I'm not one for being enamored of virtual worlds. But I use them, they are entertainment to me. I don't make the dangerous assumption that they are a part of RL. Because they aren't. They aren't accessing the same parts of our brains that are normally used in the physical world.
What these worlds are accessing is something much deeper, and a bit more dangerous.
We are playing in the land of the dead. I look upon SL as the same space the Emperor Qin created to house his body. An accurate replica of the Forbidden City. A tomb of dreams.
And like the crazed Emperor most of the residents in SL are trying to discover the illusive Eternal Fire...Quintessence. We aren't so very far from our ancestors who were obsessed with discovering the key to eternal life. Only now, in a bid to turn the hoary concept into something new, it's called singularity.
If you aren't inclined to think of SL and other VRs like it as living tombs, then think of it as the land of Fairy. Its really one and the same. But the word Fairy denotes something more whimsical. Fairy tales speak in symbols because of our inherent fear of death. Its the only way we can process that netherworld that is a part of our own brains. Fairy gives us a more comforting vision of transformation. Which hooks into the way we see our avatars.
People like to differentiate between the various avatars of humanoids, the robots and animal totems. But they are all the same. They are all fantasy masks. They are akin to the masks our ancestors wore when they gathered to worship their ancient gods.
And our travels in that fairy space are like the stories our elders told us on dark nights. Or what we act out in theater, shadow puppets made flesh.
We never made the mistake of labeling the space that contained those ancient dances and shadow drama as real life. So why do we do that to VRs?
I feel that this new form of fairy is tricking our brains into some facsimilie of life in a way we never dealt with before. Because the technology wasn't there. In the ancient days we had our forms of play, we learned from it. Then we put it away because to live there permanently was dangerous. That was only the domain of the holy men and women. Our history and fiction is filled with many stories of shamans suffering from psychosis.
Which is no surprise when one lives permanently between the physical and the world of the dead.
These were the thoughts I had while watching a Copper Robot show in SL hosted by tech journalist Mitch Wagner. What I witnessed was exuberance for this world. But not enough caution. And the fact that everyone wants to melt the lines between the worlds is cause for alarm. We don't fully know what this new technology is doing to us psychologically. We know that it can give us personal power to change in physical space. That was always the case even when we could only listen to stories or watch theater. What we haven't collectively experienced yet was the maddening blur that our shamans had to fight.
The big bad wolf is out there my children. Keep to the path to Grandmother's house.
