Modern Society: Living Vicariously
We hear of great adventures, great struggles, and great stories from history. We see images, and hear stories about exotic and historical places to visit. We have had this capacity and this spreading of stories throughout recorded history, and likely since humans first developed communication. Our ability to convey this information with an increasing level of detail over time.
Our society began to cross a line some time ago. It didn't just begin with video games, it actually began before that.
Early stories of adventures written in book form would ignite the minds of the readers and they would live vicariously through the adventurers in the story. The strongest of writers have a gift of inspiring immersion where people can lose themselves in books. The powerful imagination of the mind fills in the details.
However, when all we had was words that often would ignite something else. That would ignite a strong desire to go see these things for themselves. Reading of the Great Pyramids and some adventure story might one day inspire someone to travel to Egypt to see for themselves.
Seeing things in person always offers some details, senses, and experiences that cannot be found in a book. There is also a side effect that any future stories read that involve places a person has actually been to will have more accurate imagery and memories with which the imagination can shape the pieces that fill the nooks and crannies of the story.
Another early form of communicating things has always been in the form of art. This can be in the form sculptures, drawings, paintings, engravings, and more.
People could see an artists rendition of the great pyramids before they actually ever saw them in person.
People would see stories accompanied by imagery and they would live vicariously through the actors within that story. Yet the details were still low enough that there could still be a strong desire to see these things in person.
Then we had photography and the actual images showed the reality that artistic renditions may or may not have covered. It also allowed for mass capturing of images, and it no longer required extremely skilled artists to recreate images to share what something looked like. The phrase "A picture is worth a thousand words" began to become popular.
The images depending upon their quality may still leave people wanting to see these wonders. Yet, it is also possible that some people were satisfied with the images and words. They could begin to be vicarious adventurers through the works of other people.
Then a wondrous thing was invented. The motion picture. We could capture moving pictures. The early versions lacked sound and color, but these would be short lived deficits.
In time short of a true 3D vision and Sound experience people could see any place that people filmed. We also began to see completely fantastic and imaginary ideas brought to life.
The number of people living vicariously through these movies combined with all others and vicarious adventure began to accelerate. Many people may never go to any of these places, yet they will have seen and heard things with relation to them through their movies without ever experiencing such things themselves.
This could include concerts, museums, great wonders, as well as completely fabricated and imaginary experiences.
Some of them would be inspired still to go to these places. Others would be inspired to create these vicarious experiences for others. Some would not be inspired to go to these places at all realizing it was more effort or expense than they wanted to put forth to go to these places, and this was an easier decision than ever before simply due to having access to a growing amount of vicarious media to partially satiate any such desires.
Throughout this process at every stage there have been people calling out the "evil" of some new discovery, whether it is photos stealing people's souls, or any other warning that people might wish to speak.
Then we created video games and the early games were so primitive in imagery that much like the initial book required the human imagination to fill in the details of the nooks and crannies so did these games.
The process of upgrading this detail level accelerated rapidly with increasing detail levels, and number of colors. Eventually at the two dimensional level the detail level would begin to match any technology present in movies.
Yet movies were not idle during this process either. The movies used this emerging technology to create anything that can be imagined, even 3D models that look exactly like the actor in question for certain scenes, to voice synthesis which makes it possible to make any phrase spoken seem like a certain person said it when they actually didn't. The high quality 3D sound first occurred in movie theaters and was a huge draw. They also increasingly offered better and better 3D experiences, so it began to become more and more like you were there.
One thing that was certain by this point is that seeing and hearing are no longer believing when it comes to videos, audio recordings, etc. It is not a reach to make a video or audio recording look and sound like anything people want it to sound like. Unless you see it with your own naked eyes, and hear it with your own naked ears then believing becomes a dangerous thing.
Meanwhile the 3D sound and 3D videos make it into the house not long after that.
Then they all converge as Virtual Reality becomes more affordable than ever. Concepts such as visiting the Taj Mahal from the comfort of your house begin to become a reality.
You may be missing the smells, and sensations. Yet people also realize they are sacrificing those experiences while avoiding the cost, time, and negative events they have to deal with to go there in person.
