VIRTUAL “REALITY”…REALLY? – How Nature Can Save Us From Ourselves

 “When I listened to developers talk about their eagerness to “immerse” audiences in multisensory experiences, I thought I detected a less savory desire 
to imprison them in programming — to leave them with no sensory exit.”
VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN – Virtual Reality Fails Its Way to Success – New York Times Magazine, Nov. 14, 2014

PASSIVE, TENSE
A vacuous reality star has managed to sucker the American media and a bit less than half of voters into making him the most powerful man in the world. Twice. Vacuous "reality" shows continue to garner astounding ratings. 

Our kids and grandkids, exposed to advertising on every surface from those ubiquitous glowing screens, to supermarket floors, to people’s bodies, can identify hundreds of corporate logos, but not the trees and animals living on their own block.

In the last three decades, artificial intelligence has snowballed from an icon-toppling chess bot to an omnipresent menace whose potential for evil refuses to knuckle under to its merits.

We're being lulled, surely but not so slowly, into a kind of consumer torpor. We're allowing corporations—some would say machines—to not only decide what we see and how and when we see it, but dictate whether or not what we see is real.

Donald Trump—I like to call him the Fool's Gold President—has exploited artificiality so well that he's convinced his followers that their beliefs are truer than facts. 

This soulless "Big Brother" specter is already, with our acquiescence, compelling our comings and goings, controlling not just our notion of truth, but the very tempo of our lives.

     They lure us ever closer to the end-game…
     making us think it's all our idea.

One social scientist recently asserted that the sci-fi plot line of computers taking over the world isn't really so far beyond the realm of possibility. They lure us ever closer to the end-game, all the while making us think it's our idea.

A CLASSIC FAUSTIAN BARGAIN
Okay, so maybe that outcome’s a bit over the top, but the steps we’ve already taken in that direction are troublesome. In too many cases, something more or less tangible we once knew and loved has been stolen and stripped of at least one aspect of its reality, replaced, in a kind of Faustian bargain, with another quality the trend-makers would like us to think we asked for.

Among their cynical promises: convenience and other creature comforts; saving time and money; a competitive edge; safety; control; “connectedness.” And what are we left with? More time glued to screens and buying stuff we don’t need—a surrender we’re promised will make us happy, but which ends up doing just the opposite.

  It’s not reality; it’s entertainment. And we’re 
  raising a generation of kids who will no longer 
  be able to tell the difference.

Whether it’s information, entertainment, connection or inspiration, they’ve taken reality, with all its color, depth and imperfection, all its challenges to reflect and ponder, and repackaged it under a different definition of “reality.” Thing is, the new version was never meant to serve human needs, but those of the corporations and czars who control all that “content.”

Sped up, dumbed own, flattened, sterilized, lowest-common-denominator-ized, what remains is simply an illusion. From vapid sitcoms to grown women under contract to "fall in love" with a man chosen by TV producers, children’s programming that promotes consumption. It’s not reality; it’s entertainment. 

Not even the news is immune from the alternative-reality infection, with Fox News having paid $787,000,000 for lying, and admitting that what they do is more entertainment than journalism.

And I’m afraid we’re raising a generation of kids who will no longer be able to tell the difference.

What’s the big deal, you ask? Well, like pushers of other addictions, the trend-setting, faux-reality machine is no dummy. Start ‘em on a few seemingly harmless free samples; get ‘em hooked; they’ll come back.

DEATH BY A THOUSAND CUTS
It’s not until you step back and look at the big picture that you see the scope of the deception. Everywhere you turn there are examples of things and experiences folks are passively choosing no longer to actually experience or control first-hand:

• Fantasy football
• Virtual reality headsets and games
• AI summaries now headlining Google search results 
• Political memes realistically putting words in people's mouths 
• Automatic bill-paying
• “Crowd-sourced” information and opinion
• The cloud
• Twitter-speak (communication reduced from something that once had tone and color—a heart and soul if you will—to the equivalent of primitive grunts.)
• Apps (For watching TV; ordering dinner—even when your waitperson is within eye- and earshot; for dealing with your plumber…I could go on.)

