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Are We Just Fuel? For What?
Sometimes I get hung up on big ideas. It takes me a while to distill down what it is I really want out of them, what the real questions are that need to be explored in them. I want to take another crack at the ideas I was playing with in my recent post, Endless Advertising & Costless Production in Virtual Worlds.
Let’s start with the assumption that at some point in the near future, totally immersive and “real”-seeming virtual reality worlds will not only exist, but will proliferate. According to basic trends in business, it seems probable that at some point in this future world, it will be more cost-effective to both market and sell products within virtual worlds than in the real world.
At such a point (which may or may not ever happen), what happens to the companies that create and sell products exclusively in the real world? Do they die out because their costs are so much higher and their profits so much lower than virtually-based companies?
Of course, somebody has to keep all that hardware and software running though. So, maybe the only “real world” companies that would survive would be the companies that create and maintain the technology that immerses us within virtual worlds to begin with. And like Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life, they would in turn take a cut out of all the virtual businesses operating under their aegis.
Let’s take it a step farther though. Let’s imagine that the ubiquity and popularity of immersive virtual reality renders more or less *all* of humanity into a Matrix like state. Let’s imagine that the money each of us has in the “real world” is increasingly spent buying virtual goods and services, and that this goes on to such an extent, and we become so continually immersed that we never come up for air anymore at all in the real world. At this point, our money no longer refers to anything external or “real” out in the world. And yet we remain, continually hooked up to machines, having pumped in all the available supply of money into the corporate VR economies. At what point in such a scenario do we become worthless? And what are we worth at any one point?
In the Matrix, they solved this philosophical problem with a fictional device. The machines keep us locked in and hooked up so as to draw physical energy from us. We are the living batteries which fuel them, which keep them going. But this is not just a philosophical problem, an arcane “what if” scenario. This is really happening to us. Our money doesn’t refer to anything. It never did. It’s a symbol of a symbol of symbol. It’s a reference to gold which is a reference to something precious which is something totally intangible. We are, in effect, hooked up to pods which draw the life out of us to fuel some vast infernal process. What are we fueling? What do those in control get from those they control? What is power? What is control? What are we? What are we doing?
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- Benjamin Stove is GM!
- Prev: Infiltration Marketing
- Next: Do Demons Have Free Will?
March 19th, 2006 at 10:11 am
As you say later, it never did… At least the dollar didn’t after it was de-linked to gold.
Unfortunately, it’s not even that any more. It’s whatever the Fed says it is. It’s value is determined by fiat.
Our whole First-World social experience is one giant simulacrum.
March 19th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Did you ever read the Diadem books by any chance? “Young Adult” fantasy by John Peel. One of the main characters comes from a world where the people do live in total VR. They never leave their homes, never see their families in real time, and all their needs are met by robotic household appliances. For some reason (I foget why, it’s been a while) the boy decides to leave his VR and go outside his home for the first time in his life, and he discovers a slave camp where the other half of the population is forced into producing everything the privileged classes need to survive in their VR worlds. Fascinating stuff.
March 19th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
I don’t mean to pigeon-hole my fellow Gnostics out there, but obviously the similarities between Gnosticism and the Matrix Trilogy are as obvious as they are brilliant. At any rate, in Gnostic belief. . .I suppose we fuel the Archons, which feed off our energy….hence why they perpetuate the fear-based mentality that’s permeated the world since the first day of day one. It keeps “food” on the table. I don’t necessarily agree with this, but it makes a certain kind of sense. Maybe the plants and animals that humans feed off of are only dimly aware of our existence, not to mention our intentions, and they’re totally oblivious to the role they play in this world….even when they’re shipped to the slaughter houses or harvested in factories.
March 19th, 2006 at 6:45 pm
Couple related items of interest. Link at the Noble Realms forum about Don Juan and the predators, who feed off our life energy:
http://forum.noblerealms.org/viewtopic.php?pid=32780#p32780
Also included there is a piece by Robert Monroe about something called “loosh” which I think more or less translates to the Garmonbozia of Twin Peaks, see FP for more in that realm:
http://www.snant.com/fp/archives/ultradimensional-terror-and-you-part-one/
June 2nd, 2006 at 2:24 pm
[…] Either way, they get to feed on fear, or on worship - both of which occur as a result of people mistaking their powers of illusion as actual reality, both of which seem to further fuel the illusion. The net result is that we either remain trapped repeating our lives endlessly, controlled by our own mistakes, which we are too scared to overcome. Or we feel as though we are evolving and ascending upward, but in reality, we have merely been caught in nets laid for us by predators who would feed off of us. […]