every single blog entry or journal entry, or self-reflective piece of writing falls into what i'd like to characterize as the self-distancing loop. that's the same problem as the one psychologists encounter when testing emotion: say you wanted to test how emotionally affecting some stimulus was (cute bunny vs giant japanese water salamander). you have only a few ways to go about testing this, one of which involves directly asking the subject what emotion they experienced upon perceiving the stimulus. however, this is a subject-dependent test and comes from within the experiencer. in some ways it's very accurate since there's no degree of separation between experience and report, but on the exact flip side of that comes the fact that the experiencer can't see any implicit or out-of-consciousness information about their own experience. they can't even think of it. or maybe they can, because they're meta-cognitively active. but even then the act of bringing a thought into conscious awareness changes it. i'm thinking along the lines of someone who doesn't realize they straighten up whenever they see a blue piece of chalk because that stimulus associates itself with a positive emotion, but if they were told they did so, the action might become pointed, aware, and lose the truthful original connection.
i was thinking about truth. it had to do specifically with what if one day, after we'd cut down all our forests except for the marketably useful ones, and biodiversity on earth plummeted, we created a virtual experience of entering a forest so strong that it was exactly the same as visiting a forest today. setting aside the ecological and environmental consequences of no forests or biodiversity (ha, that's a big setting aside. let's forget about all biological reality for a moment), speaking simply in social terms, what differentiates the experience of a perfectly constructed and virtual forest from going to a real one? i'm talking there's sunlight dappling the trunks, decomposing leaves from last fall carpeting the ground, a squirrel running up some tree thinking it's so clever at avoiding you on the other side of the trunk, there's a small breeze that smells like moss and a bug just bit you. you experience it all as if it were true (speaking of which--when you mentally picture something, the exactly same neuron populations fire as if you were seeing them. exactly the same).
anyway, so you have your good-as-real virtual experience. you are gaining the same refreshment of the soul, appreciation, whatever it is that you get from the wild. yet, at least for me there'd be a nagging feeling of "this isn't true." It wouldn't be truly a squirrel scampering for dear life, it'd be a code in a program, and that knowledge would taint the experience. why though? that's what i wonder. why do we value truth? it may seem silly to ask, because telling the truth is one of the earliest and widespread moral lessons, and thus it has probably been engrained very effectively into our collective societal mind--but why? disregarding the ethics of truth when interacting with people, what is the motivation behind authenticity? that may be a better way of saying what i'm trying to say. oh, and i wanted to also say that these well-obviously, engrained, widespread feelings or thoughts are oftentimes the ones that should be questioned the most, if solely because it hasn't been done very much.just to escape the danger of passively accepting.
i'm by no means arguing for a virtual world. my god i already vacillate between appreciation for technology and utter disgust/loathing of it. i'm just questioning something that popped into my brain.
periodically, i try to go on these facebook fasts. i was a lot better about not using facebook the beginning of this year...then i got sucked back in. and i know facebook has a lot of good qualities but personally, my rate-meter for facebook gets stuck over on the extreme dislike side most of the time. for sheer sadistic pleasure i will quickly say why i hate facebook. at least for me. i feel like this entry, like most of my blog entries, needs disclaimers halfway through every paragraph. yeah, not even one disclaimer. multiple.
also, "people" really means "me." your secret guide to interpreting this paragraph.
i hate facebook because it makes people focus on petty things between other people (that one was not a "me"). who gives a flying fuck about annie mcgenericfriend's location or mood as interpreted by ambiguous song lyric? sadly, everyone, that's who. it's voyeuristic and that's why facebook is a thrill. why do we need to know that? WHY?! believe me, i do my share of the facebookstalk (TM) but i'd like to think it's still less than most--but i'm guilty nonetheless. getting off my high horse here. it's just gonna graze on the grass of my discontent while i shout these things off this metaphorical soapbox. my roommate last year used to check facebook within probably twenty minutes of getting up. i could not believe that it was real. but it's surprisingly easy to fall into: the habit of getting up and technologically connecting yourself right away. more about that some other time. technology rant. but back to facebook. facebook is creepy of itself, and thinks it has a right to recommend who i should talk to/interact with ("reconnect with girl-from-kindergarten-who-bit-you-for-a-scooter!"). or, "your friends have found other friends through Friends Connect, our technology that promises to make your life sparkly with magical unicorn happiness just like your other more evolved and Connected friends!). that annoys me so much, and makes me so disgusted. especially that last one, since it's predicated on the cleverly subtle thought of more (facebook) friends = better. oh, and i hate how facebook pops up everywhere on other random websites, next to the tweet button or whatever.
ah, there's more reasons why facebook pisses me off and fascinates me. but it's almost 3. whyyyyyy? why do i do this to myself?? i've been so ridculously tired all day that my hands were shaking.
http://gawker.com/#!5787290/female-you-probably-hate-your-facebook-friends
someday i'll make a less bitter post about technology, because i was thinking about that too today.
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