Fantasy is more than just an escape—it’s a powerful lens that shapes how we see and interact with the world. In this episode, Eddie Reece and Bill Courtright dive deep into how fantasy influences everything from our behavior to our beliefs. They explore how childhood fantasies, like believing in Santa Claus, evolve into complex adult beliefs about life, love, and society. They also discuss how the stories we tell children and the cultural narratives we buy into subtly shape our decisions and perceptions of success, relationships, and identity. Tune in for a fascinating exploration of how fantasies about critical thinking, shame, and belonging impact who we are and how we navigate the pressures of the world around us.
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How Fantasy Shapes Our Lives, Part 1
It’s Bill and Eddie back again with this episode of the show. Starring our very good friend, the thought leader extraordinaire, Eddie Reece, we have a wonderful and, dare I say, exciting conversation in store for you. The seeds of this conversation were planted at the end of our previous episode when Eddie referenced how people deal with the conversations, visions, and fantasies that they may sometimes have deep within their own mind and sometimes embedded in their subconscious mind, the consequences or the results of that, which we’re going to call fantasy and Eddie’s going to better quantify going forward, and all of the effects and all of the circumstances that surround that.
We can talk about everything very topically about what’s going on in the world, whether it be politics, herd mentality, confirmation bias, or cognitive dissonance. There are a lot of things that we’re going to touch on, and all of them are incredibly compelling. We are all going to be better, happier, and smarter as a result of this episode. With that preview, I’d like to introduce our very good friend, our thought leader, Eddie Reece.
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Eddie, how would you like to set the stage for this episode?
Believing In Fantasy As A Child
That’s a good question because this subject encompasses pretty much everything in somebody’s life. We’re going to talk about how believing in fantasy as a child spills over into our adult everyday life and into the life of our culture. It explains so many different phenomena. That’s what I’m excited about. These are things that you would never believe have anything to do with where you came from as a small child. I’m guessing we could start with that.
Until about 6 or 7 years old, children’s brains have not developed in terms of this frontal lobe. It hasn’t developed well the part that can do logic, that can put things together and question them. It really is a world of fantasy, which makes childhood seem, in some ways, idyllic in that you can believe in Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and things that your parents, caretakers, and the culture teach you. Those things are very real. This is a concept that a lot of people find tricky to understand, especially if they have small children and they’re talking to them. If they start to talk to them like an adult with logic and reason, it’s not going to compute. We believe in that stuff until our brains develop.
The story I tell is remembering at about 6 or 7 years old, somewhere along those lines, I learned the size of the planet Earth as best as I could comprehend it at the time. I remember thinking, “Santa Claus goes all the way around the world and he does it in one night and stops at everybody’s house.” I’m not questioning if the reindeer can fly or if he can put all of his presents in a slate. I hadn’t figured that out yet. I’m thinking, “I’m not sure how he’s going to do that.” That’s the beginning of brain development which can do critical thinking and can question something and come up with a different idea instead of blindly believing. That’s the concept to hang on to as we talk about this.
Parenting & Fantasy
Think about blindly believing. As parents, we feel like it is our obligation or duty to create a safe environment for our children. We explain certain things in a way that we hope will elicit a certain behavior. I have 2 kids under 10. They’re in great behavior from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Whether it’s religion, government, parental rules, or the rules of the house, so to speak, it’s an intent to keep an environment safe.
For a younger child, it is my belief, or maybe the belief that I had adopted, that I need to create a context in which they understand because if they don’t exercise the behavior as instructed, injury, trauma, and, dare I say, death could result. We’re trying to create a reaction. We’re trying to create a behavior. The idea that the fantasy, religion, parable, or whatever we create in order to elicit that response, although well-intended, what we’re saying is, “You don’t have what it takes to understand logically and cognitively on the level I need you to so I need to create a narrative in order to elicit that behavior.” Is that fair to say?
