Could it be Reality?

What defines reality? As I read Snow Crash, I find that its hard to know what reality really is. If you are interacting with people isn't that in itself part of reality. What does the word reality mean? Is it life as we know it on Earth on solid ground, or does it have to do with the social morals and interactions we create. The Metoverse seems to be perfectly real. People interact, if something is drunk your mind simulates drinking or if information is handed over it changes you in some way. The mind controls how we react to life. If today you were told that the entire life you have created was just a stimulation and you were actually someone else outside of a computer...what would you do? Probably go into shock, but the point is, this may not be reality. Who has the right to say it is or it isn't? I feel like much of Snow Crash brings up points about how we see life, how we interpret it and what we see as real. The Metoverse isn't just a fun place to go, there are businesses and people being hunted down or thrown out of a club. Its just like real life. It's just like getting in your car and going into a city. So what makes it any different. Sadly I can't see how it's different. The mind is so much more powerful then we give it credit for because our other senses seem to have their own control over how we react to things, but they are controlled by our brains. All our senses don't have minds of their own, cells are connected to other cells that are connected to nerve cells that are all transmitted back to the brain. If they brain wants you to believe something or to see something or to feel something it lets it happen. We are a computer to say the least, we just don't have a grasp of everything that's going on inside of it. To me reality is what we make it. It may be here on solid ground, me sitting on my bed writing this small blog about what's real, or it could be an avatar created by myself inside of another computer controlled by my own brain. Reality is just a word, but we give it so much credit, we give it so much power that it doesn't necessarily deserve. Mostly because topics like this, scare us. Because in the end we realize how little control we have.

Aggression, Hatred, and Murder

Humans seem to live off of the tension in the world that we live in. I would say that it is almost sick to think about, and indeed it is, but think about it, everywhere you go there is sadness, fear, and hated. We feed off of it in a way because if we see that the world is falling apart it makes our own lives seem so much more worth while. We aren't as bad off as the next guy in line, so that must say something good about our own lives...right? That is the hope anyway. When we read the essay on Jack the Ripper, I was astounded by the fact that people do look for the worst parts of other people to make their lives seem much more genuine then the next. It's in the news, it's on the television, it's in the newspaper, and it comes out of the mouths of people walking along down the streets. You don't hear nearly as much good news in one day as the bad you hear. Good doesn't surprise us or make us have much emotion, it's boring. Isn't it horrible to think if something good happens in the news you just sort of take it face value and get over it quickly, but when something tragic happens you can watch it over and over on television or hear about it on the news for weeks or months and still feel "entertained". What would happen if the world flip flopped, would we be able to get used to the fact that maybe the world would be a much better place if there were good things being spread instead of bad ones? Or would the world become a strange pleasantville where people just didn't talk about the bad? The good thing about the society we live in is that at least we see the bad as something that needs to be worked on. I mean grant it we don't always work on change well, but we know that something has to happen to make things better. If we just ignored the bad, how much worse off would we be? The thing about the good times is that you share those moments with the people that you care for and when something in the news occurs that is good it passes by which in the end may be alright. Think about it, we are around to try and protect the world we live on and humans are made to fail at it, but we always get back on our feet. If we need to go back and try to figure out who Jack the Ripper was, even if it's a lost cause, who cares. We do our best. We try to see the light at times and sometimes that's all it takes.

Tiny Boxes

Society has created small boxes to organize all the different groups of people of the world. These groups are defined by the independence one has, the smarts one has shown, and the status one has claimed. These boxes have broken up society as well. Into different levels of independence each group has within the society. This makes a very strict restraint on everything that happens within it. Each society is really defined by two different types of break downs: Disciplined and Controlled. Isn't sad to think that we have created boxes in the societies we live in, but give them rules as well just as we say we live in a free nation you then realize that its not even true, because the society you live in is just controlled by more rules created by the last to live there. The rules you create for yourself don't become instated until you leave. The disciplined although it is less dependent it is still enforced. Each part of you life you become controlled by another group of people. A "family" is always around making sure you do what you are supposed to and nothing more. It's sad that we can't break way from that to change our society into a place where Disciplined and Controlled don't exist and each person can decided how they will live their lives. That can't happen only because each group our at a different level. You just have to keep climbing on top of the ones that came before you to try to reach that point. You won't get to see the changes you make in a society, but you have hopes that the ones to come after will realize what you did while you were around and thank you for what you have done. That's what we do to stay alive and believe that its all worth it in the end.

Halloween turns to Christmas