You shall kill only the killers

How prescient was PKD - even though the specifics are off. There is no Penfield Mood Organ, there's just entertainment on demand, mind and body pornography. There's no Mercerism, there's just the global mind fusion that is the internet. There are no androids, but we feel the need to separate ourselves into classes and castes, between those who feel and those who do not (which is easy enough; this side of the TV feels, the other side does not: see third world, global south, etc).

We've even got Buster Friendly. 24/7/365 news, TV, media, sports. Britney Spears and Anna Nicole. It's cave drawings gone digital. Large breasts symbolize fertility. It's everything humans have ever been - and we think we're different.

Maybe that's the delusion he is really trying to uncover. These are universal themes, not exposed by technology. Instead, we use technology to exploit these desires. We haven't used the internet to evolve, to interact more potently. We've used it in the same ways we used any form of communication and networking. It's just a new plane.

Take internet gaming, for instance. It's similar to any sport. Work together with others against a common enemy to reach some goal. The goal doesn't even matter. The goal can be symbolic. If sports prepare us for war, this is a valuable evolutionary trait. We don't need to go to war to be prepared for it. We can use symbols and artificial constructs - which entertain.

And in that sense, the two are no different - biologically and socially speaking.

So it's not as if this is a huge revolution. At its roots, it is the same thing we've done since we came out of the weeds. We replaced the real with the symbolic. Now we just run on treadmills.

Okay, so - do we feel any longer? Or are we all androids, unsympathetic, the real meaning in our lives destroyed? I think the symbolic has so fully replaced the real, but it doesn't matter. We don't see through our own eyes, we see through others. We're reaching a new global medium. Average. An emotional middle-state.

Check this out. "We Feel Fine", a data-driven collection of feeling statements drawn from the internet. It's interesting enough in its own right. But what makes it so fascinating is that anyone can plug in and really feel those emotions. Just like in "Androids", we program for ourselves the emotions we want - from inspiration to depression - and there it is, on the screen, in our mind.

It's as if a billion monkeys were typing - not on typewriters, but on blogs. And this is what they came up with. Was this always here, but unexpressed? Now we just have the power to explore the feelings of millions of individuals, not just Shakespeare or Yeats or Goethe, but nearly everyone.

Strange that we all think our experiences are unique. It's that dichotomy - we live our own lives, but we are part of the collective, unyielding experience. Perhaps that's the 'mystery of faith' in the religion I was born into. That every day we are all crucified. Only through the experience of one can we understand the experience of all. In believing, we choose to fuse with that entity or idea.

Just some thoughts. Ramblings. I haven't posted in a while, so I suppose my glass is overflowing right now.

Here:
I think the only thing allowing me to ramble like this is my complete lack of audience.