• On-line dating
• Virtual medicine
• Telecommuting
• “Friending”
• Twenty-four-seven “connectedness”
• Seven-and-a-half hours a day on-screen* 
• Self-driving cars (and a bourgeoning field of other robotics)

For these activities and many more, we are now completely at the mercy of our computers and their ability—or willingness—to continue operating at our beck and call. It would take only one thing for any of these pursuits to simply quit and leave us helpless: the corruption of the vehicle.

We’ve already seen, albeit on an as yet less-than-apocalyptic scale, the signs of such betrayal. Power outages, air traffic control breakdowns, stock market crashes, data security breaches, service denials and an untold number of other hacks & whacks happen all the time, yet somehow we fail to put two and two together. Are these just tests, one might ask, of how much we’re willing to give up for our end of that Faustian bargain?

       The more technology-driven our lives 
       become, the more vitamin N we need to 
       balance the virtual with the real.

A DOSE OF VITAMIN N
Who are we? Where are the patience, the reflection, the curiosity, the nuance, the character, the heart and soul that have defined honest, self-aware, hard-working cultures for so many great generations? Where is the healthy tension between risk and reward?

In this age of Belviq and Botox, of Simbalta and Cialis, of more cures than there are maladies, there must be something we can take for this atrophy of mind, body and spirit that threatens to brainwash us. Right?

Turns out the remedy already exists. Always has, right under our noses. It is Nature. Or as Richard Louv so famously calls it in his best-selling book, The Nature Principle, vitamin N.

Louv never says—nor do I—that we should simply quit technology like a bad habit. What he does say is that the more technology-driven our lives become, the more vitamin N we need to balance the virtual with the real.

Nature is hard-wired into us from birth. So we can never turn off the fundamental connections between us, the earth and other living things, our need for our senses take it all in and be nurtured, taught and inspired by it. But we can and do forget how vital those influences are to our physical, mental and spiritual well-being.

     By learning how little control we have, 
     we learn about letting go.

REAL, LIVE…LIFE  
For each excuse one might have for not turning off the incessant virtual-reality deceit and actually getting out there in Nature, the potential benefit outweighs manyfold our tendency—or should I say our conditioned response—not to. Because Nature does not exploit; Nature cares for and teaches human beings—especially little ones—in the most amazing ways:

• By facing risk, we learn caution, creativity, patience…
• By learning about our environment, we learn about ourselves.
• By facing new experiences, we get in touch with the timeless.
• By surrounding ourselves with the vast, the complex, we learn of our true place in it all, at the same time insignificant and scary-powerful.
• By tackling challenges we didn’t think we could overcome, we learn about our capacity.
• By learning how little control we have, we learn about letting go.
• By escaping our culture’s complex, hurried, embattled, often alienating influences, we discover the timeless, boundless, totally-authentic original community to which every living organism on earth shares an equal claim.

Before we willingly concede yet more of our own reality to this media-mad, “connected,” “content” culture, let’s stop, take a deep breath and think deeply about what remains in our lives that still is real, and decide—before it’s decided for us—where we draw the line.

“The sensory cacophony (of virtual reality experiences like the Oculus Rift headset) is so uncanny and extraterrestrial to suggest to the organism a deadly threat.”
VIRGINIA HEFFERNAN

* Sources FamilyEducation.com   /  BBC
 

FALLING SENSATION – The Sad Decline of Empathy

“You can only understand people if you feel them in yourself.”   
  JOHN STEINBECK

Are you an empath? How does one even know?

Some time in my thirties my own answers to those questions presented themselves to me. I was watching some kids playing. One little brat tripped a playmate—a klutzy little boy—who fell like a ton of bricks, skinning a knee and a wrist. As he was falling I felt this sinking sensation in my gut…as if I were the one falling.

I’ve experienced that sensation many, many times since. It doesn’t matter who’s falling—a child, an adult…even a bad guy—nor if the fall occurs in real life, a movie or the tiny screen of my iPhone. As long as it’s a fellow human being I always end up sharing the drop. (It’s funny, though; I don’t remember ever feeling it when I see a pro football player falling. Why do you suppose that is?)

