“Strange to say, Jayjay’s nearly fifty years of life in Vearth had lasted but five of the real world’s hours. He was plagued by a persistent sense of living in a dream. Would he never awake?”(296).
Although Jayjay’s experience may have been more severe, I can empathize with the emotional feeling of perceiving life as a dream. Often times, I feel like I’m observing my life from a distance and analyzing myself from an objective perspective. Although self-evaluation can be a useful tool for psychological well-being, this disassociation between mind and body creates an emotional strain. It becomes difficult to rediscover oneself as an active participant in a life one feels they are watching.
Through advice from others, I've realized that there is no specific psychological trick to waking up from this symbolic dream of life. In order to feel like a participant, I need to participate. In order to feel active, I need to act. As Albert Camus posits, "You will never be happy if you continue to search for what happiness consists of. You will never live if you are looking for the meaning of life." Indeed, the trick to life is living.
If virtual reality becomes a reality, it will be important to give people access to the controls to the virtual world. As creatures who love to alter aspects of their worlds according to their will, people will want to be involved in processes that change their virtual landscapes. Without the autonomy to at least impact part of the virtual world, people will become passive observes. And from my experience, passive observation does not make anyone happy.
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