It's not BLOGOLICIOUS, folks, but perhaps it's true. The Digirati might disagree but running headlong into a cyberspace kind of world that forgets about the real world (VR over RL) is actually elitist, insensitive and just plain stupid.
It's been over ten years since Mark Slouka wrote his book on the assault of cyberspace called War of the Worlds and luckily the evangelistic, practically fanatical predictions of release from the bounds of reality and our worldly flesh into a world without boundaries, morals, physicality, ethics hasn't happened—a world where you can rape and pillage without pesky resistance or penalties, where you can create and abuse and even kill slaves without consequences, where you can have cybersex and prostitution without censure or fear of STD's, where you can be anything, anyone, any object you want and do whatever you want without having to worry about the ramifications to either yourself or others just basically be as selfish and egotistical and godlike as you wish.
In other words, a place where you don't have to think about others, about world events or even the welfare of your pet or children or spouse. You can ignore hunger and talk blithely about how virtual rape is just as bad as the real thing, as traumatic—where a real physically raped victim might disagree—but then again, you can ignore the RL protests to your own view of the world and how to solve the world's problems. You can just be academically deconstructionist and claim that Reality is not Real, we are just creating a Consensus that is temporary and fleeting.
That unreal consensus sure feels real to those who are starving, or dying, or being beaten, abused, raped, robbed and killed. Maybe the folks in Washington, D.C. have bought into the whole deconstructionalist VR worldview—would explain a lot of their policies and good humanitarian deeds—or lack of them. For them, like such VR pundits, it's the words that matter not the deeds, it's the flash or the image, not the substance that people really care about. Given the apathetic, religious right, power-seeking follow-my-views-or-starve attitude of the US at times (including now) maybe they are right. I don't like the religious fanaticism and me-as-god-over-you-ism I see in both groups.
Maybe cyberspace did win…in fact, maybe Reality isn't Real has been with us all along. Don't like tackling real world, tough not easy to solve, non-soundbite issues that include treating other people, animals and the environment with more than an elitist, I can do what I want since I'm more powerful regard? Ok, ignore the problem—that's what DC and cyberpundits tell us to do—go bury ourselves in violent video games that offer cheap thrills and realistic horrific violence. Why connect decapitations common in video games with real-life mimicry happening to real-life (and now real-dead after real-painful screaming caused by real-physical saw used by real-physical-completely-disconnected-from-others-rights terrorist)? There couldn't possibly be a connection, could there? Nah!!
But at least marketing and business are as usual and perhaps that's a good thing. With all the spam, banner ads, search word bartering, brand management and viral campaigns running around cyberspace and jumping out at us from all cyberports, most of us realize that the RL is better than the VR…for one, we can still recognize familiar signposts in both (marketing, PR and advertising remain remarkably the same) that both point us ultimately back out to the RL to see the results of our purchase and second, if we really want to escape, a good book or music CD still allows us to escape for awhile, but without the contextual ads or the intrusive, interactive virtual rape from other cybercriminals.
So I don't want to pretend I'm the opposite sex, or a turnip or a table leg, nor do I want to deal with the apparent schizophrenia inducing mindwarps of such MOOs and MUDs. I worry about our sanity and our ethics in every new medium and our (human race's) apparent eagerness to allow & bring out our dark sides at every new opportunity. It scares me when I read that something like over 70% of young college men say they would commit rape (real rape, not even Virtual Rape) if they thought they could do it without reaping any consequences. We need to remember to keep consequences on the Net as well, I think. We need to remember that we should not be worshiping a Machine or even a Medium…nor should we think that life without checks and balances is going to automatically bring a utopia.
Lessons from cyberspace over the last 20 years should have taught us something—life in general should have taught us the same, even without cyberspace thrown in as the new cure-all. Deconstructinalism doesn't automatically bring truth or insight. It's a technique to help weed out the wheat from the chaff and should be remembered as such. Ignoring reality doesn't make it go away—unless you want to spend your life in an asylum, in which case go ahead—better you be removed from the rest of us trying to help create a better reality.
Keep searching for insights but keep your perspective as well—remember why every society instituted checks and balances. Examine your own motives and look to history (as many perspectives that have factual data to support them as possible, but keep an open mind) but remember to not always look to bolster your own arguments. Are you doing it because you want to justify your actions, your inner prejudices, your inner dark side dreams? Yes, the Jewish Holocaust happened. Yes, AIDs is blood borne and caused by HIV. Yes, men landed on the moon. (All of these have been debated in the past, often by those who wanted to deny history, rather than because of true inquiry and doubt.) Facts (overwhelming facts, in fact for those who bother to really study them) prove it.
But it doesn't mean you shouldn't keep pressing for answers, especially if you sense that maybe there is more to be found. Yes, North American European-stock settlers were massacred by Native/First Peoples but also yes, Native/First Peoples were massacred by NA European-stock settlers. A book called Lies My Teacher Told Me is a great place to start when trying to honestly look at how history can be misconstrued depending on those in charge of keeping it. Political policy is usually worth intense scrutiny, so is economic policy and environmental policy.
In fact, too often these things are ignored because they are complicated and don't fit the 10-second dumbed-down entertaining soundbite expected and served on our daily news feeds. Gossip about the sex life of a religious figure from 2000 years ago is much more interesting, if impossible to prove one way or another since even the writers of the Bible weren't firsthand witnesses (in the bedroom or outside of it) but came over a hundred years later and beyond and even then heavily rewrote and edited according the historical political agenda that THEY had—thank you Da Vinci Code even though no one seems to get the irony of the arguments, themselves. Tragic.
So…I'll take RL, advertising and marketing over cyberistic deconstructionalist escapist avoidant elitism any day. At least commerce doesn't try to be something it's not, or try to enslave me, get me to worship it (with a few exceptions) or virtually abuse me.
But I’m still not paying for search words…
CG Anderson is a 10 year market researcher and web strategist involved in technology, science and the online world. Also a writer, blogger and novelist. CG's comments are personal and opinionated and solely the responsibility of the author, so there. Don't like the opinions, disagree, agree, don't know? Great, make a comment—clean ones will be allowed, netiquette-challenged ones will be ignored!Blog sites: http://ahablogolicious.blogspot.com/
URL: http://home.myuw.net/cganders/
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