“Anarchy in Cyberspace”

Now, here’s a story of how and why transhumanism isn’t going to cure what ails the human condition: Second Life, which I had not even heard of until a correspondent wrote asking to interview me about it a short time ago, allows players to lead virtual lives. Say, you are a lawyer and always wanted to have a more adrenaline filled job. You could become a cop or a soldier. Or, you’re a plumber and wanted a job where your hands don’t get dirty. You could become a stock broker. As I understand it, the people playing the game have virtual lives, go through different experiences, date, marry (?), that is, have whole new second lives.

Well, trouble has come to paradise. From the story: “FRENCH elections are typically volatile affairs. But when Jean-Marie Le Pen’s National Front party (FN) set up a virtual campaign headquarters on Second Life, the internet site where over 2.9 million registered users live a double life, it caused a cyber-riot.

“The arrival of the xenophobic party in the ‘geographical’ area of Second Life known as Porcupine sparked protests by outraged virtual characters known as avatars. They protested, waving placards and banners decorated with an unflattering portrait of Mr Le Pen sporting a Hitler moustache.

“But the protests soon degenerated into riots, during which anti-Nazi protesters from a group named Second Life Left Unity engaged in running gun-battles with FN supporters and hurled exploding pigs—fortunately only of the virtual variety—at their political opponents.”

There is a lesson here, it seems to me. People are people, wherever we find them—even in virtual reality which, of course, isn’t real at all. The same will be true in Transhumanist Land. That is why it seems wiser to me to embrace our full humanity and work in the real world to overcome our baser sides than to pine for a utopian post-human future that would probably remain all too human. Our problem as a species isn’t that we don’t live long enough, it is that we don’t love fully enough.

Strengthening our more noble natures doesn’t require futuristic technology, drastic disfiguring surgeries, or electrode implants: It merely requires true introspection—the doing of which we are the only species capable—unplugging from music, videos and other entertainment to just think, ponder, contemplate, pray if that is one’s wont, and, I think, finding the joy in serving others (including animals, if that is our desire).

And with that bit of “wisdom,” I end my sermon and return to areas more within my pay grade.

Post Script: I am sure we can expect “Second Life: The Movie: any day now.