Dear N.S. Lyons, your thoughts always cause wide flights of thought in me, thank you very much. I hope no one is bothered by my lengthy comments.
The names of commentators indicate a wide range of interested and interesting minds.
Will we need separate states soon, for people who insist on living in real reality?
Chinese or US VR are equally repelling and useless to a Christian steeped in tradition and the humanities who has personal friendships and no contact with social media and other distractions on the internet.
I already (attempt to) live in the truth, goodness, and beauty of the classical world normal till 150 years ago but lost like Atlantis today. 90% of my fellow Germans can not discuss with me, they are like "Major Tom to Ground Control": Lost in a space of triviality, mainstream media without any groundings in culture, morality, faith, or even the realities of their - our - Western civilisation.
What is described concisely here will lead to the need for people like me, who probably mostly live in the USA, to create their own political entity at some point.
Of course, every conservative libertarian or "liberal" abhors Chinese totalitarianism. But the clarity of mind of Xi Jinping, Wang Huning, etc. on such issues is humbling compared to Western politicians.
History does not repeat itself in great detail. But should we not go back to a world where kids play catch in the mud and the forests, and we have some cultural grounding in the Bible, Aristotle, Shakespeare while cooking for real friends instead of living in a virtual world which - one properly documented - makes us physically and mentally sick and meak? The medium still is large part of the message, it forms the brain.
Is there a way forward instead of backward? I am not a nostalgic at all, but we are on the wrong track.
And although eventually perhaps helpless, Xi Jinping understands that well. Exactly as you say: It may well be that the Chinese bending Virtual Space with brute force will be better for mankind than Western "Zauberlehrlinge" (sorcerer´s apprentices) trying to exploit that space while actually being used by its anonymous force.
It´s good to be too old to have to fight this in my lifetime. I pity the young - more than they do themselves, they seem quite happy while reports on their mental health issues pour in like crazy.
I am not used to feeling intellectually helpless. For any imaginable issue from child-raising to Realpolitik and war, we find good theoretical solutions in the classical mix of Christian conservative and libertarian thinking, from caritas to personal responsibility before the face of god. But this here seems like a mass drug addiction to me where most everyone young or old gets proselytized and increases the mad crowd.
I am personally convinced that the political solutions will come from characters like Candace Owens reading the Bible to her 1-year-old son. From those millions who will rebuild part of the US on their historical foundations.
And maybe the solution to Virtual reality addiction = flight from reality is nothing more than a lack of competition in the internet and a lack of freely shared information about its effects, like the SWOT analysis done in business. Maybe it´s simply parents properly raising their kids instead of outsourcing them to state institutions and VR?
Happy New Year to everyone,
thanks so much to N.S. Lyons for his inspirations,
There's long been a thread in science fiction which has a "gnostic" element, to use your framework. Individuals "trapped" in a false utopia with a leader who breaks them out, or fails to do so. More interesting here might be the duality between those who would embrace a metaverse and those who resist it. Loyalty to the state may not fall neatly along an axis of real versus virtual.
Two thoughts that come to mind is the revival of a pagan gnostism and some interesting parallels to Wilhelmine Germany.
1. The intense longing I see in young people for a religious experience but their antipathy to all iterations and expressions of Christianity as a spent and foolish force that offers them nothing they want, points to the interesting merger that I think will occur with these Metaverse rumblings and the connection between its gnostic tendencies and the pagan gnostic trends of late antiquity (as opposed to their Christian expressions) should be an area of more intense study by those with the time and talents for such things. As the school year came to a close and we were reading Ovid's Metamorphoses I was struck again by my students desire to understand and even experience the thought world of Classical paganism that they glimpsed in the myths.
2. As China ages and fragments and voices clamor and desire things material as we have seen with the yuppies of modern China, one can sense Xi really thinking of how to square these circles while also growing Chinese power in the face of American decline. It does strike one as if Xi was a wiser Wilhelm II, but he faces a modern version of many of the same problems. Luckily for him the British Empire's modern equivalent seems even more moribund and prone to failure, it is like Wilhelm II is going up against Chamberlain's Britain with the religious vacuum of the 1970's.
Dear N.S. Lyons, your thoughts always cause wide flights of thought in me, thank you very much. I hope no one is bothered by my lengthy comments.
