Marcus Strode First Installment

Marcus Strode 

A & P 

Final blog post 

First Installment 

 For my first installment I'll be discussing more on my mid-term report on making make believe more real and real life more make-believe; however, this time I'll be talking more on the fantasyland I lived in. I lived in fantasyland of religion, race and popularity.  

My whole life I've been fooled and not questioning anything. I grew up Christian and was told to pray and go to church every Sunday and whatever problems I had to give them over to god instead of trying and motivate myself to do better and solve my problems myself. So, in return when things were going well I would pray and thank god. Which there wasn't anything wrong with that, but as I got older I began to think about everything around in a new way but every time I would think about something it would result in anxiety because I was questioning god or fear what would happen after death, but eventually I broke through the fantasy of living under a divine power and started my journey questioning and atheism.  

Another fantasy I want to talk about is the fantasy that quite a few African Americans put themselves in and that's the fantasy of the world being predominantly racist towards us. I'm African American and my dad use to say things like: " you're going to have to work harder since your black", and then you have sayings going around " twice as hard, half as hard" and this is just something I couldn't believe in but some of my African American friends could. I just couldn’t see how because it's funny how the saying is, but it seems to me it's not so true. For example, I work for jimmy johns and I make more in tips than my roommate. (who is white) and I honestly feel as if people tip me more because I am black which isn't necessarily true, but I've done many of things in life and not once have I felt like the things I didn’t get or accomplish was because of my race and I feel like most just don’t take into their own work ethic or other's perspectives and/ or their personality instead of making assumptions that everyone is against them because of their race, but in reality it's based on how we interact with one another and present ourselves. 

Lastly, the fantasy of popularity. For example, back in high school I use to try and " fit in" with cool kids because that’s what I thought was right not evening question what "cool" was and didn't question it because everything the cool kids were doing was exactly what the "popular" kids were doing on T.V. and at the time I wasn't aware of the fact that it doesn't matter. This fantasy of we must do what everyone else is doing to fit in is so centralized around one person or a group of people. I was so focused on trying to be cool. Excluding others from different groups, the things we do for attention just for the satisfaction of being over someone and the exclusiveness is where some people want to be. I thought being popularity was something that mattered. So, I believed that and now that I've came to question a lot more things the fantasy of popularity went away because I began to understand it's not about how cool you are what you wear, who you know. It’s about you're character. 

On the second installment I plan to talk on make believe they our society believes in.