Reality as Social Networking
Saturday, November 8. 2008
I was "under the weather" for the past few days and haven't felt my usual bloggish self. I've managed to get back on top of the weather now and I'm back.
So I was pondering this morning as I washed what little hair I have left: what's the purpose of reality? Fantasy is often much more entertaining, and a lot easier to control. From a purely humanistic point of view, the only function reality has that I can see is that it allows entities who share the same version of it to communicate with one another.
This is exactly the same function as MySpace, which is rather dismaying.
Of course, the only way to define reality (or "a" reality, anyway) is as a shared experience between two or more individuals. The drawback to using that definition as a meaningful test is that one can never tell whether another individual is "real" (i.e., separate from one's own fantasy and/or perceptions).
So maybe you're the only person on MySpace. More likely, I'm the only person not on MySpace. At least I'm on Twitter now.
Having one's own version of reality (i.e., a fantasy) that one accepts as more factual than the reality ostensibly shared by everyone else earns the label of "insane," and makes it very hard to communicate in any meaningful way. It's actually somewhat comforting to me, then, that from the standpoint of the MySpace community, I am completely off my rocker.
Right, time to wander off to my own version of reality for awhile. Not only have I been in a blog-averse state recently, I also haven't written as many NaNoWords as I need to. I'm behind on my fantasy-fleshing-out quota. So back to the grind...
I was "under the weather" for the past few days and haven't felt my usual bloggish self. I've managed to get back on top of the weather now and I'm back.
So I was pondering this morning as I washed what little hair I have left: what's the purpose of reality? Fantasy is often much more entertaining, and a lot easier to control. From a purely humanistic point of view, the only function reality has that I can see is that it allows entities who share the same version of it to communicate with one another.
This is exactly the same function as MySpace, which is rather dismaying.
Of course, the only way to define reality (or "a" reality, anyway) is as a shared experience between two or more individuals. The drawback to using that definition as a meaningful test is that one can never tell whether another individual is "real" (i.e., separate from one's own fantasy and/or perceptions).
So maybe you're the only person on MySpace. More likely, I'm the only person not on MySpace. At least I'm on Twitter now.
Having one's own version of reality (i.e., a fantasy) that one accepts as more factual than the reality ostensibly shared by everyone else earns the label of "insane," and makes it very hard to communicate in any meaningful way. It's actually somewhat comforting to me, then, that from the standpoint of the MySpace community, I am completely off my rocker.
Right, time to wander off to my own version of reality for awhile. Not only have I been in a blog-averse state recently, I also haven't written as many NaNoWords as I need to. I'm behind on my fantasy-fleshing-out quota. So back to the grind...
So I was pondering this morning as I washed what little hair I have left: what's the purpose of reality? Fantasy is often much more entertaining, and a lot easier to control. From a purely humanistic point of view, the only function reality has that I can see is that it allows entities who share the same version of it to communicate with one another.
This is exactly the same function as MySpace, which is rather dismaying.
Of course, the only way to define reality (or "a" reality, anyway) is as a shared experience between two or more individuals. The drawback to using that definition as a meaningful test is that one can never tell whether another individual is "real" (i.e., separate from one's own fantasy and/or perceptions).
So maybe you're the only person on MySpace. More likely, I'm the only person not on MySpace. At least I'm on Twitter now.
Having one's own version of reality (i.e., a fantasy) that one accepts as more factual than the reality ostensibly shared by everyone else earns the label of "insane," and makes it very hard to communicate in any meaningful way. It's actually somewhat comforting to me, then, that from the standpoint of the MySpace community, I am completely off my rocker.
Right, time to wander off to my own version of reality for awhile. Not only have I been in a blog-averse state recently, I also haven't written as many NaNoWords as I need to. I'm behind on my fantasy-fleshing-out quota. So back to the grind...
Craig on :