Life at the end of Weimar Berlin is now. Just as Weimar Berlin was the same as any great culture on the verge of collapse from Greek to Roman to Ming to Mayan. People sense the impending disorder, get nervous and mindless just like wildebeest do when sensing an approaching predator.
Leave your Troubles Outside!
So Life is Disappointing? Forget it!
In here, life is beautiful!
The Girls are Beautiful!
At those tipping points, people find release in fantasy. We create a spot for ourselves in that cave of wealth and death (written about by blogger Elaine Meinel Supkis). In that cave we play with mirror societies. Those mirror societies are decadent, they push social norms and explore new expression. Of course, this all has to do with sexuality because the cave is sex at it's most basic and it is a death too.
In the past, these mirror societies were created by artists. Audiences with similar desires, but with no talents, would vicariously live through the artists' work. But at our moment in time, that has been destroyed. Our current art and performance offerings are not allowing us the release we need. In fact, our current culture is fighting the very need for release. But this impulse cannot be denied, it must find an outlet.
Virtual reality has allowed the previously untalented spectator to recreate the cabaret, to celebrate the Bacchanalia and push boundaries. In VR, as the song says, life is beautiful even the girls are beautiful. In VR we explore sexuality and gender roles. In VR, women can be men and men can be women. What is beauty or sexy? In the past, the artists had all the fun while we watched. Now, in this temporary bubble of order and disorder, anyone can take part in the cabaret.
In most articles on VR, Second Life is most often pushed as the pinnacle of decadence. But SL is not the only cabaret. It exists even in World of Warcraft, where many have designated the Inn at Goldshire (on just about every server) as a free zone for Bacchus.
Of course, the developers have no idea what they created or why it makes people drunk. I believe Prokofy Neva once pointed out on his blog, that the developers are largely conservative. They are more attracted to tight-ass, fascistic movements such as Singularity. They have no idea what to do with the "freaks" who settled in their utopia. Far from playing masters or mistresses of ceremonies, they want to change everyone into their ideas of what VR should be, of what avatars should be or how we should play their games.
If only some enlightened developer would come along and willingly become an avatar of Dionysus. To delineate for the revelers the sensible division between fantasy and reality. To stop the nonsense that VR drunkards are currently telling everyone, that their drunken revelries are part of real life.
But I suppose we should be happy with what we have now. It won't last...when the money runs out and the backlash takes back our new ground. The merry-go-round goes on....
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