The names of commentators indicate a wide range of interested and interesting minds.
Will we need separate states soon, for people who insist on living in real reality?
Chinese or US VR are equally repelling and useless to a Christian steeped in tradition and the humanities who has personal friendships and no contact with social media and other distractions on the internet.
I already (attempt to) live in the truth, goodness, and beauty of the classical world normal till 150 years ago but lost like Atlantis today. 90% of my fellow Germans can not discuss with me, they are like "Major Tom to Ground Control": Lost in a space of triviality, mainstream media without any groundings in culture, morality, faith, or even the realities of their - our - Western civilisation.
What is described concisely here will lead to the need for people like me, who probably mostly live in the USA, to create their own political entity at some point.
Of course, every conservative libertarian or "liberal" abhors Chinese totalitarianism. But the clarity of mind of Xi Jinping, Wang Huning, etc. on such issues is humbling compared to Western politicians.
History does not repeat itself in great detail. But should we not go back to a world where kids play catch in the mud and the forests, and we have some cultural grounding in the Bible, Aristotle, Shakespeare while cooking for real friends instead of living in a virtual world which - one properly documented - makes us physically and mentally sick and meak? The medium still is large part of the message, it forms the brain.
Is there a way forward instead of backward? I am not a nostalgic at all, but we are on the wrong track.
And although eventually perhaps helpless, Xi Jinping understands that well. Exactly as you say: It may well be that the Chinese bending Virtual Space with brute force will be better for mankind than Western "Zauberlehrlinge" (sorcerer´s apprentices) trying to exploit that space while actually being used by its anonymous force.
It´s good to be too old to have to fight this in my lifetime. I pity the young - more than they do themselves, they seem quite happy while reports on their mental health issues pour in like crazy.
I am not used to feeling intellectually helpless. For any imaginable issue from child-raising to Realpolitik and war, we find good theoretical solutions in the classical mix of Christian conservative and libertarian thinking, from caritas to personal responsibility before the face of god. But this here seems like a mass drug addiction to me where most everyone young or old gets proselytized and increases the mad crowd.
I am personally convinced that the political solutions will come from characters like Candace Owens reading the Bible to her 1-year-old son. From those millions who will rebuild part of the US on their historical foundations.
And maybe the solution to Virtual reality addiction = flight from reality is nothing more than a lack of competition in the internet and a lack of freely shared information about its effects, like the SWOT analysis done in business. Maybe it´s simply parents properly raising their kids instead of outsourcing them to state institutions and VR?
Happy New Year to everyone,
thanks so much to N.S. Lyons for his inspirations,
Jens Schirner
Happy New Year, comrade! I have appreciated all of your writings, especially "There is No Liberal West".
There's long been a thread in science fiction which has a "gnostic" element, to use your framework. Individuals "trapped" in a false utopia with a leader who breaks them out, or fails to do so. More interesting here might be the duality between those who would embrace a metaverse and those who resist it. Loyalty to the state may not fall neatly along an axis of real versus virtual.
As ever, thank you for the fascinating thoughts.
Two thoughts that come to mind is the revival of a pagan gnostism and some interesting parallels to Wilhelmine Germany.
1. The intense longing I see in young people for a religious experience but their antipathy to all iterations and expressions of Christianity as a spent and foolish force that offers them nothing they want, points to the interesting merger that I think will occur with these Metaverse rumblings and the connection between its gnostic tendencies and the pagan gnostic trends of late antiquity (as opposed to their Christian expressions) should be an area of more intense study by those with the time and talents for such things. As the school year came to a close and we were reading Ovid's Metamorphoses I was struck again by my students desire to understand and even experience the thought world of Classical paganism that they glimpsed in the myths.
2. As China ages and fragments and voices clamor and desire things material as we have seen with the yuppies of modern China, one can sense Xi really thinking of how to square these circles while also growing Chinese power in the face of American decline. It does strike one as if Xi was a wiser Wilhelm II, but he faces a modern version of many of the same problems. Luckily for him the British Empire's modern equivalent seems even more moribund and prone to failure, it is like Wilhelm II is going up against Chamberlain's Britain with the religious vacuum of the 1970's.
Fun times.