Landscapes of the Sacred - Peter Ikeda

Lane's book Landscapes of the Sacred discusses Disneyland as being "a wholly artificial place that hardly resembles any actual small town in America. It represents the epitome f village life in an imagined past." Lane basically uses Disneyland to support his idea that the "nature of human beings cannot get enough of place... [humans] proceed to make up places with the power of their own imagination" (7) to compensate for the desire for place. Disneyland is a perfectly imagined paradise to many and Lane describes Disneyland as Walt's imagined place to resemble that of his early hometown village. I love Disney. I think it's interesting to view our imaginations as being the place where we compensate for our losses or deep desire and longing. I find myself many times daydreaming or coming up with situations or circumstances of things I long for. To create a world of imagination only stresses the lack of purpose or fulfillment one has in a certain area. For Walt Disney it was his homeland which he recreated in the form of Main Street in Disneyland. And now, people from all over the world acknowledge Disneyland as a magic place that fulfills peoples dreams. To dig deeper than the "world's happiest place on earth", in terms of Lane's thinking, we can deduce that people are attracted to Disneyland because it fulfills that longing for place that everyone secretly has. I guess that means I have a deep longing for home or place because I always want to go to Disneyland/world!