I also catch myself absorbing all kinds of other little human dramas—from kindnesses to conflict, gladness to grief. Is there something wrong with me? Do I just have too little emotion in my own life? At times I wish I could turn it off.

If Empathy 101 is simply learning to be aware of and experience others' pain, then the next semester would start instilling the ability to truly care what happens to them. It's what psychologists call "transcendence," a deep-seated desire to see and help others achieve their potential. Perhaps it takes an idealist like me to hope this sort of altruism would beat in the heart and soul of every person, organization and culture.

And I hope it applies not just to what happens to other human beings in the here and now, but even to what might happen in the future after we're dead and gone. I can think of no more telling measure of this kind of empathy than our wise, gentle care and handling of the environment so that future generations may enjoy the same kinds of joyful connection with Nature we experienced when we were young.

   It gets beaten down, covered up…by an ugly 
   collaboration...conspiring to make what’s really 
   all about them feel like it’s all about us.

HARD-WIRED, SHORTED OUT
Empathy, like so many of our better, more practical emotions, is hard-wired into us at birth. How do I know this? First, there’s a wealth of research showing it. And there’s also an element of logic: why, if empathy is not meant to help guide our behavior toward other human beings, would I feel absolutely none of that sinking feeling when I witness an animal falling?

The good news is that this inherent spark of empathy can be kindled—through experience, teaching, role-modeling and the influence of Nature. The bad news? Judging from the growing number of folks who seem to have utterly lost it, apparently it can also be extinguished.

Like children’s inbred curiosity and wonder, empathy too often gets beaten down, covered up, by years of learned structure, stress and cynicism. By values drummed into us by an ugly collaboration of sometimes-dirty players like commerce, politics and the media—all conspiring to make what’s really all about them feel like it’s all about us.

      Scheming, conflict, denigration and gotchas
      —that’s what they’ve decided we want.

A FAUSTIAN BARGAIN
The dying out of empathy is not an illness; it is a symptom—of a disease brought on by the Faustian bargain the past few generations have signed onto: we get to make more money, accumulate more stuff, pretend to be “connected” with more people and information. In exchange for that illusion of power, knowledge and love, we agree to allow the circumference of our real, first-hand experience be ever shrunk, reduced to what’s determined by some algorithm to suit us, and then spoon-fed to us through a phalanx of little glowing screens.

Among the collateral damage inflicted by this attack has been the loss of empathy, that most precious survival mechanism, the one that used to give us true connection, allowed us to be kinder, more collaborative, more creative…and kept most of us from killing each other.

But someone's decided kindness and civility no longer sell ad space, air time or bandwidth. So, nearly everywhere one looks—entertainment, advertising, journalism, politics—it’s all gotten turned upside down. Now more and more of the human interaction we see on our screens involves scheming, conflict, denigration and gotchas.

One of the most obvious casualties, during this election year, is an entire political party—one claiming to represent more than half the people in the United States. It has turned, in the past decade or two, from its roots as the protector of individual freedoms and opportunity to an angry, take-no-prisoners ideology based on fear, judgement and control. (I'll let you decide for yourself which one that is.)

If that’s what the powers that be have decided we want, it’s far from what I consider being human to be all about.

Teach them that the way they see the world around them is a product of what’s going on inside them

THE WORLD IS A MIRROR
So, what do you want? Are you still able to see the essential core of goodness in every human being and truly care what happens to them? Can you still feel someone else’s hardship and pain in your gut, even folks who might be quite different from you? Do you care what happens to this precious planet even after your life on it is over?

After all we’ve traded away let’s take a step or two backward and revisit that Faustian bargain. If we won’t reclaim real connections with each other and with the earth for ourselves, let’s at least do it for our kids and grandkids. Teach them that the way they see the world around them is a product of what’s going on inside them—their awareness, their curiosity, their kindness, their sense of wonder. And teach them never again to bargain away those gifts.

And teach them that, at the very heart of what makes us human lies a generosity of seeing that makes what we perceive hinge directly on what we are willing to give of ourselves to that connection.
 

“I believe empathy is the most essential quality of civilization.”
  ROGER EBERT