I’m following you. Can you give me an example of something that you want to impart to your child?
The first example that came into my head was, “You’re not supposed to jump in the pool until an hour after eating.” I don’t have the first clue why that’s the case, but I’ve been told that’s the case and I’ve been told that I could get a cramp up and drown. I don’t know if any of that’s true, but it’s been passed down from generation to generation.
Now that I have kids, I’m telling my son, “You ate. Don’t get in the pool for an hour,” and his question to me is, “Why?” I’m like, “I’m not sure.” I don’t have an example of where we create these parables, but as you read to your children, you know that oftentimes in the fantasies, the fairytales, the Disney movies, there is a lesson. I want to believe that the fantasies that these children have are well intended. Am I wrong?
It is not so much about the intention as it is what’s presented. In the case you’re talking about, you have to present to a child something that makes sense in a fantasy world. They’re like, “Why can’t I get in the pool if I stay?” You say, “That’s because there are creatures that live in the pool. They don’t ever bother you. You never see them unless there’s food in your belly because they’re after that food. I would hate for them to come in and take all that food right out of your belly while you are in the pool. Do you think that’d be fun?” They’re like, “No. I don’t want monsters after me.” I’m like, “That’s why.”
It’s got to be a fantasy because they’re not going to understand the metabolism of the food or a cramp. None of that’s going to make any sense so have some fun with it. An hour gets up and they’re like, “Can I get into the pool now?” You say, “Let’s test it out. I’ll stay right here because the monsters are afraid of me because I’m big. Let’s put you in and see if they show up.” They’re like, “I don’t see anything.” I’m like, “You look good. Have fun.” They’re like, “Are you sure they won’t hear me?” You’re like, “100%.”
That being the case and as our children grow, you gave an excellent example in our private conversation subsequent to our last recording. You talked about when we noticed that shift from questioning the size of the globe where we were, “Is this even feasible?” type of thing. My first question is let’s operate under the assumption that that happens and your child starts to develop that question. You had a really interesting way of addressing it in a way that encouraged or promoted thought, reason, logic, critical thinking, deductive reasoning, and that sort of thing. That was helpful to me as a father. That’s the first part of my question and then I have a follow-up to that.
The idea is your child is moving from this one developmental stage of fantasy into the developmental stage of being able to think logically and rationally. The job of somebody raising that child is to walk them through that in a way that they can handle. If your child goes, “Dad, I learned about the earth. I’m wondering how Santa Claus would get around the earth that fast,” you wouldn’t go, “The truth is there is no Santa Claus.” They’ll be like, “I’m going to be really upset.”
The approach that you would take is to go, “That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that before. Tell me a little more about that.” They’ll say, “The earth is really big and Santa Claus has got to go to every house.” You’re like, “That’s true.” They’re like, “I’m thinking that’s a lot of houses.” You’re like, “I wonder how many there are.” They’re like, “I don’t know, Dad. Do you know how many?” You’re like, “No, I’m not that smart.” You have a little conversation about it and you don’t tell the child anything. You get them to think more about it.
At some point, you’ll say, “You might want to go and think some more about that. See what you come up with and we’ll talk about it some more.” That development is going to be, “How does he get all the way around the planet?” I’m not questioning that he’s in a flying sleigh. After a while, it’s like, “I saw deer and they’re big. They’re walking around. Do they really fly?” You’re like, “I’m not sure about that.”
It’s going to be a piece at a time. You do the same thing with each one of those where you’re like, “That’s interesting. I hadn’t thought about that. You’re really smart. What are you coming up with?” You walk them through that until they’re going to get to the point and go, “When I think about it, I’m not sure Santa Claus is even real.” You’re like, “You might be right. Think about that a little more.”
