Excellent article. Something I’ve been thinking about and researching quite often recently: Hyperfreedom. This line of thought was triggered when thinking about game/virtual worlds and the extent to which they’ve become the new “third place”. With this trend comes feverish objections from boomers and “journalists” about screen time, fantasy, escapism, “loneliness epidemics”, etc. However, I see this as nothing more than human nature. The standard test of, say, the Venture Capitalist, is finding the threshold between a visionary and a con-artist. Humans construct “worlds” in which we can live, move and have our being. Early cave dwellers imagined worlds and painted them on the walls; campfire stories; oral tradition promised lands; books up to and through video games. Our dumb, repetitive lives, the immediacy of NOW we seek escape from. That’s the offline. Axial-Age religions/shamans/philosophers are very much rooted in this desire to escape circular models of attaching ourselves to a cyclical metaphysical principle and to an unfolding narrative in which we play a part. We matter in this linear narrative. We can imagine a future, summon and mobilize individuals, even across genetic boundaries, and hope/fight/direct toward that future. it’s rooted in fantasy, imagination, and storytelling. We seek the Online...that emergence from the everyday, cyclical boredom of life when we’ll matter. many people feel they don’t matter. They don’t have an agency. They decisions amount to nothing. They’ve not participated in the growth, wealth, policy, etc. And, we’ve not had a picture or a good fantasy with storytelling, juicy enemies, characters, etc. America is a land rooted in fantasy, story, and the irreal. A wonderful book to read is Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen; The Image by Daniel Boorstin; and always to remember the (supposedly) Karl Rove quote: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."
Excellent article. Something I’ve been thinking about and researching quite often recently: Hyperfreedom. This line of thought was triggered when thinking about game/virtual worlds and the extent to which they’ve become the new “third place”. With this trend comes feverish objections from boomers and “journalists” about screen time, fantasy, escapism, “loneliness epidemics”, etc. However, I see this as nothing more than human nature. The standard test of, say, the Venture Capitalist, is finding the threshold between a visionary and a con-artist. Humans construct “worlds” in which we can live, move and have our being. Early cave dwellers imagined worlds and painted them on the walls; campfire stories; oral tradition promised lands; books up to and through video games. Our dumb, repetitive lives, the immediacy of NOW we seek escape from. That’s the offline. Axial-Age religions/shamans/philosophers are very much rooted in this desire to escape circular models of attaching ourselves to a cyclical metaphysical principle and to an unfolding narrative in which we play a part. We matter in this linear narrative. We can imagine a future, summon and mobilize individuals, even across genetic boundaries, and hope/fight/direct toward that future. it’s rooted in fantasy, imagination, and storytelling. We seek the Online...that emergence from the everyday, cyclical boredom of life when we’ll matter. many people feel they don’t matter. They don’t have an agency. They decisions amount to nothing. They’ve not participated in the growth, wealth, policy, etc. And, we’ve not had a picture or a good fantasy with storytelling, juicy enemies, characters, etc. America is a land rooted in fantasy, story, and the irreal. A wonderful book to read is Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen; The Image by Daniel Boorstin; and always to remember the (supposedly) Karl Rove quote: "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors ... and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."