A Short Essay On The Difference Between Fantasy and Fiction
When a child finds himself possessed of incredible powers, this is fantasy.
When a man finds himself thrust into a world not his own, this is fantasy.
When gods battle over the lives of mortals, this is fantasy.
When the dead rise to consume you all, this is fantasy.
When a woman holds sway over fire and water, this is fantasy.
When Centaurs and Minotaurs battle, Gryphons and Dragons swoop, Wizards
and Witches cast spells, and mankind survives it all? When an army twisted
by darkness marches, a gem holds incredible power, animals talk and aliens
visit, demons and angels fight in the streets? When you travel through a black
hole, when you move faster than light, when you go back through time…
Fantasy. All of it fantasy.
Do you believe in magic? In miracles? In fairytales?
In gods? Myths, legends, stories?
Or do you believe only what you see?
What if all you see is fantasy? Do you then believe it?
Beyond the realm of possibility, fantastic in nature, unbelievable, but you saw it.
Then do you believe? Why do you believe what you see?
Why, when you can believe things you can't see? Why can you see?
Do you think that diagram of the inside of your own eye is necessarily the truth?
Does it make sense to you? Maybe, but certainly not for everyone.
They believe only what they see for themselves, and they believe only what
they cannot see at all. Human minds are all made the same way, so why is it
that we can claim some are capable of understanding while others are not?
How can we claim that some are so terribly misguided while others know the
truth about the universe? How is a child able to see that all these stories are
false, yet the father holds true to his belief? How can any of us claim we know
when others do not, unless we have seen the events with our own eyes?
Eyes that lie, and eyes whose very inner working that we understand could
just as easily be a lie. You never saw the gods. You can't see them.
You have no proof that they exist except for answers to prayer.
Answers that don't always come. And yet others claim that means there is no gods
looking down. They believe in mutations, slime turning to a man, one life form
becoming another. Something they cannot see. They have no proof that it
happens, except for the results. Results with no middle ground. And yet others
claim that means there is no process going on. They believe in anything they want.
They believe in colossal explosions that come from nowhere.
They believe in higher beings we cannot properly fathom.
They believe in what? Pure chance? Benevolent intent?
Anything you believe can be said in a way that makes it senseless.
God is a fantasy. Evolution is a fantasy. Everything you believe is a fantasy.
It is all fantasy. Fantastic.
So which fantasy actually happened? One of them must have.
The Human soul is fantastic, a fantasy, unrealistic, without proof, unbelievable.
But it must exist. The soul is the key. The soul is the reason that killing another
person is wrong. It is the reason anything is right or wrong. If we have no souls,
we have no purpose, no future, no past, no needs, no desires, and nothing else.
Without a soul, we mean nothing. If we have no soul, what's so wrong about pulling
the trigger, slitting your wrists, taking that last step, dropping the bomb?
If we had no soul, we would have no need to preserve life. We would have no need
to understand life. Without a soul, we could destroy everything around us to watch
it burn and enjoy the chaos. But without a soul, even that would be worthless.
Without a soul, we wouldn't enjoy it. We would not fear death, enjoy life, cry, laugh,
smile. We would do nothing but what is efficient. The soul is what makes the emotions work.
The soul makes the difference between us all. Without it, there would be no prejudice,
but there would be no love. So the soul must exist. But aside from that, the soul tells
us something else. If we have a soul, we must have a purpose. However we came to be,
whatever caused it, there must be a reason for it to go on.
The soul is what creates art, learns science, comprehends sport, imagines war, and yearns
for companionship. It also yearns for poptarts, not broccoli. It yearns for a kitten, not a badger.
It yearns for a doctor, not a plumber. It yearns for video games, not schoolwork.
It yearns for The Simpsons, not Naruto. Yet sometimes, and for some people, it does yearn
for broccoli, a badger, a plumber, schoolwork, and Naruto. This cannot be the cause of a
logical brain controlled only by what makes sense.
But why?
We know what it is, except that we do not agree. We know when it happened, except we
do no agree. We know where, we know how, and we know who it happened to. It is the soul,
we have it, it is here, we were blessed with it, some time long passed. We do not agree on
the answers, but we all know them. We simply all know different ones.
But why? What is its purpose, and therefore our purpose?
If you say we were created out of pure chance, then there is no purpose, is there?
But if someone made us, then we were made with a purpose.
They say God made us to glorify him. How are we supposed to do that?
If making us brought glory to him, then we should do the same.
We should create, for creation brings glory to him. In the same way, if a man made
a computer program and that program did something amazing, the credit would
go to the man. When your creation does something, you get the credit.
Creation is our purpose, so long as we agree that we have a purpose.
If we have souls, then we have purpose.
It is the soul that allows us to disagree on the existence of souls. It is the reason
we can cast evidence aside, ignore proof, and more importantly the reason we can
change our opinion. It is the soul that causes every scientific reasoning to become
outdated. It is the soul that allows us to believe them anyway. It is the soul that
allows us to make up a new belief at will.
The soul is fantastic, a fantasy.
Fantasy is not always fiction.
Welcome to the real world. This is fantasy.
