Vivability: Virtuality is the new Reality
What will become of us: the human race on this human planet? Or is our planet not so human? Is the planet ours anyway? Are we in control or just a ball in a game? Playing with the Devil or playing for God? What is bad? A disease that took the lives of many who were not ready to go? What is our measure to state that? The cow which made it to my plate; the fish we caught in the ocean, were they ready to go? That flower that looks so nicely in a vase, was she ready to go? Who are we to end life or decide who’s to live? To decide that mankind can be optimised: more human and less mortal.
Confined in a small space, rural people are this time as fortunate as millionaires. Both restricted in where to go and what to do. Our world enters through our computer screens. Yes, that includes the smartphones and tablets too. Wasn’t it Kracauer who spoke about the frame of a movie as a window to the world? And Arnheim, who stated that the frame is an artistic choice, consciously excluding and including. The computer screen: an entrance to the world or a constraint? What is digitally capturable we have at our display: all kinds of information, places, people. With a click on the button, it comes or disappears. We decide. Do we? A computer interface opens worlds.
Distances are bridged between people thanks to video calls. Opinions of strangers are displayed as falling leaves: some sticky and wet, some dry. We are able to explore physical locations which we will never physically visit. Clicks and scrolls replace steps, the airplane, a car or a bus. We meet people who share their experience and their experiences. We are connected with the world through isolation. My safe space is now an outer experience. Is it still safe? Was it ever safe? The public sphere has merged with the private sphere.
We divide ourselves in a body and a mind. Our minds can be affected through this new window to the world. Yet, our interaction with whatever always affects us. Would we leave the window wide open in the jungle? Or is the threat as virtual as what is displayed on our screens? And what does virtual mean? Hasn’t it become time to call virtual real? This house with open windows in the jungle where predators and poison cannot harm us physically. Perceived fear can physically harm us, as perceived love warms our hearts.
It is time to leave ‘perceived’ out. Virtuality is the new reality. The German language has the word ‘Wirklichkeit’. Translated with ‘actuality’, it is not the same as reality. Because the lack of consensus on how they are different, I will define ‘Wirklichkeit’ as something that is: the truth independent of our interaction with the world. Maybe we should call reality ‘Wirklichkeit’ when the virtual has become our reality?
This conceptual distinction doesn’t save us from danger. Besides danger that threatens the mind, will there be still danger that threatens the body? Locked up safely in our confined spaces, where physical interaction with other biological beings was from the past reality. Food is delivered at your doorstep. Everything biological contains a physical risk. Something that cannot be controlled. Can we live on soul food? As Uploads we can. But we still have biological bodies that need biological components to survive. The physical door of our confined spaces is not an effective barrier for tiny intruders, disobediently travelling on surfaces or through the air… We disinfect our hands, our environment. An old fashioned sip of brandy to kill the bad bugs, has become a pill, or two. In order to stay healthy, the body needs exercise. Hunting in the jungle involves risk.Walking in a cultivated park too. Danger arising from unforeseen situations looms everywhere. Research reveals that being in nature is good for mental and physical health.
That cultivated park where the risks are considerably lower than in the jungle. Yet, only if we keep an eye on the vegetation, bio-engineer the plants in such a way that the plants fertilize themselves, or only by a bio-engineered bee that doesn’t sting human beings and commute only between by humans predestined flower couples. Or maybe it is a better alternative to use bee-sized robots for that. And, at the same time, these artificial worker bees can keep an eye on who visits the park. Communicating their observations to the park owner, that is… Who is the park owner? The government? A government is there to guarantee human wellbeing. Or is it a commercial administrator? In that case the administrator has an incentive to keep his park as low-risk as possible: “Enjoy all the benefits of being outside with the safety of staying home!”. Our confined space expanded with a controlled park.
Taking commerce for this moment out of the equation, as well as any ethical debate on privacy issues, there are circumstances thinkable where it is useful to know who went where. Or maybe these hybrid or full robot bees keep their observations stored in their memory, to be destroyed or utilized on demand. It seems more likely that their observations, yes, it is just ordinary sensor data, is directly send to the Cloud. But then the question remains: to whom do they report and who owns the Cloud? Urgency makes measures futile if they don’t serve purpose. The data is sold or given to the instance that needs it for a higher aim. There where the uncontrollable slipped into our extended confined space.
