Fantasy World

Jan 5, 2026

The tree in my backyard yearns to touch the sky, my pencils to be worn writing the world’s next great novel, my stuffed tiger to be loved. Everything has a unique and evolving essence that desires fulfillment, including humans. The journey of fulfillment of this ideal form is a good life.⁰The journey is the primary joy, and the destination (fulfilling one's essence) is secondary in the Hero’s Journey. In a lifetime, many ideal forms will come and be fulfilled, and new ones will be chosen. The final essence is completion, what we think we desire above all.

Sometimes, objects find themselves in an environment antithetical to their essence, like an oak seed in a desert. In such an environment does modern humanity find itself. The modern world does not match our evolved nature, unlike the old world, and especially the fantasy world.

The Fantasy World is well-designed

A good environment is measured by its capacity to actualize the essence of each human. The fantasy world aligns with our essence:¹fantasy worlds differ, but I try to speak of characteristics shared between them. I think Sword Art Online and Frieren are two of the best executions of the fantasy world.

1. Adventure and exploration

The world has new lands, creatures, people, and magic to be discovered. Adventure means exploring new areas while oriented by a purpose.²like why greatness cannot be planned The pre-1600s world was rife with exploration, since distant lands hadn’t yet been bound. Now, we yearn to explore the stars, but seem caged to the earth.

We want an environment that allows for high variance, greatness, and a great story of our journey. It shouldn’t be a coddled, safe world. It should be a world of risks and uncertainty.

2. Pursuit of Quests

In addition to exploration, adventures are motivated by quests, supplying drive and a sense of purpose to the journey. Quests can be grand or small. They can be to help others - rescuing their dog from the local troll - or for personal satisfaction - finding a rare flower to honor a friend’s place of rest. In this world, a man can live out his essence as a hero and undergo the purest form of the hero’s journey. The dragon is the classical example of a beautiful, dangerous, and worthy quest.

3. Gathering allies

Moving through the world with allies, a team that excels together and covers each other. One piece captures this aesthetic well. One of the four criteria for blue zones, zones of the world with the longest life expectancies and high life satisfaction, is a strong sense of community.

4. Concrete self-improvement

Most fantasy worlds have concrete notions of leveling up, which fulfill dopamine and masculine ambition drives. They give a clear sense of progress and change, and act as another motivating driver aside from exploration or a central quest.

5. Purity of Nature

The nature is diverse, beautiful, and untarnished. Man still lives in union with nature. The adventurers grow in nature’s womb; their purpose fully aligns with exploring Earth. Nature is still dangerous, man doesn’t yet have complete dominion over the earth, and maintains their sense of humility to the elements and gods of earth. Nature is in play; the spirits and creatures are in tune with it. “The beauty of god’s creation” abounds.

6. Mastery over creative tools

Swords and staves, steeds and dragons, cottages, castles, and dungeons are the tools of the world. In this fantasy world, tools had not yet become so powerful that they optimize themselves in a complex network of capital incentives. Fantasy tools are still an extension of the will of the wielder. In the modern world, more tools are for consumption rather than creation. We do have some novel tools to extend the user’s creative capability rather than aiding consumption, like digital art, music, and writing.

7. The pinnacle is to be a hero

Ideally, mimetic complexes and innate drives/essences align. In fantasy worlds, there are safe and unsafe paths, but the mimetic complex is to be a hero. To be a hero. (and a king, a just king). Depending on the world, the complex can also be a conqueror-king, but I exclude those worlds in my ideal (though it has its appeals).

8. Magic as Science/study of the nature of being

What is magic? It is a power above the limits of our natural capability, known as technology in our world.

Science is knowledge that explains the world and has predictive capacity. This exists in fantasy worlds via magic and the study of the natural. The appeal of both is a meditated, long engagement with the nature of reality. Technology is the application of understanding to achieve some super-regular-human goal in the real world. Magic is exactly this.

