...the great realty of reality...
...a descent into mania made after experiencing the "VISION"...
…this week I decided to look into the Apple’s latest technology, and in doing so found myself questioning and exploring reality. I’d love to hear what you think about any parts of this and/or your experiences with reality. Please leave a message in the comments if you have time. I want to know about your reality and your visions…
“Reality is the true nature of things and events. But truth is also defined as reality. So like a duck stuck up its own ass, reality can’t sniff a feather for shit. Perception is the only reality.“
-Somm Morann -
Alone in my home it stares at me from across the room, my eyes catching its glassed dead eyed smirk as I peer in and out of my telephone screen. Deeply breathing in the moment, my eyes scan the murmuring chit chatting chirps of strangers communing on the talker’s website.
I am a grump. The great stone fruit has released its latest technology, a two pound screen you strap to your eyes. The future is here, the chit chat chirpers tell me. Imagine a future where everything I see is seen first by a computer which then tells me what it sees?
Ah yes, what a VISION.
I should be excited. This future is not only inevitable, it is good, it is great. What is a street without a layer of directions and new shopping opportunities? How could I know a stranger without linking to their social media accounts first? Think of all the new and strange ways in which we might jerk off!
I scoffed a dozen years ago at the idea that rebuilding the earth in the ocean was a bad idea. In Dubai a construction company spent some $15B dredging Gulf sand to rebuild a map of the world in the ocean to hopefully house hotels for wealthy clientele.1 The world was not enough so they built a whole new world. Then after all that investment they stopped building. The new world was sinking back into the ocean. The only world that finished was a luxury resort called Lebanon. Now you can buy one of the unfinished worlds for $16M.
The world is not enough.
Reality is boring, broken, tired and expired. We need augmented and virtual realities that share actual and artificial intelligence. Real reality is limited by reality, the sadness of “it is what it is”-ism eeyores only the status quo. I need fifteen screens in my bathroom so that I might pooh a status woah.
To be grateful requires practice.
My “is what it is” is pretty fantastic. I’m mindful that my mind is full, my moments made from moments made. I got here from being here so many times before.
Alive. Awake. Asleep.
Alive. Asleep. Awake.
Alive again.
I do, so that I might do more and other things. I learn, so that I may learn better and deeper. My reality is grateful. I am grateful for reality.
John Spacey, a man surnamed to have been a star, planet or astronaut writes that there might be 9 types of reality.2 Below is a quick pass of those realities alongside added asinine interpretation. As Eeyore was an ass, so am I.3
|| – AH, REAL REALITY LIST – || – || – (codex of the reals aka the RealOdex) – ||
UNIVERSALISM – These are truths that apply universally to any situation, like if you have to fart, do not take ownership of it. Or that Purple Rain is the best rock and roll movie of all time. Your honor depends on universal truths.
RELATIVISM – This truth is subjective and dependent on the individual. For example I can tell you that feet are our greatest appendage, but you might be an elbow, hand or a head person. I would be content in an elbowless headless handless reality, just a sentient right foot hopping down a hill.
PRAGMATISM– An offshoot of universalism. Universal and subjective realities have no matter unless they are applicable and have practical purposes. So your reality might be “think with your feet”, but unless you are walking or hanging out with legendary footman Quentin Tarantino, that reality is not applicable.
MATERIALISM – Reality is purely physical. Everything is a thing, and there is some manner of harnessing that thing. In a materialist reality we might all be gods, and/or god might be a fifth dimensional talking cadillac with baby seal skin lips who comes and hums beautiful balloon songs at you. Dear god.
IDEALISM – Stresses the central role of the ideal or the spiritual in the interpretation of experience. The value of existence is inside the intangibles. Jurassic Park isn’t only great because it is, but also because of the dream of dinosaurs it gives. And also it teaches us the fear of becoming a lawyer and being eaten on a toilet in the rain.
REALISM – A reality so real it is real plus ism. It is the viewpoint that things have an existence or nature which is independent of whether anyone is thinking about or perceiving them. We all exist even if you don’t think we do. Ignore me at your peril for I am here. I find this reality unfair, as it is the only reality so real its name contains itself. Someone should start a Reallyrealrealism or an Evenrealerism.
