One of the worst claims I’ve heard is that things such as love, art and metaphysics are an escape from reality, and that escape from reality is something that arrogant people do.
I cannot begin to tell you how wrong that is.
First of all, the people who find reality hard to endure aren’t the arrogant type; they are the sensitive type. Sometimes a sensitive person will be arrogant and sometimes she won’t be. In neither case does it have anything to do with arrogance.
Second, there is a lot more to reality than what these people believe there to be. The earth is not just its crust. It is also molten metal at the center, atmosphere and oceans at the top, and all the life that lives on it. The people who see only the crust fail to see the rest of reality, and they do ignorant things.
I started out as an atheist; but I had many experiences with less than a billionth chance of happening whose only explanations are religious. These experiences were as real as you and as real as me. They are not about escaping reality; they are in themselves a profound reality. Call it anecdotal if you want. But it would not be anecdotal if it happened to you.
The worst error that such people make is identify the infrastructure of which they are a part with reality. They then fail to see, or compute, the reality of the planet in which this infrastructure exists and without which it would have no existence. This failure to compute what is very much reality has now lead to terrible consequences. These people think that they are being responsible. They are not. Reckless consumption is more irresponsible than even drug addiction. The addict hurts only himself and the people who love him. The reckless consumer hurts the planet and its inhabitants.
Once again, the planet Earth is not limited to its crust. There are many other aspects of reality. Things such as art and metaphysics provide a way to work with these other aspects of reality. The result is that greater reality is served. And then people have a fuller experience of reality.