They’re like, “I’m going to go talk to my friends. “They’re going to be in some part of that stage. Some of them are going to go, “He’s real.” Some of them will go, “My parents told me a long time ago.” They come back and go, “Billy’s parents said that Santa isn’t real.” You’re like, “That is the truth. There isn’t a Santa Claus. It sure was fun though thinking that there was, wasn’t it?” They’re like, “Yeah. That was fun. Where do the presents come from?” You’re like, “Maybe it was the Easter Bunny.”
That’s helpful for all the parents reading and anybody who has ever had to have that conversation as awkward as it was in the beginning. That’s a valuable way to go about it in a way that empowers the child to come up with some solutions or to do something. It’s like, “Go try that a little more and tell me what you find out. Through your investigations, if you choose to believe so-and-so over so-and-so, let’s flesh that out.”
Unhealthy Responses To Logic
This is my second question on that point. This one is the one that I spent a lot of my time contemplating and pondering. What you described to me sounds healthy. It sounds like a really normal development. It sounds like someone who has got a healthy household of parent and child and they’re having conversations.
You’ve got a parent who’s taking the time to not only figure out but care how to go through this in a way that’s the most productive for the child and a child who responds to the productive flow of conversation, inputs, and comes out on the other side of what we would describe as ideal. That isn’t always the case. What happens or what may have happened when someone refuses or chooses not to believe in the logical, deductive side of things and wants to hang on to that more idyllic, more ethereal, more fantastical version of the non-truth?
It can go a lot of different ways but the end results are pretty much the same. If a parent is hearing you question it, let’s say they go, “Sweetheart, it is magic. Santa Claus is real.” As you get deeper into your thought process, you’re thinking, “I’m not sure I’m going to buy this.” They’re like, “Santa Claus is real.” You then start to question, “Who’s crazy here? One of us is not really catching on.” You’re going to develop a bit of doubt about your abilities.
Whereas in the first way that I talk about handling it, you are gaining an awful lot of confidence like, “I can take this kind of stuff to the big people and they think it’s pretty cool. This is a good way to be. It’s okay for me to be this way, question this, and figure this out.” If the caretaker is going, “Santa Claus is real,” or right off the bat, “That’s all a big lie. We lied,” then they don’t care about the kids’ feelings at that point. Either way, you’re going to wind up with this sense of, “I can’t trust what’s going on around me. I can’t trust that people would tell me the truth,” or, “I can’t trust that anything I say would make sense to them or that they even care.”
This ability to think critically can be damaged in some way. Anytime there’s some kind of damage in a developmental state, it gives us a sense of doubt. It gives us a sense of, “Do I really know what I’m talking about?” or it can throw us to the other side of, “Whatever I say, I know it is real and you people are crazy.” You’re either going to go, “Whatever,” and walk away not feeling very good or you’re going to go that other direction and work hard if you take the approach of, “I know how big the planet is. I know reindeer can’t fly. I know all the presents wouldn’t fit in that sleigh anyway so I know what I’m talking about. You people are idiots.” You’re going to take that as a template.
This is what happens as we grow up. We develop these templates that give us a way to handle situations that are similar. We’re getting into how easy it is to buy the fantasy that our culture wants to sell us all the time because we don’t have that critical thinking developed in a way where we can question, analyze, and break it all down without this emotional content of hurt that, “I wasn’t given the tools emotionally to learn how to do this.” We’ve got to cover that hurt up and the shame about it of thinking, “Maybe I don’t really know but I’ve got to act like I do,” or, “Maybe I don’t know so I’ll go along with everybody else. That way, everybody will like me. The people on this side are going to be very highly suggestible. The people here are not.”
We get into how easy it is to buy the fantasy that our culture wants to sell us all the time because we don’t have critical thinking.
You then move into watching an ad on TV and you see, “The people that use that toothpaste, drink that beer, wear those clothes, and drive that car look awfully happy to me so that must be the way it works.” That’s why advertising works. None of us think advertising works on us. We probably will agree that advertising works on everybody else. We think it doesn’t work on us but it really does. You begin to not be able to question things. You go from ads or then you see a story on the internet that’s got a little bit of something in there that interests you. You don’t go and check it out. You think it’s so funny or you think it’s true. You don’t ever question it.