SKEPTICISM – My grumpism, a non-real personal reality, is drawn from my skepticism, a reality defined by its inability to trust humans. Under skepticism the only thing provable is existence, in that by questioning it we prove its reality. But if I continue that skeptical logic might also questions be their own reality, and then thought after that, and then determination as the precedent for the actualization of the question? As a skeptic I eat myself and ask for seconds to prove that I am food.
VIRTUAL – Also known as imagined reality, or “I have too much money or reality so I am avoiding all real reality by strapping a computer to my brain”. This is a reality best known as your mom asking you to finish your chores and you ignoring them because you are fake stealing a car and thinking woah cool these walls look like walls.
AUGMENTED/MIXED - The mixing of the physical and virtual realities. Also known as schmuck reality, as in I am a total putz and a schmuck if I believe that reality augmented is somehow superior to the real thing. In choosing between being a schmuck and a putz I would choose putz by the way. I think it might be worth more scrabble points (*editor’s note — it is not, I am a schmuck)
“Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.”
-Albert Einstein-
Others on the internet tell me there might be even more realities (objective, subjective, intersubjective, subsubjective, unobjective, predictive, reductive, productive, conductive, un-ob-pre-sub-op-dictive).4 In fact the more I look into reality the more sub, post, pre, ultra, semi and faux realities I find. If the film “Being John Malkovich” taught me anything there is at least a me reality, a you reality, and if we hang out long enough a we reality (as well as a Malkovich?-Malkovich-Malkovich? reality).
The execution of this article is proof of written reality, and your valued readership that of a read reality.
Are there infinite realities, or definite realities? Or perhaps just individual realities, lonely self imposed contemplative realities hoping to get out there and meet other realities.
What a gift that there might be “any” reality. In an “any” version of reality I can have any reality I want, any reality I need. And perhaps that is why the thought of putting on computer goggles to have a branded reality created by the makers of suicide factories in China isn’t that enticing.5 As much as I want to know your reality, I don’t want to know your reality through the prism of lenses built to sell ads on a silicon back end.
But then there I was at home again. Watching TV, a screen made to sell ads and watch me. While watching a hobby company spend $7M dollars to share with the world a jesus themed A.I. art foot fetish commercial during TV’s favorite football show it dawned on me the futility of reality.6 If lord loving people have so much extra money they are buying $7M ads, this to me is proof that not all realities are good realities. What would Jesus do with $7M?
But who am I to judge? My reality is doofus and dweeb. My reality is huh? and oh man. My reality might not overlap with a billionaire hobby empire’s reality. And maybe it shouldn’t.
How many realities do I live in? Do I own any of them? Does that even matter? Sometime in the late 1990’s MTV, a television station at one point devoted to music, began showing “reality” shows instead of music. Music became reality. And at the same time music became my actual reality. I quit caring about TV and started caring about making noise(z). Being human felt real, and I wanted to be surrounded by people IRL instead of watching them on TRL.
Reality TV was supposed to document reality, but now reality documents itself. Everyone is a TV and a TikTok (and some of us are also DingDongs). The culture persists. The Real World sent Big Brother to test whether we would become Survivors or The Biggest Losers. Decades of Keeping “up” with Kardashians, Idolizing Americans, and Apprenticing to become Golden Bachelors and I still have no idea who is the Top Chef.
Shows showing “reality” both contain and disdain it. The common refrain of a reality TV star is “I am not here to make friends”. They are there to win. But what happens when you win reality?
This woman, named Reality Winner, found that by sharing a piece of global reality (leaking US “intelligence” secrets) that winning reality means prison. She shared the truth and had to pay for it.
Reality lies.
Reality bites.
“You can design and create, and build the most wonderful place in the world. But it takes people to make the dream a reality.”
-Walt Disney-
Time is reality. Action is reality. Existence and purpose are realities. Dreams on the other hand are real but unproveable. Yet we share them. We build our dreams so that others might live inside of them.
We all have at least one reality, our reality, that we hold within us individually. Sharing that reality is a powerful human action. To know my reality is to know me. My reality is my home. Left naked and afraid in the middle of nowhere I would still always have me, my understanding of I, and inside myself a fireplace to cook marshmallows, a bed to go to sleep in, and a hot tub where I get wet and wrinkly.
