Also from that excellent and thought-provoking comment by Sonny Moonie:
Similarly, if everyone in the world were raised in a machine that provides every need and pacifies every desire, an ossified “liberal democracy†where your vote doesn’t really matter because it can never change the system, if it’s really “the end of history,†then however good or bad that system is from a Utilitarian perspective, anyone who has another philosophical perspective would choose to overthrow it if possible. An anarchist would do it, obviously. A true liberal would do it, for freedom for individuals or social development. A true conservative would do it, for traditional culture. A religious conservative would do it, either because it’s not the end of history that is expected or because it’s not the way of life that conservative religion prescribes. It’s only those whose religion or philosophy is undiluted Utilitarianism or fatalism who wouldn’t take the opportunity to throw a wrench into the gears of the ultimate machine to rule mankind.
This threads together a number of elements for me. Specifically, it causes me to envision a futuristic scenario where in a technocratic society creates a fully-immersive virtual/augmented reality system wherein each person, or groups of people can live however they want with absolutely no restrictions whatsoever, as long as they do it within the self-contained environment of the VR system, or the Matrix-like machine described by Sonny above.
I have to argue with Sonny’s interpretation of what would happen if such a situation arose though. Would these various groups “throw a wrench” in such a system, or would they willingly enter into it because it allowed them to fervently and vividly live out each of their own dreams? What if the machine could create a convincing simulacrum for the anarchist, the liberal, the conservative, the Christian? One so convincing that none of them knew it was a simulation, or if they did, they would quickly forget about it. Which one of them would overthrow a system that gave them everything they wanted? And in exchange for what, to naturally create a system that also supposedly gives them everything they want?
Or is it possible that what we (or at least some of us) really and truly want is simply to not get what we want and to try and sabotage anything that seems to come close to giving us everything we want? Maybe “those in power” know this deep secret about us: that you have to keep us wanting the things we want, but that you have to make sure we don’t actually get them, because we will become bored…. Some good deep thoughts about the paradoxes of human existence in this little mental experiment, if you ask me!
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Wow, you so totally described my philosophy there, it’s uncanny. In the realm of the infinite, I have a means of circumventing this inevitable boredom, however. Say we could have anything we desired at any moment. No restrictions. Obviously this would get very old very fast. However, if we had a particular desire and then thrust ourselves into the realm of limitation…..choosing to fulfill this desire whilst in a temporary state of amnesia, than we would side-step the boredom that comes from realizing you CAN have anything you want immediately (because we are part of Source, and thus connected to everything and everyone, etc.). We would rejoice in the experience of having what we desired by forgetting that it is we who engineered the manifestation of whatever we desired in the first place. Than, when we got bored with having it…we could “awaken” from our amnesia (sorta like an alarm would ring within ourselves and activate our higher consciousness once we’re done fully experiencing whatever it is we returned to expericne)…and then go back to the realm of the infinite and do it all over.
Perhaps that’s exactly what we’re doing here, right now. Only our temporary state of amnesia doesn’t seem temporary from our earthly perspective at all, and the desire we wished to experience was merely to experience desires.
You’ve read Brave New World, yes?
This reminds me of some thoughts I had about the Matrix trillogy. I thought a possibility by the end of the second movie that wasn’t fully explored was this: what is the “reality” Neo escaped to was really just another layer of the Matrix? It made perfect sense. People who don’t fit in to the system created by the robots, who needed to rebel, could do so. They just unknowingly activated a subroutine that made them think they broke free and were waging a big war on the system. It would be a bit of a safety valve in the system.
I was expecting something like that, actually, after the end of the second movie where Neo used some of his “Matrix power” against the robots in the real world. I thought that maybe he went so far beyond, he even detected the second layer and was going to break out of that, too. I think the story would have been a lot cooler.
Actually, I have not, stupidly enough!
This is exactly the question I have been wrestling with for a while now: is this what we’re doing? Did we just happen upon a subroutine that gives us a feeling of importance, but is really only a safety valve in the system?