from ignorance, the impossibility of knowledge to artificially construct pleasant or, on the contrary, frightening, exciting images of imagination and worlds. Yi-Fu Tuan, an American geographer of Chinese origin, notes that craving for escapism leads man’s imagination to not only the beautiful and the best, but also to the terrifying and nightmarish. Children completely begin to fear the darkness and “someone who hides under the bed”, our consciousness constantly gives rise to our often unfounded fears, which, nevertheless, we need for life diversity. If there are not enough impressions in our life, we begin to look for “sources of adrenaline” in extreme sports, horror films, or simply watching the suffering of other people (from public executions of the Middle Ages to the news programs of our days).
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