How does it make a difference if we see our computer screens as a frame of personal decision making? It is now no longer an open window to the jungle that can virtually harm, but a sterile dashboard. This assumes that we have control over our choices and what the content as a result of our choices, does. Do we have control over the content on a social media platform? We do have an on and off switch, an exit button, a decision who or what to follow, on what to lay our eye, and also how to process that what we lay our eyes on. We know that there are tigers out there, but we only frame a tiger, if we want a tiger and we know we can handle it.
On the other hand, what drives extreme sports men and adventurers? Certainly not the lack of risk. And if you ask them why they are doing it, their answers are unanimously that that makes them feel alive. Nevertheless, we are still in our confined spaces, prohibited by authorities to go out, the violation presented as a lack of self-love, and a lack of love for your fellow human being, endangering him by being a human being. Fortunately, we can invite extreme experiences in our confined spaces in our lives through virtual reality. Which has become the new reality. This means that we have to forget about outside. Outside is inside. And maybe we should also forget about the display here. The interface is non-apparent. It is shifted inside our brain.
We decide upon rock climbing without ropes. The setting is loaded, the experience in a state of becoming. Is everyone allowed to have this experience? Is that fair towards the people who in the old reality practiced so many times, risking their lives? Let’s say, that it is not fair. You are not allowed to free solo without having practiced. Without having proven that you can climb with ropes and that you are crazy enough to risk your life. How does that work in the new reality where risk is confiscated by the authorities? Insurance companies breathing down the necks of tech companies. There are still people out there…
Back to virtual free solo climbing and the risk of dying. In computer games you can loose your life. Loosing your life in a (computer) game can be an intense saddening experience. How is this different from knowing that you take a physical risk? Surfing twenty-meter giant waves, knowing that you can drown. In the new reality, everyone can surf Nazaré. Maybe we can emulate the fear of dying, to stimulate the thrill and final satisfaction when the mission is accomplished. Our minds believing that something is the case, prepares the body for the physical situation. A stressful situation does have a negative impact on the physical body, which we still have.
A rational analysis and calculation may offer the solution. How much value has the thrill-seeking experience for wellness, in comparison to not having the thrill-seeking experience, and thus not burdening the body with stress? If the amount of pleasure and satisfaction the experience gives, is more beneficial for the well-being of the human being, then, one should get a permission to involve in the training course.
Are we allowed to die? What is dying in the future anyway? The idea behind the Mind Upload is that we can always make duplicates. Still, what to do with our physical body? Hybrid bodies, slowly evolving into fully artificial bodies are also completely replaceable. If I compare a human artificial body with a car brought to the garage after a severe crash, it might be more cost-efficient to get a new one than having it fixed. What is the role of cost-efficiency in whether or not having a physical body? It seems that a physical body natural / artificial / or hybrid, only has disadvantages. A virtual ‘new real’ body is modifiable. And in the case of the aspiring solo climber or big wave surfer, that athletic body is easier achieved then through actual physical training. The pain that comes with training can be emulated. Having no physical body makes the rational calculation on the effects of stress also redundant.
In order not to be too greedy in our reductions, we may want to consider what it is to be a living human being. Are we mind or also our body? According to some, we are none: ‘We are pure spirit: you are not your mind, nor your body’. This resonates in both spiritually enlightened people, as well as in fearful people seeking for a skyhook.
Being confined real or virtual, can be a mentally terrifying experience. The human is a social being and there are no signs that this characteristic is something we want to get rid off. Teleconferencing, social media, these are various ways to stay connected. The lack of human physical touch must find another catalyst. However, let us not forget that physically interacting with other people involves risk. Are pets still allowed? Isn’t a robot pet better? Better means: more safe, more controllable… Mind Uploads solve this touchy problem.
Let’s pull ourselves loose from the technology for a moment: ‘You are not your mind, nor your body’. We are one, we are collective spirit. For the non-enlightened person this doesn’t stop mental and physical suffering, but it eases the mind. The support of other likeminded people too. People practice yoga, meditate, share in spirit, worship nature. Is this human community sustainable in a ‘Reality 2 world’ that abolished risk? Natural food, no vaccinations, no rules, except for the love of nature and each other.
We perceive nature as cruel sometimes, but is she? Or is ‘cruelty’ a human predicate that we put on things that we don’t like? The eagle will certainly not feel guilty for eating a lamb. A virus not for intruding an alien body and snatching cells. Shouldn’t these not be all moments of insight? Humility of the human race and a reminder to take care of ourselves and the ecosystem, us being included in the ecosystem. This vision touches closely upon Spinoza’s deterministic pantheism and therefore upon seeing nature as an optimal efficient and effective system, run by itself.
