Philosophy Can Help Us Adjust To A Virtual World Our Minds Weren’t Built For
Navigating our digital cave with Plato, Martin Heidiger, and an internet psychiatrist
Over 2,000 years ago Plato unknowingly described the perils of living in a digital world removed from reality. Although his netizens lived in a cave. In Plato’s allegory of the Cave, he describes prisoners forced to live in darkness, knowing only the false images created on a wall with puppets.
These unfortunates couldn’t understand the real world because all they see is a simulation made of shadows, designed by their captors, not actual sunlight.
Today, we’re getting our own Cave Allegory. According to Statista 4.59 billion people across the world use social media. This virtual cave is filled with avatars of our own creation, along with algorithms made by slick engineers which alter reality.
It continues at our jobs. By 2023, about a third of global employees worked virtually, this went up to nearly seventy percent for technology workers. Moreover, this cave will only get deeper soon.
Mark Zuckerberg debuted an initial version of his Metaverse on the Lex Fridman podcast, and its incredible cyber version of reality left the well- spoken podcaster awestruck. Not to mention me.
We’re entering a time when thoughts can instantly become reality and what’s real itself is blurring due to the virtual world we’re immersed in. Inevitably, it’ll have us questioning what’s real, how one should live in this hybrid world, and possibly what it means to be human.
Fortunately, some philosophers have laid a road for us to travel on. A psychiatrist from Harvard that concentrates on how technology affects the mind also has some helpful advice.
Our first step on the path is learning how tech today diverges from that of the past.
Martin Heidegger And The Standing Reserve
PhD in Systems Engineering Alejandro Terán-Somohano points out in his article Modern Technology: The World as Standing Reserve, that Martin Heidegger is an ideal guide for analyzing the effects of technology on the mind.
This German philosopher saw lots of dramatic changes throughout his life. He watched Germany transform from a monarchy to a republic, then to a Fascist dictatorship, and back to a republic.
Being born in 1889 and living until 1976, Heidegger also knew a time when horses were the primary mode of travel, and eventually witnessed humans land on the moon. Talk about dramatic technological changes. Heidegger noticed this leap, and addressed it on a philosophical level.
In his essay “The Question Concerning Technology,” he says that technology isn’t new to our species, but its very essence has changed in the present day. Previously, ancient technology mimicked nature.
For instance, nature causes things to bloom into existence. Likewise, our ancestors gathered materials from the world, combined it with thought, and brought about something new. Just like a sculpture makes a figure bloom out of stone.
There’s something inherently satisfying in this type of “bringing forth.” Yet new technology gives us what Heidegger calls a “standing reserve.” This is just excess energy which can be exploited and saved — in fact, that’s its purpose.
Standing reserve’s only point is to be transformed to something else. If it can’t serve that purpose, it’s just tossed away, since it has no inherent value other than practicality. According to Terán-Somohano, this exemplifies data perfectly (the base for information technology.) He states:
“Massive amounts of data can be stored, manipulated at will, transformed, and transferred almost instantaneously. Data can be summoned at the speed of light...When things are present before us as data, they no longer stand in our presence as objects, as things existing in the world, but as sequences of bits. They are brought before our senses not in their reality but through a screen, they appear before us in virtuality.”
As our ancestor’s tech mimicked nature, we try to make nature mimic data and its ability to have things appear with a single click. We set up mass supply chains to ship us clothing within a day, along with entertainment in an instant.
But this instant gratification mixes convenience with goodness, plus robs us of something — struggle. According to Terán-Somohano:
“Wikipedia and Google make us think we can acquire knowledge quickly and without toil, but that is not the case. ChatGPT makes us think we can write well without struggling to find the right words to express something, but that is not the case. Tinder makes us think we can find true love by swiping right, but that too is not the case.”
Inevitably this causes frustration because we lose our satisfaction from “bringing things forth,” and our virtual world can’t match reality. According to a popular psychiatrist, it’s also a recipe for anxiety and depression.
How The Virtual World Affects Our Mental Health
Dr. Alok Kanojia (Dr. K) is a Harvard trained psychiatrist and a self-proclaimed recovering gaming addict. In a recent podcast interview he explains addiction is becoming a larger problem in the world, especially with technology. Dr. K thinks it keeps us focused on the present.
He says depression is usually derived from problems with the past, while anxiety arises from worry about the future. But social media, video games, entertainment, and online porn take past and future thoughts away. They helps the user focus on the now.
Dr. K explains “evidence based mindful techniques” for dealing with depression and anxiety also help the practitioner focus on the present. But they do it in a wholistic way, while tech functions like a crutch.
This makes the user dependent on random tech stimulation, and without it, anxiety and depression flood back. These crutches also cause mental atrophy due to their easiness.
Video games offer challenges with “no consequences of real failure,” you just reset the level and start again.
Anyone can join social media platforms and post, there’s no selection criteria.
Digital streaming services never say no to you and supply the entertainment you want now.
Dr. K combats this by using a mixture of Western neurology and Eastern meditation. He believes breath work, meditation, and a bit of advice on better ways to live life can fend off the distress about the past and future that send people to technology addiction.
A firm distinction between the virtual and real world is also necessary. For this, let’s step back to Plato’s Cave.
The Trouble When The Virtual And Real World Blend
In Plato’s Cave Allegory, nameless captors distort the prisoners’ impressions of the world with shadows. Today many would say our captors are algorithms; however, this is only partially true. Our main prison wardens are ourselves.
The four billion of us on social media are only too comfortable seeing our neighbors as just avatars, and not real people. That’s why we can easily be so mean on these platforms. This blending of virtual and real world also occurs in our modern travels and expectations during the day.
Road rage.
Temper tantrums by impatient adults for any kind of lines or wait.
Demand for instant gratification in most things.
Our online experiences with the instant nature of data and Heidegger’s standing reserve makes us desire similar things in the real world. Obviously, mass supply chains can make it happen to a degree. However, life can’t match data, which leads to anger and frustration.
As Dr. K mentions, we’re also tempted to self-medicate with the instant gratification of video games, social media, and entertainment at the push of a button during times of anxiety or depression. Although these crutches only make our cave darker.
There is good news though. Philosophy can help us adjust to a virtual world our minds weren’t built for. It starts with recognizing the dangers of this new pseudo-universe and the mental pitfalls that lie in wait to snare us.
It’s also a philosophy we should all work to become more comfortable with as soon as we can. The Metaverse awaits. From what I’ve seen, it’ll put the darkest cave ever imagined by Plato or Heidegger to shame, and truly cause us to blend the virtual and real world.
-Originally posted on Medium 4/13/24