Note: I didn’t mean to take a break in January but the new year tugged me into a melancholy funk that made it hard to work on anything beyond The Project.1 Thank you for your patience and for not abandoning me in the unplanned weeks of writerly darkness.
The other day my husband showed me a YouTube video of a famous YouTuber wandering around NYC wearing Apple’s latest gadget: a $3,500 virtual reality headset that not only “seamlessly blends digital content” with the physical realm, but also projects an artificial display simulating clear lenses and blinking eyes.
In the video, YouTuber Casey Neistat crosses busy intersections and boards the subway while viewing a widget menu and video playing in the corner of his goggles. Halfway up the stairs from the subway exit, a text pops into Neistat’s line of vision with a digital keyboard. His cameraman catches him pausing on the dirty stairs and slowly moving his finger in the air to respond to the text without pushing a single physical button. Neistat reflects, “This feels like a little glimpse into the future of what computing could be like down the road.”
Simulated Reality
Did you know some people think we live in a simulation? I didn’t know until I happened upon a Facebook reel one random night scrolling in bed when I should have been reading. Or sleeping. I’ve never seen The Matrix in full, though I understand the premise has to do with perception and discovery. It’s fiction with a hell of a lot of metaphor. But it’s a fictional idea some people have run with, convinced the weird discrepancies in nature and caught-on-smart-phone weirdness is proof nothing is what we think it is.
Regardless of whether life is a simulation (for the record, I don’t hold this theory), the reality is that our understanding of the world IS shaped by perception. Even Neistat says to his cameraman, “It’s impossible for me to imagine that you can’t see what I can see.” Beyond our neurons and transmitters and physical bodies is a whole reality we know nothing about—all we can perceive is our own. We study it. We measure it. We pray to it. We do our best to break through this grand sheen of mystery but all the research and study, experiments and observations will only get us so far. Because we’re small. Our little worlds are mere microcosms. We exist as the barest, briefest bits of matter in a colossally enormous, unfolding system. Perception is all we have.
I think it’s interesting that the rise of the “nones” (those who claim no religious affiliation) has also produced a rise of Matrix believers. Even in religious disbelief, many still believe in some sort of otherworldly scheme or grand conductor. Maybe because technology gives us more access to other stories of strange encounters or “glitches” in the fabric of reality.
Sometimes I think the internet is killing us. Like, we accepted the red pill of instant access and information and now we’re paying the cost of it. AI stealing our jobs and creative work. Slaves to the algorithm. Endless scrolling. The highs of likes and follows and shares. We’re so dependent we don’t remember what it’s like to sit without a phone in our hands or walk down the street without someone talking or singing in our ears.
The internet tells us what to buy, who to support, what cups to stand in line for overnight, rushing past employees and pushing past other Ugg and white-socked Gen Zers. TikTokers perform “food hauls,” spending hundreds (thousands even) on cheap ingredients to create (objectively) disgusting recipes to shock their audience for views and engagement. I don’t even have TikTok (thank god) and yet I still know this. I can’t escape Stanley Cup Craze or toilet bowl sundaes. I’m as caught up in the rush as anyone, writing in my notes app while sitting on the toilet contemplating existence and the internet while my keyboard tap tap taps.
Real Life Matrix
The digital landscape has become real life. Our souls have been affected by 0s and 1s and the machine is reading us like some god existing beyond the veil of the World Wide Web. The god of the Matrix. Of simulation. The people convinced this world is a simulation—that matter is an illusion and something bigger is controlling us have missed the irony of the belief. The internet is a simulation and we’re all too caught up in its power to realize it.
I know I sound like a curmudgeon—like Frank in You’ve Got Mail, typing away on his old-fashioned typewriters, raging against commerce and capitalism. But I’m really not. Because the truth is I’m so grateful for information. For technology. For real-life friendships that spring from a DM’d “hello.” My cooking is better because of the internet. My writing is better. My likelihood of scoring a part-time job is better. Hell, my lights turn on and off via an app because of the damned internet. It’s a luxury. And it’s a travesty.
In Kazuo Ishiguro’s Klara and the Sun (a book I found fascinating and also a bit slow at times if I’m being honest), Klara is an artificial friend (aka a robot) who observes the human world beyond her artificial being. The book unfolds from the perspective of AI and this robotic protagonist’s interaction with the lonely, grievous human world.
Klara reflects, “...what was becoming clear to me was the extent to which humans, in their wish to escape loneliness, made maneuvers that were very complex and hard to fathom.”
We’re becoming lonelier in this technologically-saturated world. We want the digital evidence of a viewed landscape or devoured meal more than the memory of engaging our senses fully. We miss friendly waves and calls of “hello” or “good morning” because our heads are down and our ears are plugged. In the push to escape loneliness, we retreat further into ourselves.
The Matrix of digital followers, digital engagement, and virtual realities drowns out matter. Life becomes a pixellated illusion. The adage of “all the world’s a stage” has never been so poignant, so disturbingly accurate as toilet sundaes amass hundreds of thousands of views and influencers convince us to lose our minds over CUPS.
Perhaps life is a simulation. A simulation that grows in power as we withdraw from the wonders of the world into screensavers and 10-second reels. But even Klara, an artificial human, found wonder by escaping her own digital world and letting the sun warm her manmade body. We can remove the goggles that obscure our vision of the real world. At least our real world, offer middle fingers to the algorithm. We’re not 0s and 1s. We’re not pixellated beings. Our lives are not a series of get-ready-with-me reels. We are breathing, beating, pulsing, thinking humans with minds that can be trusted and hearts bursting with emotion.
Every time I slink into an existential funk, feel overwhelmed by the bigness of everything, the limitations of my perspective, and encroaching powerful technology, I remember I can walk outside and let the sun warm my body. I look up and feel. I am alive, I am alive, I am alive.
Recommends
This in-depth article: Elisabeth Elliot, Flawed Queen of Purity Culture and Her Disturbing Third Marriage by my friend
This new book The Matter of Little Losses (affiliate link) by
on honoring the griefs and losses we carry (big and small). “Rachel invites you to see and be seen in the midst of your sorrow, your suffering, your story.”This curated (and ridiculously affordable) trip to Europe with my friend
and a small group of women. I traveled to Europe with Amy last March and experienced wonders, sights, and flavors I’d only ever imagined. I can’t recommend enough signing up for Amy’s next curated trip to not only visit Europe but learn how to do it affordably.The Project being the book proposal I’ve been working on for a few months, editing, honing, reshaping, and rewriting, etc. Part of me worries if I write here on Substack, I’ll have less to write about in the book which is clear evidence of a bleak scarcity mindset. But it’s what I’ve been up against these past few weeks.
I know that feeling of needing to hoard ideas, but I often think of this Annie Dillard quote. Trying to trust that more will be given, even when it seems the well is dry:
“One of the few things I know about writing is this: spend it all, shoot it, play it, lose it, all, right away, every time. Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now. The impulse to save something good for a better place later is the signal to spend it now. Something more will arise for later, something better. These things fill from behind, from beneath, like well water. Similarly, the impulse to keep to yourself what you have learned is not only shameful, it is destructive. Anything you do not give freely and abundantly becomes lost to you. You open your safe and find ashes.”
Still drinking out my Nalgene over here ;)