Guest post: Brave New World had the “feelies”
Originally a comment by Vanitys Fiend on The disembodied avatar worlds of the internet.
One thing that gets me about this is that Science Fiction, and probably a fair number of fairy tales and myths, have been exploring and warning about this kind of disembodiment from reality for decades now. The original pilot for Star Trek featured a race that became so detached from reality over time that they no longer knew how to maintain the advanced technology of their ancestors. Neuromancer has “The Matrix” before The Matrix did and even that film has time to explore the idea of whether it matters if you’re living in an illusion or reality, and it come down on the side of harsh reality over a comfortable unreality*. Brave New World had the “feelies” which allow people to escape from reality if only for a few hours at a time.
To go back to Star Trek, The Next Generation had an early episode called “Holo Pursuits” about a socially anxious crewmember who was using VR as a way of coping with his isolation and as a way to live out his fantasies. The ep didn’t treat this as a terribly valid lifestyle choice. Helping the crewmember overcome his anxiety was seen as the correct solution. Honestly I can’t think of many Sf stories where living in VR was treated as the best way forward for individuals or humanity as a species and yet there are so many people in geek spaces who seem reality enamoured with the idea**.
*The unreality in this case is an eternal 1999 in a generic American city (filmed in Oz though) with a green filter.
**Being pro VR plus genetic and cybernetic enhancement are three of the things that baffle me about a lot of Star Trek fans. It’s doubly weird when they ask question like “Why do conservatives like Star Trek” and I’m like, “you’re a pro eugenics, porn addled furry who wants to live a life of debauchery in a holodeck banging a Vulcan Love Slave with your cybernetically enhanced penis, you don’t get Star Trek either”.
Of course the creators of The Matrix both identify as women and supposedly meant the whole movie as a parable for transition in the first place (in case you wonder: the people who think Eddie Izzard is a woman are the ones who have taken the red pill, had their eyes opened, and see the world as it really is. It’s the rest of us who are living a lie).
And we all know what happened to a certain member of the cast of Inception (I just know all that stuff about planting destructive ideas in people’s heads, the idea growing to define everything about the person, the danger of losing track of reality etc. would be a great metaphor for something. Let’s see, what was it again?)
(Ariadne should have done a better job with her totem. Ok, I’ll stop.)
Ob. Gibson
Add ‘The Congress’, based on Stanislaw Lem’s ‘The Futurological Congress’ to that list.
@Bjarte Foshaug
“Of course the creators of The Matrix both identify as women and supposedly meant the whole movie as a parable for transition in the first place (in case you wonder: the people who think Eddie Izzard is a woman are the ones who have taken the red pill, had their eyes opened, and see the world as it really is. It’s the rest of us who are living a lie).”
The character of Switch was originally intended to be one sex in the matrix and a different sex out of the matrix, the result of a coding error by the machines. That’s as good an explanation for transgenderism as any I guess. It’s a side element though that was dropped in the actual movie. It’s bizarre from my perspective because the whole message of the movie was about choosing reality over fiction, even if reality sucks. The traitor among the crew chooses the fiction over reality and it’s not treated as a heroic decision. I doubt the Wachowskis see the Cypher in themselves.
I think the way a lot of people in geek spaces conceive of the authentic self makes them vulnerable to the teachings of the trans movement. If you’re shy, or a bit of a misfit like a lot of geeks are then the “real you” is often the person you wish you were, more confident, more suave, rather than the person most people see you as. If you’re a Walter Mitty type who works a boring job but has an fantastical imaginary life then which you is the real you? To a lot of geeky people the “real you” is the imaginary you, after all it’s who you are on the inside that counts. So transgenderism makes sense on an intuitive level for a lot of geeks imo.
I think authenticity and honesty go hand in hand, but being honest with the world about ones opinions has no bearing on whether ones opinions are objectively true. A gay person who is open about their homosexuality is being honest with themselves and the world, but what about a trans person or an otherkin/therian? No amount of honesty can override raw biology.
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