Life is Just a Fantasy, Can You Live This Fantasy Life

Not for much longer.

After the collapse, maybe leopard prints will come back.

Before we get started, that picture is from Canadian rock-star Aldo Nova from the 1980s. His 1982 debut album Aldo Nova contained the hit single, "Fantasy".

Here is the video, and my God, it is wonderfully 80s. If you watch the video and wonder where Aldo is coming from in that helicopter, and why those guys are walking around with machine-guns around an abandoned warehouse, and why he has a laser weapon built into his guitar - you’re overthinking it. Just relax and let the 80s wash over you. A man in a tight leopard jumpsuit, cowboy boots and a fantastic mullet is rocking out. Just go with it.

For those interested in reading about our current brand of capitalism as a fantasy world, read on.

The story we tell ourselves is a fantasy.

For the sake of this argument, let’s define a fantasy as something that isn’t real, based on things that are impossible or improbable. If you want to have more mundane fantasies about wearing a different color shoe, you go ahead. But that isn’t what we are talking about here.

A fantasy is something that as Aldo says, “It’s not reality.” Think flying by flapping your arms, swimming across the ocean on one breath, the Maple Leafs winning the Stanley Cup, the Browns winning the Superbowl, or England winning the world cup. My wife is English, and she would even agree with that last one. Every time the world cup starts, I play this song, and she gives me a well-deserved scowl. It’s now nearly 60 years of hurt, but who's counting?

If you step back from our current economic story of life here on Earth, it is pretty easy to see that it is indeed … a fantasy. We are promised eternal economic growth even though that is impossible, we expect eternal economic growth even though that is impossible, and we expect to be promised eternal economic growth even though that is impossible. We expect to be lied to, we want to be lied to, and we are upset when we are not lied to.

These are not the hallmarks of a healthy society.

We didn’t get here yesterday. We got here because GDP, which was invented about 90 years ago, was over the years sold to us as the real way to measure our happiness and well-being. We got here because we were sold prosperity as material wealth, even though study after study and parables going back to before written history tell us that money doesn't buy happiness. We bought that story and adopted it as our own because things did generally get better - if by getting better it meant owning more stuff. We bought that story because we were told it was the only story that there was and when capitalism finally defeated communism and the wall fell, we thought history had ended and it would just be milk and honey from here on out.

That story is a fairytale.

But the.at story is a fairytale. The economics that formed the pillars of that story assume a perpetual motion machine where firms and households interact seamlessly to always provide us with more.

The truth is more complex and messier. The goods and services those firms provided need an ever-greater supply of stuff to make them. And the making of that stuff produces waste and pollution that we need to deal with.

Once you factor in all of the materials needed and the waste produced, you realize that we have ignored that part of the math in our story - wishing instead to believe in the fantasy. The reality was too inconvenient, it would mean we would have to give up some of our stuff, or some of our wealth.

If we factored in reality, the picture we would see wouldn’t be pretty, it would be something like this …

… in which the life support system that keeps us alive is breaking down. If we just grow by 2 percent per year as a global economy, we would need to double the resources we need every 35 years. Our planet can’t handle our fantasy now, what do you think 35 years is going to look like?

Everything in moderation.

There is nothing wrong with a little fantasy now and again. It keeps us sane. Imagining a better world, or a way out of a difficult situation can help us make it so in the long run. Fantasy can be your brain helping you escape from a difficult reality, to give you the space to be human, be sane, or figure out a better way.

But for the last fifty years or so, when worshiping GDP took hold and eternal growth became our collective story, we collectively have been living in a fantasy. That isn’t only unhealthy, it is dangerous. Living in that fantasy blinded us to the very real degradation of our life support system. The longer we insist on living in that fantasy, the harder it will be to change and the more destructive our fall will be as a civilization.

As a young man in his early 20s, Aldo Nova didn’t write fantasy as a warning against GDP worship and overconsumption. He wanted to create a song that captured the essence of escapism and the power of dreams, themes that have resonated with fans worldwide. There’s nothing wrong with that. Music is art, but music is also fun and escapist.

If we continue to claim our collective fantasy is reality, it will only end in tears … and a lot of loss … and a lot of destruction … and a lot of death.

So forget all that you see …