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OldWorldRevival t1_j53mdbt wrote

Reply to comment by Rezeno56 in Instead of escaping to virtual realities, what if we just made our reality as good as any virtual reality could be? by [deleted]

Heh!

But do understand that the username came from a personal vision I've had forever, dreaming about AI and an age of abundance making it so that we are able to build amazing, beautiful monolithic structures, and live in harmony with nature, but with none of the drawbacks and disease!

Lately, I've also been noticing that there's a sort of "juiciness" to fantasy, and a lot of people seek it out in literature, and I've been trying to probe more fundamentally what that's about.

I think the mere fact of us being human with ancient roots stretching back billions of years is actually amazing. William Shatner's experience of grief looking at the earth from space also hit me. I used to be a huge space nerd, but I've started to really deeply love the earth.

There is so much beauty in nature, but we've contextualized it in this scientific rationalist way, so even when we're in nature, we're seeing atoms and things.

Basically, there should be an attempt to return a sort of magic to nature - the magic we now seek out in fantasy. This is an aesthetic movement, but for me it's also a spiritual one. But, I came up with the idea as an atheist, so it's totally compatible with secularism. Heh.

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BlessedBobo t1_j559s6r wrote

1-It is important to understand that virtual reality (VR) fantasy and
escaping into a book fantasy are not the same thing. The main difference
is the level of immersion and first-person experience.

2-The drive to return to nature and the feeling of nostalgia and loss that is common in modern society is a reaction to the disillusionment caused by the modern way of life. Many people feel lost, and this feeling can be attributed to the lack of ability to navigate life in a meaningful way, and a mastery of oneself that encompasses all aspects of being human. it is a deep-seated drive for oneness, meaning, and transformation, we want to break out of our patterns and live outside the box for lack of better word

The longing to return to nature is not just about forests, but also about returning to our more harmonious human nature, toour childlike selves with all the curiosity and sense of exploration that comes with it. We strive to live in the flow state, but as we grow older and accumulate more knowledge and world experience, we often lose our ability to be one with ourselves and to enter the flow state. We enter a world of inner conflict and loss, and we enter the material world, which is often not satisfactory as we are trapped in the illusion of the world. athiests are more susceptible to this, that's why our ancestors were relatively better off, Religion and other spiritual practices exist to bring us back to our original state through powerful tools such as rituals, metaphors, and transformative experiences. These practices create systems that allow us to explore the world within the flow state. without them the world becomes rigid and materialistic,we get stuck and with every single aspect commoditized, things are much like a poorly designed video game.(look up transformative experiences if you're interested)

VR fantasy, on the other hand, could offer a world that a person could explore in perfect flow state, radically transforming themselves. A tailored world that offers tailored challenges and experiences that are then used to extract insight and wisdom. It could be thought of as a mix between a profound psychedelic experience and meditation. This potential is often overlooked. People naturally find this more intriguing than the current world illusion because it could allow us to finally be human again that is the true appeal of true VR

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OldWorldRevival t1_j55f38l wrote

Interesting take.

I've been moving in the opposite direction of VR on my personal spiritual end of things in that I'm not sure that what I am looking for would be found in VR or not.

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BlessedBobo t1_j55ip9r wrote

i feel you, the drive to be closer to the real and away from the fake is huge driver for humans
but it's been proven that we need profound experiences for that, no amount of knowledge or thought could lead you there, as you are still living within the patterns of your perception (look up the 9 Dot problem)

you need to first hand experience the reality or nature that you seek, in order to transform your current percecption of reality to be closer to that

if we look at something like Zen buddhism for example, it's pretty much constructed around showing you the limitations of thought and perception , bias etc but no person outthere can write down what Zen is, you can only "know i" , meaning that it's a kind of knowing that is not ony verbal

i see VR as being a possible tool to offer something even more profound than that, by actually showing people, nonverably experiences that could transform them

if wisdom is the ability to generate meaning and live a meaningful life, and wisdom is extracted from experience through insights, then we we can generate those experiences and guide people through them so they can aquire that wisdom
this has been the role of stories for centuries, but we will be able to do it on an even deeper level

instead of reading about the myth of sisyphus , you can be sisyphus and experience it , see what he went through, and generate those insights yourself
i hope you can see the incredible value in that

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