Connecting Fantasy To Adult Behaviors
It doesn’t take too many steps before you’re pretty knee-deep into a conspiracy theory or the fantasy of something. One of the biggest ones in our culture is this idea of romance and that we’re going to meet this person. There’s this perfect person somewhere. If you listen to somebody who’s looking to date, they’re like, “I want to find that right person.” They’re always talking about finding that one person. Where do they come up with that? They don’t go, “I want to go out and date and meet as many people as I possibly could meet that might be possible partners and choose from that large sample to find the very best one.” They say, “I want to find that special one,” which tells you that they’re in a fantasy.
That fantasy causes us to lust for somebody and then believe that’s love because that’s the way it’s portrayed. It’s like, “I’m in love now, so this must be the one. Therefore, we need to start talking about marriage, children, and where to live because that’s the template that’s laid out for me. I’m going to follow that in some way, shape, or form so that I can be a legitimate person in this culture because that’s what we’re supposed to do.”
Thankfully, the younger folks in our culture are not buying into that one quite as much as the rest of us did. That’s a fantasy. That’s a conspiracy theory. It’s not true. You’re not going to live happily ever after. You’re not going to find this one right, perfect person. You might find one person but they’re not going to be the right person because you’re not the right person.
It’s going to be somebody that there are going to be things you love about them and they’re wonderful and then there are going to be things that get under your skin and drive you crazy. The fantasy tells us, “That must not be the right person because with the right person, there wouldn’t be any problem.” That is the right person because that’s how it’s going to be with anybody you pair up with. The reality is you have to take a whole different approach to finding, being with, staying with, and continuing with. You have to take a whole different approach than what we’re taught of the happily ever after.
The Emotional Need For Fantasy
Think about it. There’s a mature quality to what you’re saying with a mentally healthy individual with a strong self-image and logical and deductive reasoning capabilities. What you’re saying makes perfect sense. The term love is blind or the idea that the fantasy or delusion that someone would have at Prince Charming the Cinderella wife character, or whatever, what I’m hearing, and I can’t wait to get your feedback, is somehow the emotional tie to that need. That needs significance. The hierarchy of needs is the scale of love, shelter, safety, or what have you.
If you become so committed to that reality or that fantasy, it starts to be an idea of what you look for, you will find. We walk in and we have an expectation. We’re looking for evidence of, “What I already feel is true.” You are ignoring everything else that’s more in your face saying, “This is not a healthy question. This is not probably good for you or it is but it’s not the fantasy version.” Am I on the right track? Is this what’s going on? Is that what you look for, you will find?
Shame And The Need To Belong
If I’m hearing you right, at the very bottom part of all of that is I that come out of my childhood with a lot of screwy things that keep me from being a really healthy, fully functioning adult. This goes to the conversation that we’ve touched on before. We can do a whole mess of stuff on this. It causes me to feel what I call shame.
I like the term that a lot of folks in the industry use there. Shame says, “There’s something fundamentally wrong with me that will never be fixed.” I have to hide that from you, and in order to hide it, I have to come up with an image that you will buy. We’re going to latch on to these different cultural fantasies than the one about finding the right person, being a happily married person with children, or living in a nice home with nice cars where everybody gets along and does well. If I can do that, then I can cover up my shame. That’s the real need that we’re trying to cover up. It’s not so much about, “I’ll be loved or cared about.” It’s that, “I can cover that up.”
Shame is the belief that something is fundamentally wrong with you and that you need to hide it. So, you latch onto these different cultural fantasies.
We don’t talk about it that way. This is the main way everybody talks about it, and it fascinates me how everybody says the same thing. If they’re single and they’re looking and they can’t find somebody, I’ll say, “Why are you so sold on this idea that you have to find somebody?” They’ll say, “I don’t want to die alone.” After years of hearing that and learning all this stuff I’ve learned, I’ve finally connected it to this sense of shame.
