It seems to me that what we like about dragons, magic, etc. is precisely that they don’t exist; they are obviously objects of fantasy, and thus completely safe to imagine about. If they did exist, they wouldn’t be wondrous at all — they’d be existential risks and we’d be plotting how to get rid of them or limit them so they didn’t kill us all.
As someone once said, long ago and in another place, “Fantasy is not reality. Fantasy is not always even a desired reality. Rather, fantasy is the selection of certain thematic elements and the exclusion of certain others, in combinations which may not be possible in reality.”
It seems to me that what we like about dragons, magic, etc. is precisely that they don’t exist; they are obviously objects of fantasy, and thus completely safe to imagine about. If they did exist, they wouldn’t be wondrous at all — they’d be existential risks and we’d be plotting how to get rid of them or limit them so they didn’t kill us all.
As someone once said, long ago and in another place, “Fantasy is not reality. Fantasy is not always even a desired reality. Rather, fantasy is the selection of certain thematic elements and the exclusion of certain others, in combinations which may not be possible in reality.”