Living vicariously through technology is becoming an increasingly preferred method to experience anything. It is just usually more convenient.
People are living vicariously through media more than they ever have in history.
This even applies to concerts. With a nice 3D sound system and a VR rig at home you can experience the thuds of the drums against the chest, the rumbling of the floor, and the sounds as though you were there. Yet, you need not stand in line, and jostle people for your seat. You need not walk through clouds of cigarette or marijuana smoke. You don't have to worry about being in the wrong place at the wrong time with regards to drunk people, or other things.
Vicariously experiencing these things begins to become more and more appealing.
Implications
There is a reason this article was written. The above part of the article should be considered a very long intro, or build up. In fact, that build up is likely to be longer than the remainder.
The world has an increasing number of people that will choose the EASY path anytime it is presented to them. Is it easier to go along with the crowd, or to go your own way if you find their direction questionable. Many people will choose to go with the crowd simply to avoid risk.
This is becoming a kneejerk reaction. Anytime something negative occurs the go to move of the masses seems to be to go for the simple and easy idea that they come up with. Then as a crowd they will push that simple and easy idea. Often the idea is actually a very bad one, yet realizing that would require putting forth effort and thinking over long term consequences and considering different alternatives. Doing that though is not the easy path. They have other things they wish to be doing instead. In reality, they look for the easy path so they can go back to living vicariously.
These days having adventures can occur every day, and every night without leaving your house. These vicarious experiences are becoming more and more detailed and they are present in such great numbers now, that truly the most difficult choice many modern people have to make is WHICH of the many choices for vicarious experience that they will embrace. This still can be in the form of videos, books, and games.
These vicarious options themselves are not the evil thing. As with many things that get vilified that do not actually think themselves, it is people and their choices that are ultimately the culprit.
Banning anything does not work. Yet there is hope that we could make people aware of what is going on and people will want to do other things and alter their lifestyle.
The answer is not to remove videos, games, music, books, etc. These things offer a lot of positives, such as rapid learning opportunities, records of events, and truly mind expanding experiences. Our own biases against media (pick your villain) ultimately don't matter. All of these things have positives. They also have negatives.
Ultimately the problems lie in the choices of people. The bulk of the bad choices people make with regard to these things are not due to the media/game itself. They are due to how poorly the education system has done to teach them to think, critically think, reason, or whatever other label one may choose to use. There is fairly strong evidence that a lot of this is intentional. It is written into the early writings of the creators of the Prussian Education System which is where the term School comes from. This particular system has been found to make people better at repeating that which you want them to believe, and not questioning the government or other perceived authority figures.
This also makes people more susceptible to vicarious media being used to program opinion, minds, and beliefs. This is sometimes called propaganda. Other times it might be called brainwashing.
The flaw with media sources whether video, gaming, or literature is not due to the media itself. It as with most of our problems are due to the education system, and the apparent agenda behind that system.
If people are going to make good or wise choices then they really need to know how to reason, and think critically. These skills are increasingly removed from education. Instead there is a bigger and bigger push to go with feelings, and so much time spent talking about being offended, and not how to offend someone. New insidious terms such as micro-aggressions are conceived of and pushed with fervor. With these concepts the person can focus all of their efforts into keeping a look out for things they SHOULD be offended by. That increasingly becomes one of the most important things to them. The only actions that are really their own are the times they can challenge someone for doing something they perceive as offensive. The rest of the time they just live vicariously. So if they want to feel like they accomplished anything they can virtue signal that they took on a troll.
Though the majority of the time the person wasn't a troll at all. Increasingly people refer to someone trolling as someone saying things they disagree with. That isn't trolling at all. They may also refer to someone saying something shocking to make someone stop and think as trolling. That is not trolling at all. The intentions of a true troll early in that terms existence was to intentionally make someone angry or reactive. The troll didn't care about making someone think, they also did not say things just because they disagreed. They would say whatever they could think of to intentionally get a rise out of people. Trolling as such had no actual goal other than to give the person enjoyment for feeling like they were in control of someone elses emotions.