If you carry out, “I’m this person that nobody wants. I’m irrevocably flawed,” and that comes out, you’re like, “I’m not going to make it. I’m not going to survive. Nobody’s going to want anything to do with me.” I’ll be like, “Why is that a problem?” You’ll say, “That’s because I’m not going to be able to get a job. I’m not going to be able to have a social group. I’m not going to be able to afford anything. I’m going to be a homeless person. Since my problems and flaws are so evident, even the other homeless people are not going to want anything to do with me.”
The end game if you carry all this out is, “I die alone under a bridge somewhere and the other homeless people step over my dead lifeless body. Nobody even cares or knows that I’m dead. Therefore, I never existed.” That’s the terror that we live with. It is, “I will never exist in the world.” My concept of shame is a sense of non-existence. It’s not about an abandonment issue because to be abandoned, you first have to be joined. As we are questioning Santa Claus, if that’s not accepted, then it is like, “I’m not going to be accepted. There’s something wrong with me. The big people don’t even want to have anything to do with me. I’ve got to do something about that.”
This is one of the subjects that fascinates me because it ties in virtually every major concept of our culture, our psychology, and our relationship. Virtually any big topic you want to pull in, you’re going to say, “I’m not worthy of this. I’ll do this in order to feel okay about myself so that you’ll like me and so that I won’t die alone under a bridge.” That’s why I do all this stuff, talking to you. I want a bunch of subscribers and I want people to go, “That Eddie is something else. Those conversations he and Billy have is fascinating the hell out of me.”
As someone who is fascinated by psychology from an amateur perspective and looking at why people do what they do, this conversation is fascinating to me. We’ve talked in the past about shame and narcissism, having their hooks in everything we do as people, and then how the science behind those universal truths is used almost against us in marketing, advertising, media, politics, and religion. You talk about needs. You talk about core values.
When I say need, you live a certain amount of time. The ultimate fear might be dying alone and having your life have no meaning or never having existed at all if a tree falls in the forest and no one’s around to happen. We come through our lives with these societal norms and pressures to behave in a certain way and avoid shame or exercise the shame. Whether we exercise it or not, the people who are talking to you are still struggling to do that but it’s all pushing this narrative that that’s what happiness looks like.
That’s exactly it. It is like, “If you follow these guidelines, then you’ll be happy. Everybody would want you.” The fantasy comes in here that it’s an all-encompassing kind of happiness. It is a happiness that never ends, which is what people want. If a client says, “I want to be happy,” I’ll go, “I can do that for you. I’ve got a magic wand in the drawer here. I would wave it and you would be happy.
I’m assuming that you want to be happy all the time.” They’re like, “That’d be nice.” I’d be like, “Let’s walk that through. I wave my magic wand and you are happy. You’re like, “I’m alive. I’m good. I’m doing great.” You then walk out of here and get a phone call that three of your best friends were tragically killed in a car wreck. You’re going to go to the funeral home like, “How’s it going? Is it not a gorgeous day outside? I am so stoked. How are you doing?” Is that really what you want?” They’re like, “No.”
I’m like, “You got to get rid of this fantasy of happiness. Happiness is not a good goal if you’re going to use it as a singular destination. How about, “What I really want is to experience my full humanity. I want to experience all of the possible emotions. I want to be able to experience this amazing joy and awe. I want to go through an experience of a beloved dying and be in the depths of despair because my love was so great and I’m going to miss them so terribly. I want the full human experience. How about that?” People go, “I don’t know about that.” That’s a hard sell.
We have to get rid of this fantasy of happiness. Happiness isn’t a good goal if we’re going to use it as a singular destination. What we want is to experience our full humanity with all the possible emotions.
