What point is served when my ears are deafened by self-blown horns, my scruples are sullied by the narcissistic minority which feels that manufactured cool is the only meaningful end, my mind is besieged by those whose best efforts are aimed at glorifying themselves while demeaning others, my intelligence is insulted by the eighty percent who do nothing of import, and can only venerate the boastful and self-important?

It is clear that I was  born in the wrong century, or the wrong dimension, or the wrong universe. I value intelligence, quiet competence, unadvertised charity, the pragmatic, the esoteric, quality over quantity, building up over tearing down, a logical left brain, a creative right brain, and balance. I am certain that my value is minimal when compared to the universe at large. I know that I can control only myself, and that only with difficulty.

It is not that I am spectacularly unworthy. It is rather that I am conscious of my relative worth, understand upon reflection that I am but a tiny speck of protoplasm, short-lived and consigned to a backwater. I aspire to ignore the pompous and the asinine, to pity the builders of shrines to themselves, to lament the sheep who can only follow, and to deplore the arrogant who feel qualified to lead.

Knowing that I am a relatively competent human being, even though that counts for little in the grand scheme, should be its own reward. Observing the loud, the arrogant, and the self-righteous for what they are should insure my understanding of the rewards of the fool, and give some comfort to life in a minor eddy. However, among my many failings is the occasional need to cry out in the darkness, to lament the status quo, to climb back aboard the sway-backed steed and to fly the banner of reason.

Those sorties are short-lived, at best, because the pretenders are legion and I am but one, too proud to capitulate, too stupid to retire with grace. With wisdom, I would negate the advice of John Donne, pare my life to the minimum, retire to an island, and pull up the drawbridge for good and foever. When you have sought everywhere, and belong nowhere, lonely discretion may be the better part of vainglorious valor.

Although we have access to that specific kind of “more” on the internet, you lose as much in richness of experience as you gain in variety. You can “see” the Mona Lisa, or The Scream, on the Web, thousands of times. But none of those times include the experience of breathing the air, or drinking in the sights of the museum, of experiencing the entirety of the feeling of the place and activity surrounding the painting.

If you are researching something, you get words and photographs that are several steps removed from the experience surrounding your subject. You can “see” the mountain, but you cannot smell or feel the air. You can “see” the surface of the planet, but you cannot have the experience of traveling there, or feeling your weight change in a different gravity. You can “watch” a video of a play, but not feel the intimacy intended by the author, seeing and hearing the actors as they move and speak in three dimensions in space you share with them.

For better or for worse, the same differences in the parameters of the virtual and physical worlds hold true for those people with whom we interact only on line. There is some reality, just as we can see the basic shapes and some of the detail in the Mona Lisa as you view it in 2D on your monitor. And, as with the Mona Lisa, you miss the three dimensional details of how the paint was applied, and how the actual light of the physical space plays over the colors used by the master.

Similarly, we miss most of the fine structure of the people with whom we interact only in two dimensions. We miss the body language. We miss the cast of their eyes. We miss the pheromones which should be floating between us as we speak, We miss all of the little nuances that mean the difference between the truth and lies. We miss all of the little things that make the experience personal and real.

And that works two ways. We know that we are not going to have to actually physically touch a person in order to send them a virtual hug. We give many more hugs on line than in person. When the relative of an on-line friend dies and we express our sorrow, we know that we are not going to have to cook a casserole and take it over to the house. We will never have to make good on our sympathetic offers of help, because there is rarely anything that we can do at our far remove. This basic unreality applies in both directions, and colors everything we do in our on-line-only relationships. This situation is not alleviated greatly by hearing a voice, or seeing a photo or videos.

As with research, we get a lot of the bare facts but none of the experience. People are generally less inhibited on line, and will tell you more (and more intimate) things about themselves. At the same time, you learn less about them because they do not have to look you in the eye as they speak or, for that matter, avoid doing so.  Nor are you ever likely to tell their mother, or their co-workers. Of course, that does not really matter because you are not really there, either. The experiences are on a par with looking at a picture of a puppy on line and that of playing with a puppy in the park. They are nowhere near the same, on any level, emotional or logical.

None of that should detract from the pleasure derived from online experiences with people, as long as we understand the differnces. Those experience can be interesting. At the same time, whether or not they are “real” lies in the minds of the beholders. And that “reality” is changing with every sub-generation, as people become more and more used to interacting on line. They are losing, slowly but surely, what it means to interact with actual people, substituting virtual people for reality.

All of us do this to some extent, getting lost in virtual space, pretending that all those online experiences are somehow real, as if they were occurring among physical people on our living rooms. They are not, of course. That does not mean that they are bad. That simply means that we must keep the differences in mind, every time we interact on line. When we pretend that someone on line is as well known to us as our friends in 3D life, we are doing both groups a disservice.

As I said first in 1976, “Reality is that set of circumstances that we find most concrete at the moment.” On line reality has it’s own set of parameters, different than those of reality in the non-virtual world. Not better, not worse, just different. As we move between our different realities, we would do well to remember that some are more real than others, and to govern ourselves (and our minds) accordingly.

What do you think?

In speaking with a friend last night, I wondered what sort of name I should give to posts that have little to do with business, or with ?talents?, or even with sites or services. More like the post titled 101 things about me, but generally more contemplative. I, the writer, was searching for a word, but the visual artist was the person who supplied it. The word was “Musings.”

This then, is a meta-muse, or a muse about musing. A musing can be defined as a calm, lengthy, intent consideration done in a reflective manner. Musings are what allow us to model the world around us and to deal with that world according to our objectives, plans, ends, and desires. They are our thoughts about the universe, its inhabitants and processes, and our place in that mix. I plan to write any number of those. Our musings are us, are our essence, disembodied.

Why are morning and evening light the best lights for painting or taking photographs? Why are relationships so complicated? Why is mortality both certain and mystifying? How many Malaysian native warriors can dance on the head of a snare drum? Why is there really air? Why do our minds play the tricks they do in a misguided attempt to protect us, when in truth that effort usually does us ill? Why are we here at all, and and why should we not resign en masse?

You know, those sort of things.