Let’s Create Better Realities: Level 1
In Praise of the OASIS
Ready Player One depicts a near future where most people on Earth experience a majority of their lives in a massively multi-player virtual world called the OASIS. In the OASIS, players are fully immersed in an digital virtual reality thanks to advanced visual, audio, and haptic technology that enable players see, hear, and even feel their surroundings.
This experience is so immersive and the virtual world so engaging that many people, especially to the entire generation who grew up in it, find it more meaningful and real than the real world. They spend most of their time there, discover most of their friends or romantic interests there, and even find purpose there. This is because in the OASIS, players can pretty much do whatever they like. They can meet other players, play videogame-like challenges, join quests with other players, hang out in virtual chat rooms with other players, reimagine their own bodies and even their own identities, and so on.
What’s Not To Love About The OASIS?
Theoretically, this type of existence should be incredibly amazing and desirable.
Existing reality consists mostly of a monotonous rut in cubicles, cars, and private homes where people spend their time going to and from mind numbing 9–5 jobs which suffocate much of their identities, hopes/dreams, true talents/interests, then retreat into their private, solitary dwellings, where they unwind mindlessly.
The OASIS by contrast is a place where people can do almost anything imaginable.
It is a place where players can develop and engage their full selves. It allows players to be as creative and resourceful as they wish while having tremendous fun. They can find a sense of purpose by engaging their minds solving interesting challenges and quests. They can meet like-minded individuals and make meaningful friendships quickly, risk-free, in any number of virtual contexts. These friendships often develop into deep feelings of camaraderie with their virtual friends thanks to frequent interactions, shared experiences, collaborative problem solving, and feelings of common purpose.
The OASIS doesn’t just engage the mind. It even allow players to bring along their physical selves for the ride. To move their virtual avatars, players use their bodies to move their characters around the OASIS. A few hours in the OASIS gets players more fit than most gym aficionados. Compare that to our modern existence or to modern video games, where the body fatigues and where securing physical movement actually requires putting aside dedicated time to engaging in yet again, boring, repetitive actions of running, weights, and other forms of modern exercise. (disturbing fact: the treadmill was actually first conceived of as a torture machine).
The OASIS Is Human Utopia
In short, the Oasis allows players to live in a reality, that in many keys ways, actually seems as close to utopia as possible.
It offers an insanely rich universe where players can quite literally have all possible experiences that can be conceived of. It offers something for every part of ourselves: it offers challenges for the mind, fantasy fulfillment, identity creation and recreation, unlimited social interactions and bonds, fantastic drama, a sense of purpose, and an outlet for our darker impulses without any of the real risks or harms.
And for the slightly wiser or skeptical reader, the OASIS isn’t some nihilistic state of being where players are chasing moment to moment pleasure, always looking for immediate hits of gratification.
Players are actually encouraged to develop the parts of themselves that have to do with growth from struggle and work. To develop their OASIS avatars (and have any kind of fun), players must strategize, plan for the future, delay gratification, take on responsibilities during quests, collaborate with others, attain mastery at various tasks, and so on. In other words, they must engage in activities that are recognized even by the most conservative among us to be psychologically healthy and beneficial.
If religious leaders weren’t so unimaginative or uptight, their descriptions of heaven would probably be much closer to the reality of the OASIS rather than that of conventional heaven: a mind numbing existence of hanging out on clouds, eating grapes, and listening to angels harping on lyres all day long.
In the next post I discuss how virtual realities are nothing new for humans.
