Altered Reality - And The Internet

"Oh what a tangled web we weave!"

To find oneself in a make-believe world of altered reality and severe, draining, emotional intensity must have been exceedingly uncommon in the era before the internet. But now, it is the order of our day - and I fear that unless the human race finds a way of stopping the reflex scrolling that has become our lodestar of reality, we will meet a savage end when the actual world collides with the artificial one we have constructed around ourselves.

The modern phrase for this special ability of modern man to live in his own, manufactured environment which can alter from day to day and even hour to hour, appears to be to “live in a bubble.” It is an inadequate term for two reasons. A bubble, by definition, is invested with the imminent possibility of bursting and terminating its existence - and we all know that the particular bubble/s the internet is capable of constructing around us can last for days, even years! The other problem with the “living in a bubble” idea is the implication of there being just one bubble - not a mass of coalescing, squishy bubbles, amalgamated together, enabling us to skip (or leap) into another related bubble and back again to our original bubble, or to a closely related one!

Actually, the poison of this phenomenon was present in very much smaller doses in the era dominated by the idiot box (otherwise known as the T.V.), when the internet played a relatively minor role in our lives. I remember the era well - and in the context of the emotional intensity that would often envelope the watching of NHL hockey games on T.V,, I remember watching a game in our home, together with a newly married friend and his wife. My friends would erupt in cheers, leaping from their chairs and punching the air with their fists - and this was all very well and a lot of fun, although I did not really support their team. But when my friend demanded that all our chairs should be arranged in a particular way when a penalty was awarded; or that his wife should not move at all from her chair (supposedly if she did move, it would affect his team adversely!), I became aware that much more was at play here, than simply watching and enjoying a game.

On the whole, such indulgences in front of the idiot box were quite harmless - and the imaginary world we inhabited would end with the conclusion of the game (or movie, or cookery class). But with the internet, there is no reprieve and no respite. Anybody may, with a few clicks and scrolls, transport themselves to another world, inhabit the world and continue to inhabit the same world for weeks, before jumping to a related world with several more available podcasts, videos, X-feeds, Facebook posts and Instagram messages!

The actual, cold, reality of all this expended energy is that there is absolutely nothing we can do that will affect the outcome or in any way influence the artificial world we have constructed around ourselves. Just as the moving and rearranging of chairs that my friend demanded had absolutely no impact upon the outcome of the hockey game, our constant scrolling and constructing of several overlapping layers of make believe reality on the internet does not and cannot influence this artificial world that holds us in its thrall.

It would not be a make-believe version of reality if we were actually able to influence or change the particular, constructed world we weave around ourselves. The events we “partake” in are themselves “true” to greater or lesser degree. But like the old Indian tale in which blind men believe an elephant to be like a rope when feeling its trunk; like a wall, when feeling its body; or like a pillar when feeling its legs, the world as the internet presents it to us is always a particular version of reality that it wants us to embrace.

When we embrace that particular version of reality, and by incessant scrolling and clicking construct our own, individual versions of our own world, we become robotic automatons who are not in control of our own destinies. The terrifying thing in fact, is that rather than we embracing this so called “bubble world,” it embraces and overpowers us and renders us ineffective.

Even the best podcasts and “feeds” and posts on the internet share this ability to lure us away from the real world we live and move and breathe in - and into the virtual world we construct for ourselves. Endlessly “following” what the MAGA movement under Trump is doing; or how the Middle East is blowing up; or how Ukraine and Russia are near or far away from peace; or how exasperating Canadian politics is - all this does not make us able in any way to influence the course of events. But all this does make us utterly ineffective and emotionally and spiritually drained.

The printed page, whether it be a book, a magazine or a newspaper does not share this sinister and dastardly ability to take over our minds and bodies and souls. It beats in synchronicity with the pulse of the universe and does not race away erratically and dangerously like the internet. It is the stuff of crisp pages turning and lingering memories. And if we are to survive much longer as a race, it must reclaim its ancient place in our lives and homes.

The pen is indeed mightier than the sword, both being acknowledged as mighty in their own way.

But a digital, virtual, make-believe world is as far away from the mighty pen as a pondering podcast is far, far away from the flashing steel of a sword.