The direction of escape is toward freedom. So what is ‘escapism’ an accusation of?

There's no real objection to escapism, in the right places... We all want to escape occasionally. But science fiction is often very far from escapism, in fact you might say that science fiction is escape into reality... It's a fiction which does concern itself with real issues: the origin of man; our future. In fact I can't think of any form of literature which is more concerned with real issues, reality.

The danger in survivalism lies in the fallacy of the hobbyist-escapist's own, private dreamworld. Most imagine that blowing exorbitant sums on the supposed trappings of the "professionals", or the accumulation of a library of doom-say manuals, or even the acquisition of a monstrous personal armory, means survivalism. But are they living in a metro area? Are there hundreds of thousands of undesirable humans only blocks away? Do they have a good well? Wood-burning heat and adequate fuel? Can they grow or hunt food? Are they a likely target in the event of a nuclear war? To me, survival and reality are the same. Phony, faddish "survivalism" is nothing more than a hobby and hobbyism is nothing more than escapism. But, admittedly, escapism appears to be part-and-parcel of the "Movement" as it stands. Useless and expensive hobbies won't make it. It's all the same if you remain hooked up to Big Brother's life-support system. If you are, you will get disconnected with the rest and sink with the ship. This phony survivalism appears to be the most elaborate yet of all the dished-up excuses for inaction and retreat. It's another way to build yourself an expensive sandcastle. There is a clear path to survival just as there is a clear path to victory. Both involve being in touch with reality and in taking action, in going FORWARD.

Fantasy is escapist, and that is its glory. If a soldier is imprisioned by the enemy, don't we consider it his duty to escape?. . .If we value the freedom of mind and soul, if we're partisans of liberty, then it's our plain duty to escape, and to take as many people with us as we can!

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal… unnable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort, the trifling feeling of escape experienced at a masked ball. He distances himself from that which he feels and sees. He invents. He transfigures. He mythifies. He creates. He fancies himself an artist. He imitates, in his small way, the painters he claims are mad.

The thing about sci-fi is that it’s complete escapism. I think nowadays, people really need that; they thirst for it.

Man seeks to escape himself in myth, and does so by any means at his disposal. Drugs, alcohol, or lies. Unable to withdraw into himself, he disguises himself. Lies and inaccuracy give him a few moments of comfort.

And the idea of ourselves is our escape from the fact of what we really are.

The struggle for existence in a universe we did not choose, and the burden of being a member of the only race which values objective, verifiable truth as an end in itself, makes us sometimes long for escape from reality -- in some cases through a literature of the fantastic, of marvelous dream worlds, of free-ranging fantasy. But we must not confuse that necessary escape with what is real. Permit me to suggest to the reader that it is a waste of his time and energy to play with fantasies that lack the literary and aesthetic charm of poetry and imaginative prose fiction.

This exile is a fascinating symbolic act from our modern psychoanalytic viewpoint, for we have held in earlier chapters that the greatest threat and greatest cause of anxiety for an American near the end of the twentieth century is not castration but ostracism, the terrible fate of being exiled by one’s group. Many a contemporary man castrates himself or permits himself to be castrated because of fear of being exiled if he doesn’t. He renounces his power and conforms under the great threat and peril of ostracism. — Rollo May, “The Tragedy of Truth About Oneself” (The Psycology of Existence: An Integrative, Clinical Perspective by Kirk Schneider and Rollo May), pp. 14-15

If all we seek is an escape, what does that say about the world we live in. We are desperate with our dreams. What - oh, what - does that say?

There is only a way of escape from a place: is leaving ourselves. There is only a way of leaving ourselves: is loving someone. Só há um modo de escapar de um lugar: é sairmos de nós. Só há um modo de sairmos de nós: é amarmos alguém.

Escape from Freedom attempts to show, modern man still is anxious and tempted to surrender his freedom to dictators of all kinds, or to lose it by transforming himself into a small cog in the machine, well fed, and well clothed, yet not a free man but an automaton.

Escape, God how we all need escape from this tiny here. The need for it has motivated just about everything man has ever done in any direction other than that of the satisfaction of his physical appetites; it has led him along weird and wonderful pathways; it has led him into art and religion, ascetism and astrology, dancing and drinking, poetry and insanity. All of these have been escapes because he has known only recently the true direction of escape—outward, into infinity and eternity, away from this little flat if rounded surface we’re born on and die on. This mote in the solar system, this atom in the galaxy.