It is enabled by the security of one’s life, which allows for higher pursuits than survival. It is fulfilled by the wizard of ancient tomes aesthetic, and in our world by the less powerful alchemist archetype (now a dead one). These are the ever-curious, arcane Renaissance men who both create and discover, theorize and practice, manipulate knowledge and rotate shapes. This aesthetic has waned in our modern age, but it is coming back.

Essentially, fantasy worlds offer more capacity to live out a fuller form of the hero’s journey.

You can shape the world around you

People believe their environment is natural and that they ought to conform to the environment, rather than the reverse. At humanity’s birth, our environment was natural, but it is no longer.

A certain subset of humans realized that there are diminishing returns to changing oneself and that changing the world is more evolutionarily effective. All organizations are designed to optimize certain people’s goals, including:

1. The education system

2. The financial system

3. The government

4. The development and dispersion of technology

These are not optimized for some arbitrary general “goodness”. They are optimized for the specific perceived well-being of a select group of designers.⁴A modern human moves slowly within hundreds of webs constructed by others. Some eventually open their eyes and look around to see themselves surrounded by webs. Billions of minds are entirely products of their environment, all engineered by someone else. This modern world we’ve created is optimized for maximizing survivability and reward chemicals for all, and resources for a select few.

The best solution is not simply to return to the old world. The very drives that helped us survive in that world inevitably led us to create our modern world (the drive to survive and reproduce). Humans are naturally drawn away from the old world: the match of humanity and the old world is not a stable one.

Although we were designed to maximize the old world, the fantasy world shows that another environment can be even “better” for humans. So we can explore the space of possible environments. This is what we’re doing with technology, but we’re trending in a poor direction. We can explore new worlds according to the principles that make the fantasy world better, until a stable, optimal match of self and environment is found.

We could also adapt ourselves as we change worlds. The trouble then becomes defining “optimal match” where values are not grounded in anything constant. Changing self would lead to an infinite loop of changing self, and changing world. I (and I think others) also place value in “remaining ourselves”.

Design a new world

“What would I change in the world, with infinite power?”

Restrict yourself with nothing: even physics and logic can be changed. In doing so, you understand the arbitrary nature of things by considering what can be instead of what is. In designing a world, you enter a frame in which everything is arbitrary, designed, and shapeable. “Everything can be changed with enough effort” is a powerful heuristic.

You reach a base layer of novelty below your conditioning, which you have not known existed. When you think about “what should I do”, eventually some learned principle or heuristic will stop that thread, “oh, not that because this”. Think “what if that isn’t true” then continue the thread, reach novel thought space. What would have to change for this to be the right path?

Becoming an environmental designer

How do you build the capability to design and change our environment in the modern day?

All actions change the environment, but most are in the distribution of common world states. Meaningful actions are the ones with the capacity to change the environment in more out-of-distribution directions. Some of these actions are:

1. Changing your mind

Your mind determines the world. The mind determines experience, and it is fully shaped by the memetic complexes in which you nestle.

2. Advancing technology

The main advantage our world has over the fantasy world is complexity. The complexity of global interactions, of complex science, advanced technology, and new media of artistic expression. Those are worth taking advantage of. This is the hope of the most powerful men of our time. They share a different version of this dream. Technology is the magic of our world. It is powerful magic, unbounded magic. It can change the nature of the world and ourselves, or create a new one of both.

3. Creating art and new thought

Inspire others to change their minds, which changes perception of the world and inspires actions that change our environment.

4. Through others via charisma, physical force, and a shared mission

Directly work with others to assist in the execution of changing the world, either through a great number of regular actions or through technology, art, or thought.

Remember The Hero

The function of goodness and optimality is complex and incomplete. But whatever it is, the fantasy hero is clearly good. Inspired by the fantasy hero, the modern hero creates a world to help others actualize themselves.

At the same time, the fantasy hero doesn’t wait for the perfect world. He succeeds in his quest through will, not waiting for the perfect conditions. He acts.