I used to stay up all night playing ‘Resident Evil 2,’ and it wouldn’t stop until the sun came up.. Then I’d walk outside at dawn’s first light, looking at the empty streets of London, and it was like life imitating art.. It felt like I’d stepped into an actual zombie apocalypse..
~Edgar Wright
We keep trying to escape this reality; is that because this reality isn’t good enough? No, not at all.
It’s just that we keep realizing this reality’s deficiencies. Carl Sagan said, “It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.” And that’s true. But…
It’s pretty damn arrogant to think we understand the Universe. I’ll be honest; it took me something like two years to figure out exactly how I liked my morning coffee. It took me ten years to realize that I look bad in shorts. We seem to think that a small portion of a human lifetime is enough to tell us what’s “real”.
And at the same time, it’s pretty damn self-destructive to think that we can’t understand any part of the Universe, that we’re totally out of control. Jut because the Universe is big doesn’t mean we’re insignificant; it means we sometimes need to think big if we’re going to make something work.
Friends, reality is malleable. We are human beings; we are not slaves of destiny, we are not machines, we are not programs. We change the world simply by existing within it.
That’s part of what Villainpunk says: “To hell with a world where run around saying everything we don’t understand is evil; let’s just create BOUNDLESS IMAGINARY VILLAINY!” This is why the Post-Apocalypse says: “To hell with your day job, this future is more ALIVE.” That is what Goth says: “Forget the insipid joys; a REAL joy should be able to exist in the face of the complete and exquisite knowledge of sadness and remorse.”
We are beings of imagination and creation. Go ahead, try to tell us what’s “real”. We’ll fight back with a reality ridiculous and implausible, a reality flawed in every way except…
…except that as humans, we can make it real. And that is Villainpunk and Renaissance Faires and Zombies and Goth and Halloween…but it’s also the fascinating technologies around us, the things we take for granted, cell phones, computers, video games, knowledge and information. Understanding alone is much less limited than anyone thinks it to be; Moore’s law alone proves it.
We’re humans. Our only limits are imaginary, and we can break imaginary rules any time we want; ask anyone who’s ever played Dungeons and Dragons.
Never let Reality hold you back. You can do better than that.
My name is Jeff Mach (“Dark Lord” is optional) and I build communities, put on events, and make stories come into being. You can get most of my books right here. Go ahead, pre-order “I HATE Your Prophecy“. It may make you into a bad person, but I can live with that.
