You would have to create a specific definition of
reality. For me, it is all the things that
modern society struggles to get away from for its own comfort.
Central air conditioning.
Soap operas. Fabric softener that makes irons obsolete. All those little pieces and bits that on their own don't add up to much but have a tendency to build on top of one another and
bury us.
I recall an example from a fine book called Four Arguments for the Elimination of Telelvision by Jerry Mander. The author's son was asking where oranges come from: "You mean they don't grow in supermarkets?" How much harder will we have to work to reinstate the obvious as we evolve, to whittle back into reality the things we so easily forget about because our cultural structure allows for such benign ignorance.
It is a challenge to not relate escapism directly to the acclimation of wealth in America, since the media and trends point in that direction constantly. Nor is it easy to avoid that the opposite is true, that those of us on the poorer end of the spectrum are somehow more aware of what is really going on around us simply by default. It is an argument similar to the idea that those who are the most intelligent are often the most mentally unstable and likely to go insane, that the more you learn, the more you are burdened (not liberated) by what you understand about the world around you.
I am tempted to believe these things about myself, that I am better prepared to deal with reality or life in general because I have little protection from it, financial or otherwise. At the risk of seeming pompous or at all better than anyone else, I am sure the reader would agree that even if this theory were true AND could be applied to me, it is not that great of a consolation. Rewards like these are inherant; no one else is going to think them beneficial at all, but I do.