People love each other, cheer for others, help others, without the intervention of an authority. People make decisions for their own well-being, caring about others and therewith sustaining humankind in its original form. When the market doesn’t provide, people provide to each other. Love, care and positive thinking possess healing powers. We will be subject to risks, and not live forever, but isn’t it the fertility of the decay of life wherefrom new life rises?
All of a sudden, our screens are not windows or frames to the world anymore, but they have become physical things like everything else with a function. A function that serves that moment, but does not affect in essence who we are. What has become of the world behind that screen? Should we still call it a world? Or is the term ‘world’ exclusively reserved for physical interaction with the physical world? Virtual reduced to its origin: virtue, that is, the right way of acting. Here it is not an authority that dictates what is right, but humankind himself. Just as we decided that it is beneficial for us to have a government, or to have machines that do the work for us to allow us more leisure time.
AI connects people. Yet, shouldn’t we be aware of the rationality behind its well-intentioned help? Is the control not something we have to let go off? But that implies accepting the rationales behind the objects we created, too. Will that not result in a new kind of struggle for existence? Does the question if we are in control not also apply to nature including us, and also to the things we have created and are creating? Isn’t this an evolving interaction where there will be losses and gains? We gain material wealth, and we loose leisure time. We gain health and longevity, we loose some of our individual freedom. We gain real-time global contact with new people and our beloved ones, we loose freedom to travel where and when we want, also related to the measures we are taking to preserve nature.
We redefine ‘death’ and ‘life’. Death is not exclusively reserved for what came natural into the world. We give birth to things we consider helpful for our survival. Here the evolutionary element is back again: beavers construct dams to protect themselves from predators, birds build nests for their offspring. The human species has developed intelligence as his main property for survival. How can we say then, that that what we create, is not part of the Wirklichkeit. Virtual is Wirklichkeit, AI is, plants, animals are.
Wirklich contains the word ‘wirk’, meaning ‘work’. We are part of a work, which we create at the same time. Survival means to overcome life. There are no predefined rules. The Wirklichkeit challenges us and itself. Dryness that instigate wildfires, rising sea levels caused both through sun activity and our own creations, intended to benefit us, now understood as having far reaching consequences that we have to face.
With our intelligence, we find solutions that create new problems. There are no boundaries between natural and artificial. Artificial as a human product: how can that not be considered natural when it is intended to overcome life? Selfish genes want to overcome life, viruses invade and mutate to overcome life. Information serves only its functionality, if it spreads. Outdated cell phones are refurbished and get a second life in third world countries. Novel companies, valued with astronomical prices, strive for survival by offering a need that a large amount of people have. And then they suddenly perish due to an unforeseen event or a competing offer. Most of us don’t feel the urge to control these entities and mechanisms. Some of us do, related to their interest in it, that is: the perception of what it is that gives the individual human being value and an advantage to survive.
Struggling together through ones own individual path towards an enlightened mind: ‘you are not your body, nor your mind’. How does this differ from the creation of the immortal post-human? And what does immortal mean, if there are no boundaries between biological and artificial, between life and death, between virtual and actual? These shifts in understanding, but also the differences, the diversity, the change, the desire for power, and the lack of overall control, are our human condition. The struggle for existence is life, our persistence, our intelligence, the experiencing of all kinds of emotions, is life. A preserved human being, whether or not an Upload, in a confined space or stored in the Cloud, is this life or death? Does its ability to work define its sur-vivability? And what if we decide that it is all about vivability? Just living.
We embrace the uncontrollability of the ecosystem, the unknowingness where it is heading to. We create and steer the ship, yet we don’t control the currents, the weather conditions, and all the other elements that are already there or are into a state of becoming. The human’s highest good is vivability: the ability to live. Confined at home, not even aware of the physical limitations due to a brain-computer interface that makes you feel you are in the jungle with only friendly tigers, a five-star hotel or ride that giant wave. Walking outside in a human-AI designed park, physically at the office where pets and kids are allowed or in a meeting displayed on a computational device as an iconic living mosaic, everyone representing individual existence. I didn’t speak about individuality. At the end, this will distinguish us from the past in a future where even the past doesn’t exist: oneness.