Apple made a mask called “Vision” that lets me live and relive the memories the mask makes for me.7 Walt Disney created theme parks that put workers in minimum wage monkey (mouse) suits so that “fans” might live and relive the magic of his reality (kingdom). For $1000 you can go sit inside his dead head and take a jungle cruise to space mountain after enjoying some star wars.8
I can buy AI pins and necklace wearables to follow me around and record my daily anything, replacing my thoughts with its answers.9 I can wear Ray Ban brand “Spectacles” to record everything I do, their layer of interface on top of my existence.10 What a spectacle!
What is it about reality that requires enhancement? The only reality we own is our own. Why then would we sell it to these companies? Worse, why would we pay them for the right to reshape it?
(The Vision sells for around $4-5K)
Something odd has been happening to users of these AR/VR masks. Their brains are being rewired.11 Maybe odd is the wrong adjective here. It is to be expected that when we consume too much of that which is not ourself there will be effects (…in the midst of having a back to back buffet of all you can eat lobster…I have become shellfish…). The global growth of screen time has brought with it a massive increase in mental health deterioration.12 What might happen now with 4 giant screens glued to our eyes? Why are we paying to do this to ourselves?
My reality is grateful. I am grateful for reality. I am grateful you let me share it with you. I look forward to partaking in some of yours as well. There might be no better augmentation than to hang out with a good friend and hear about their reality.
I see the potential of enhancements. What if I expand my knowledge and experience, how then might my reality look? Good health, good relationships, adventure and discovery. Our world brings with it endless enhancements, most of which require no cost, all of them real. I can use my eyes, my legs, and my mind to increase reality at any point.
I had a “virtual reality” when I was growing up. It was called a mall. Having Apple, Google, Meta or some AI start-up be the tool to make up our reality is an obfuscation of what they are truly doing. They are setting up shop in our minds. They are selling ad space to our eyes.
The Apple VisionPro is anything but visionary. It is hallucinatory. It is here to blind us of the reality we already have. We don’t need to mask our reality. We should embrace it.
You own your own home. Your reality is your realty. The reason folks try to buy and not rent homes is the appreciation of value over time (and to make use of wooded quote placards). To own land is to have future wealth. And to that end, as real estate gets harder and harder to own, we should remember our mind is our first home, and the one we don’t have to sell to anyone. How rich we might be if we instead live inside it forever?
“A dream you dream alone is only a dream. A dream you dream together is reality.”
-Yoko Ono-
FOOTENOTES
https://elitetraveler.com/property/story-behind-world-islands-dubai
https://simplicable.com/philosophy/reality
https://neuroscience.stanford.edu/news/reality-constructed-your-brain-here-s-what-means-and-why-it-matters
https://aaronlynn.com/productivity/inner-game-mindset/types-of-reality/
https://www.cnn.com/2022/11/25/tech/apple-foxconn-iphone-supply-china-covid-intl-hnk/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/11/us/he-gets-us-super-bowl-commercials-cec/index.html
https://www.tomsguide.com/computing/smart-glasses/apple-vision-pro-review
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/travel/article-13133201/disney-world-ticket-prices-expensive-vacation.html
https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/9/23953901/humane-ai-pin-launch-date-price-openai
https://www.theverge.com/2021/5/20/22445481/snap-spectacles-ar-augmented-reality-announced
https://www.businessinsider.com/apple-vision-pro-experiment-brain-virtual-reality-side-effect-2024-2
https://health.osu.edu/health/mental-health/how-screen-time-affects-your-health
…a local reality called hike presented by a product called legs…
hahahaha excellent read
Brilliant, yet again. I adore how wonderfully you weave in the ridiculous paradoxes of us giant apes.
Side note... A friend recently sent me a link to a music notation app/software. And okay, I've seen plenty of musicians in the orchestra pit using iPads to play from (with a handy foot pedal to 'turn the pages'). Handy. (or footy...)
But then, upon scrolling all the way down their webpage, I noticed that they also make a version of their software for the Apple Vision thingy. My brain went into imagining an entire symphony with those damn things on, and I couldn't handle the dystopic vision, so I closed the computer with, 'well, that's enough internet for the day'...