One
of the newest technological rages today is Pokemon-Go. Young people use the GPS on their smartphones
to go out into the external world to find virtual creatures called Pokemon that
they capture, train and then send to battle the Pokemon of other trainers. It would appear that it is the modern world’s
answer to an exciting adventure in a living environment that is making life
increasingly routinized for the vast majority of people. Routine from pre-kindergarten to college and
graduate school is primarily what gets people good jobs. Yes, it is nice for a student to have an
unusual hobby or a year abroad in college, as long as the hobby and the time
abroad don’t represent too significant a chunk of the student’s time, energy,
or state of mind.
A Pokemon
represents adventure without risk. The
trainer himself is not in battle nor is an animal he cherishes. Rather, it is a virtual entity that exists
but doesn’t really exist. There is no
possible organic perishability if something happens that the Pokemon loses in
battle. There is no organic
perishability, and, by the same token, there are no organic imprints made and
preserved on the surfaces of the person’s field of experience in the external
world. The whole narrative of the
Pokemon adventure is a ghostly vacuumized adventure that numbs the person as he
participates, because he is immersed in virtual reality. This is different from a true adventure in
external world reality, which causes a person to feel vibrantly alive and leads
to meaningful organic imprints which can be preserved in the memories of the
people that surround the adventurer or even sometimes in artifacts like
documents and books.
To
the extent that a person gets pulled into a vacuumized adventure with Pokemon,
to that extent the person gradually and subtly becomes vacuumized himself. There is already another technology-generated
situation where a person becomes a vacuumized entity. This is when a person translates himself into
an avatar for purposes of getting involved with computer games or Internet
forums. The avatar is the computer
user’s virtual representation for purposes of his participation in different
cyber-processes. But as the computer
user uses his avatar, he subtly becomes influence by it as he would by any
complex behavioral entity. The avatar
mirrors him and becomes a model for him, and slowly but surely the person
becomes avatarized. He becomes
vacuumized, which means he becomes very susceptible to the influence of
entropic disintegration, which, in turn, is a natural force that exists in a
vacuum.
Even
though the user is operating openly without an avatar when he plays Pokemon-Go,
an avatar-like presence becomes more and more implicit in his persona, as he
starts getting more and more involved with the capturing and training of
Pokemon and with the battles that come afterwards.
So
here is another symbolic model of technological transformation that is somewhat
distinct from that of robotic transformation.
Experientially, a robot is an overly defined figure made of hard
unyielding metal or synthetic materials that definitely has a strong critical
mass in external world reality. As a
machine, a robot is incapable of bonding with other robots or with humans, for
that matter. It behaves by following a
series of defined discrete processes, but these processes are not directed by a
coherent sense of self or a coherent consciousness. A robot does not make, receive, or preserve
organic imprints that are recorded as meaningful impresses on the external
world in such a way that they become a part of other people’s memories. It does however leave discrete marks on the
world, marks that are not recorded in memories as purposeful preserved
imprints, because they are not the products of coherent senses of self or
coherent consciousnesses. The only
possible exception here is the meaningful impress of a robot or a machine
winning a sophisticated game like chess against a human. And here, the robot does not receive an
imprint of winning the game as something to be happy about. It is more like the victory of the robot or
machine winning is something that disrupts the flow of meaningful imprints
among humans.
Now
an avatar is also a defined discrete figure, but one that not only lacks
grounding, but also substance and mass as well.
An avatar is a vacuumized figure that exists in screen reality and
virtual reality but has no existence in the external world reality in which
humans normally inhabit. To the extent
that a human becomes avatarized, he psychologically begins to lose his
connection to external world reality. It
is as if he starts to die to external world reality.
Becoming
avatarized does not require actually using an avatar in screen reality on the
computer or in virtual reality. One can
become psychologically a vacuumized figure, by simply dwelling in screen
reality or virtual reality for too much of one’s waking time.
So
how does avatarization manifest itself in human behavior. In general, it means being pulled more and
more into a vacuum state psychologically and being subject to the entropic
forces that are an essential part of any vacuum. In the physical world, entropy means the random
distribution of atoms in a vacuum. In
the mental world, entropy means the disintegration of one’s sense of self. It means crumbling apart into
nothingness. There are many different
ways that this entropy-influenced behavior displays itself. It is not uncommon today for a worker in a
wage-based job to suddenly not come into his job and to disappear. Actually, people disappear from many
different situations today. Two people
have been dating for a while, and suddenly one of them disappears from the
relationship. Or one day, a husband or
wife, father or mother leaves the house and doesn’t come home. In spite of family responsibilities, the
person simply vanishes. Some
entropy-influenced behavior can result in the people around the agent of the
behavior being affected more directly by the entropy as well. The victims of the modern mass murderers. These
murderers commit their crimes out of their numbness and usually die at the
hands of police or soldiers, assuming that they don’t die from suicide bombs.
People
try to control their numbness, their disappearing into nothingness, by smoking
pot and doing yoga and meditation. All
these are activities that cause a temporary but controlled diminishing of one’s
sense of self. By doing this, people are
basically using a means to control the rate of crumbling from entropy, when one
feels oneself blurring into the images of screen reality and increasingly now
virtual reality and becoming what would now be described as an avatar.
In
general, to develop the lightness of being that comes with becoming an avatar
leads to floating away from connection to situations through commitments. It is as if a person literally loses touch
with the world, as he becomes vacuumized and numb. The person loses his sense of substance, of
mass, of gravity. This isn’t something
that happens all at once. But the
situations I described are indicators of the changes that are taking place as a
result of gradual human identification with a mass-less, substance-less entity. This is why interacting so much with Pokemon
is such a stealthily dangerous enterprise.
We gradually become avatar-like in order to truly enter the world of
Pokemon and to take them seriously. And
this is so relatively easy, because the boundaries between virtual reality and
external world reality are so totally blurred in dealing with Pokemon. In developing an avatar mentality, we
practically slide into virtual reality from our external world reality. And then we become like the entities that we
use and manipulate. And, in the process,
we lose some of our humanity.
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