There’s a perspective there that is really profound. Sometimes, what we think we want and what we actually want are different. It takes wisdom and experience. You have to go through life and realize how full one’s life can be accepting the reality that is.
Folks don’t want to buy that, which makes it so easy to sell a fantasy to somebody because it really works. You offer something. If you offer allegiance to a particular sports team, you immediately have hundreds of thousands or millions of people you can start talking to and they will embrace you wholly. They’re not asking any other questions about you at all. They’ll bring you into the fold. You’re part of a tribe, and that appeals to our nervous system that’s all about survival. It’s like, “I am a lot better off here in the savanna with this tribe because when the lions come, they can’t eat all of us. I want to be in this tribe.”
You then go look for another tribe and you want to be as connected as you can. You’ll do that a lot of times to the detriment of what you really and truly like, want, and believe. The next thing you know, you’re sucked in and you’re the member of a tribe that has this all-or-nothing mentality. They’re like, “If you’re going to root for this team, you have to hate that team. You can’t like all of the teams. That’s crazy.”
They’re like, “You’re either with us or against us.”
It sets up that all-or-nothing mentality. We see this not only with sports teams but also the school you went to, the neighborhoods you live in compared to another neighborhood, the car you drive compared to other cars all the way up to the political parties you believe in, the approach at work you believe in, and which boss you are going to align with. It comes out as, “I have to go one way or the other.”
It makes it very difficult because all the way back to childhood and Santa Claus, you didn’t develop that ability to listen to all sides and pick, choose, question, and put it together in a way that makes sense to you. Most of us are not self-aware enough. Even if we can do that, we can’t connect it to who we really are and what makes the most sense for us because we don’t know ourselves that way. We’re too ruled by, “I have to get in the tribe. I have to connect. I have to get married. I have to have children. I have to drive this kind of car. I have to make this much money.” Why? We’re like, “It is so that no one will see what a worthless piece of crap I am.”
Most of us are not self-aware enough to connect to who we really are and what makes the most sense.
The Need To Feel Validation And Acceptance
This is a beautiful place to take a break. That was an excellent segue because what we’re going to talk about in the second half of this is we’re going to talk about that need to feel apart, that need to feel validation and acceptance, the tribalism, and the gang mentality, whether we’re talking about something positive or something negative.
I’ve got examples whether we’re talking about David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, the Hale-Bopp, the guardians and the seekers, or anything you can go through like Jonestown over and over again throughout history. That need, whether we’re talking about inner-city gangs, cults, or anything, could be positive or negative but at its core, it’s all about this burning desire to be a part of something that makes us feel, seen, heard, validated, worthwhile, and, using your words, to feel as if we exist. Not only do we exist, but are we relevant? Do we have a degree of importance?
At its core, it’s all about this burning desire to be a part of something that makes us feel seen, heard, validated, worthwhile, and as if we exist.
The second half of our episode, which we’ll record shortly, is going to be taking what we started with in fantasy, delusion, proper deductive reasoning, and cognition on the healthy side and how this can spiral into groupthink, tribalism, negativity, and how certain places in the world prey upon on that psychological phenomenon. That’s what I want to talk about next. We’ll sum up what we talked about in this episode and wish our readers happy trails. We’ll see them again soon.
Thanks. If any of you have any questions about this because it is not complicated but it is a giant web of connectivity to so many different things, feel free to jump online and put some questions in there. Get a hold of me and let me know what you’re thinking. That way, we can put it into these conversations and help other people because you’re not the only person wondering about that.
That is wonderfully said. This has been the show. If you struck a nerve or if it intrigued you or interested you enough to have a question, please leave it in the comments below. Like and subscribe to the channel and jump into our email newsletter. We are going to be sharing with you information, inspiration, and influence for those trying to be as mentally healthy as they possibly can be. Stay tuned for the next episode. We’re going to have part two of this fantasy conversation, which is incredibly exciting. Thank you very much. We’ll see you next time.
Thanks.
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