In a sense those fixated on looking for micro-aggressions to challenge people about are a lot like trolls.
They live in a world in their mind where they only view themselves as a victim. They are looking for any opportunity they can potentially notice to point out how they are being victimized. Terminology such as micro-aggressions gives them a near infinite palette from which to pull and point out how they are being attacked.
They have even pushed this so far as to equate being offended verbally as being the same as a physical attack.
Why?
They live vicariously. They only know the easy path.
Living vicariously may remove all the uncomfortable and challenging parts of actually traveling to places and doing the things in person. Yet is also removes the opportunity to learn from those situations.
They view verbal or micro-aggressions as the same as a physical attack simply to their life long ability to avoid truly dangerous situations, or experience physical altercations. They have no frame of reference.
Yet they still have the drive to "do something in their lives". In a world where you live vicariously, and do not like to face challenge and difficult thoughts this becomes increasingly difficult for such people to succeed.
Yet challenging a troll is something they can do. Virtue signalling about it, is something they can do.
Protesting and screaming at the sky. They can do that too.
Yet while stuck in the trap of vicariously experiencing life they have no clue how truly shallow those experiences actually are. They do not realize those actions are petty and ultimately insignificant.
They may be remembered for some photo snapped showing them screaming at the sky with other people. That is a great life achievement.
I develop video games. I love them. I am not blaming video games or other media for anything. I blame the education system and parenting. Both of those things can bring any form of media into the world of reality. Children can and should be taught how to differentiate between fantasy and reality. They also should be challenged early in life and showed the value that can come from choosing the more difficult path. The easy paths are often the wrong one, and even if they work, they often are not the best path.
NOTE: My internet upload speed is horrible at the moment and a tech is due to come out tomorrow. I discovered this as I was going to try to add images to this. I will link to some existing images out on the internet and try to replace these later. If you want to see credit for the images just view the HTML and see where the link points.
More and more, I tend to go opposite to living vicariously because it is not a true life. I don't think it's an accident that a group of fish is also called a school as they all group up and swim together moving in the same direction.
Correct. This is one of the things I was hoping some people would consider.
Curated for #informationwar (by @openparadigm)
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Relevance: Facing Reality
Our Purpose
Wow, I'm a big fan of this... I will recheck tomorrow
just loved reading it took me 5 minutes plus to read it . at minimum you might have took more than an hour to write it.
Colossal story.But I didn't get boring.
I enjoyed the way you lead through the living vicarious enablement journey through various technology developments. As I read through the post it raised a variety of thoughts I have been concerned with as I observe our kids, the media coverage (or lack thereof) of any substantive content, and even my own propensity to experience via shows, games, etc.
It's a bit hard to add to what you have captured, but I will say you are not alone in these observations. We should all enjoy these vicarious enabling technologies, yet remain diligent, aware, and mindful to live in the 'real' world as well. Thanks for the reminder and reflective view, a reminder to unplug from time to time, take a walk, get some fresh air, explore the places and people that surround us, for that is the way to become self actualized. It opens us up to experience the unexpected, unscripted opportunities life has to offer.
That's really true and now we are slowly searching for comforts which we really don't need and nowadays we can see that world actions are slowly becoming weird and in my opinion evolution is really important but evolution which forcing to leave the humanity is not good and currently we are moving out of the phase of humanity and moving towards the greediness and in my opinion we are controlled by some greedy people in this world which inturn leads to the decisions which is not in people's interests. So let's understand the real world and don't lose the ancient human being which is in you because we all belongs to one tribe and that is Humanity. Thanks for sharing and wishing you an great day. Stay blessed. 🙂
A lot of the people that point out greed often misidentify it too. Some of the greediest people out there are the ones talking about it. Just like some of the most racist people out there are the ones constantly pointing it out.
We simply need to be able to think for ourselves, and be not so quick to choose the easy path.
Really true. Easy path will give fake results which will not for long term.
What a lovely quote you have used from George MacDonald! Your post has been resteemed by @globalnfo
This great gaming, i appreciate your post. keep it up