Pigs In the Virtual World, Too
No.95: February 18, 2022
Dear Friends,
It sure would be pretty off-brand if there was civil unrest and/or civil war in Canada before the United States, wouldn’t it? Couldn’t happen to nicer people! I hope somebody turns the temperature down, but the person most responsible for doing that—Mr. Trudeau—has cranked up the heat by invoking never-before-used emergency powers in his attempt to break up the demonstrations in Ottawa. It involves the ability to freeze people’s bank accounts without a court order. Yikes.
I happen to be in favor of the aims of the Trucker protest and the protest itself (sometimes petty, tinpot tyrants need [peaceable] reminding who they work for)—but not the blocking of bridges. It seems pretty pathetic to me that the Canadian government does not seem to have the wherewithal to tow semi-trucks; instead, they just keep asking nicely if the drivers wouldn’t mind maybe, perhaps, if it's not too much trouble, moving their vehicles. I guess that is pretty on-brand for Canada. But velvet gloves usually contain iron fists, and once those come out things could get ugly.
Last week a couple of organizations, the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty and the Freedom From Religion Foundation jointly released a report on the influence of “Christian nationalism” on the January 6, 2021 Capitol riot. Its analysis—if it can be called that—is deeply flawed, and my article explaining why will appear on Sunday over at National Review. I’ll try to send you all the link in an issue of The Quarter Inch (click that if you’re not subscribed).
Get Ready For Ready Player One
Apparently Mark Zuckerberg and the team over at Facebook—oops, I mean “Meta”—didn’t quite catch on that the novel-made-film Ready Player One was a cautionary tale. It seems they read about the “Oasis”—a massive virtual reality universe populated by people who are in reality sitting around in dumpy campers wearing VR goggles—and thought, “Yes! Let’s build it!” They are spending $10 Billion toward building the “Metaverse.”
Well, their stock is collapsing (in the last six months, from nearly $386 a share to $206 at close today), and, I dunno, maybe this vision has something to do with it. In a world where everyone complains about addiction to our devices, it’s certainly counter-intuitive to gamble on more devices, more distraction, and more immersion into virtual reality. On second thought, it’s not a bad gamble, human beings being what they are. But I think it is sinister to capitalize on our antisocial narcissistic idolatries, and we should just say, “No, thank you.” The Babylon Bee satirized it perfectly:
What I find amazing is that the folks at Facebook are aware of this critique. They just happen to think that the universe is inferior to the virtual one they can create. I am not kidding. Here is an excerpt from an interview with Facebook board member Marc Andreessen (Warning: if you click that link, the interview is…profane):
A small percent of people live in a real-world environment that is rich, even overflowing, with glorious substance, beautiful settings, plentiful stimulation, and many fascinating people to talk to, and to work with, and to date. These are also all of the people who get to ask probing questions like yours. Everyone else, the vast majority of humanity, lacks Reality Privilege — their online world is, or will be, immeasurably richer and more fulfilling than most of the physical and social environment around them in the quote-unquote real world.
The Reality Privileged, of course, call this conclusion dystopian, and demand that we prioritize improvements in reality over improvements in virtuality. To which I say: reality has had 5,000 years to get good, and is clearly still woefully lacking for most people; I don’t think we should wait another 5,000 years to see if it eventually closes the gap. We should build — and we are building — online worlds that make life and work and love wonderful for everyone, no matter what level of reality deprivation they find themselves in.
Oh, where to start? First, it is simply not true that “the vast majority” of humanity is “woefully lacking” fulfillment—his perspective on the state of civilization after 5,000 years is a dystopian fantasy, the kind of thing a fairly clueless jet-setting Silicon Valley titan might imagine is the living condition of his lessers. As for “closing the gap,” we’ve just lived through 300 years in which every single “gap” imaginable either has been closed or continues to be rapidly closing by nearly every metric. You can read all about it in Hans Rosling’s, Factfulness (I reviewed that book here).
At any rate, if you are somebody who experiences fulfillment in the, quote, unquote, real world, then you have Reality Privilege, which I take to mean some kind of unfair advantage over the rest of the world’s miserable peons. The answer, in Meta’s vision, is not to improve actual misery in any way—this guy puts quotes around “real world,” as though it isn’t real or significant or something. (And, besides, “reality” people have had 5,000 years to “get good” and they haven’t. So there!) The answer is to give people goggles through which they can create their own utopia. Just like in Ready Player One, the folks living in stacked campers in the junkyard don’t need jobs and credit and property and homes, they just need The Oasis!
This has to be one of the boldest examples of Gnosticism we’ve seen in a long time. Reality—the physical world—is evil, but can be transcended by simply checking out of it. Historically that’s done by spiritual techniques, but Meta is betting it can be done with virtual reality. Yes, riches and glorious substance and beauty and stimulation and fascination can at last be yours! Just sit in a chair and put on these goggles. Escape the real world with all its Reality Privileged elites!
I have (at least) two questions. First, does the Metaverse have a plan to farm and manufacture virtual food that will nourish and sustain their civilization of couch potatoes? It seems to me the quote, unquote, real world is pretty important, after all. If the “vast majority” of humanity chooses, as Meta hopes, a life of idleness and fantasy (I mean, much more than they already have with Facebook), the Metaverse will not last very long because everyone will literally starve to death.
Second, what do they plan to do about the sin problem? Oh yeah, that. In Meta’s view, people are intrinsically good—which highlights the Gnosticism, again—but are hampered by physical reality. Sin, dysfunction, and antisocial behavior is simply a product of lacking things (this was Marx’s view, too, because he was a Gnostic). Give people all the things, and they will naturally be transformed into their best selves. Ahem. That’s ironic, since Mr. Andreessen seems to be quite Reality Privileged and has literally anything and everything he wants, but if you click to read his interview, you will instantly find—in the very first sentence—that he remains an offensive, vulgar jackass. So, there’s that.
The tiny fly in the ointment here is that the person putting on the goggles to enter virtual reality may fashion a really cool Avatar for digital space, but that person remains the same person. We all take our sin with us. And I suspect it has just as much destructive power in Meta’s man-made universe as it does in ours. In fact, I don’t need to conjecture. A woman has already reported a massive rape and sexual harassment problem in the Metaverse. Some men are pigs in the real world, and they don’t stop being pigs in the virtual one. And I don’t think lengthy “Terms of Service” are going to solve that problem.
I suggest selling your Meta stock, for the good of humanity.*
* The Square Inch is not a financial advisor and should not be mistaken for one. Consult your financial adviser when considering whether to buy or sell stocks. Have a great weekend!