Prologue
My other post about virtuality was read and I got some suggestions from some of the people I care about as to maybe I want to write a follow up on that post; between you and me, I think they liked it. So here we go…
Plot one: Hunger
Have you heard of Suzanne Collins? Yes? That’s really good. No? OK, me neither, at least before I started this post. So, you can probably say that I am definitely not a big fan of The Hunger Games despite its IMDb score of 7.2/10 or Rotten Tomato score of 84% which is pretty high really. If you aren’t either but you are a fan of some of its casts maybe Jennifer Lawrence or else then you should probably watch it. But wait, don’t leave the post here to go and watch the movie, not yet, because this is just beyond the point. My point is about “hunger” and as much as I like “games”, I should retire it at least for now; It is about “hunger” as a sense whether it is for food (which is the first thing which comes to mind) or anything else like power, etc. So, remember “sense” for now.
Plot Two: Fear
How about fear? Yes, you guessed it right… another “sense”. I searched “fear” and probably because of my search history Mr (Ms) Google suggested “Fear and Hunger” then “Fear the Walking Dead” (subtitle: Drama Series) which I didn’t know about; I probably add to my watchlist and should definitely not be mistaken with my favourite series “The Walking Dead” which I cannot brag about enough! OK, if you are a computer geek, based on this information about my search history by now, you should be able to guess (with 95% accuracy) where on the planet earth I am based, what I ate last night for dinner, what my hobbies are (I can help with this, the list is short! That should help, doesn’t it?), and what the hell I am doing right now in the early hours of 24 March 2021 (well for this one you don’t really need much of computer geek-ness, do you? It is obvious what I am doing… at least I think it is…). I am just joking and if you are a computer geek and you could not have an educated guess about some of the above questions, don’t get disappointed at yourself and don’t resign from your comp-geek-ness, it is good to be one! (Look up Harold Finch in Person of Interest! Oh, C’mon man! Again?). anyways, my point: “Fear” as yet another sense but also…
Plot Three: Melancholy
OK I intentionally gave my previous plot a mild and slight twist to make my point here about Melancholy: It probably means sadness to start with but I “sense” some “sense” of wandering around (not only physical but also metaphysical territories) in it, sense of bewilderedness and when I searched what I found was:
Melancholy is beyond sad: as a noun or an adjective, it’s a word for the gloomiest of spirits. Being melancholy means that you’re overcome in sorrow, wrapped up in sorrowful thoughts. The word started off as a noun for deep sadness, from a rather disgusting source.
Well, I still think it is less dark and more unknown than that. Again, beyond the point. My point is this is yet another sense although we might or might not quite agree on what it exactly means but we agree – despite all disagreements we may have on this – that this is a “sense”.
Plot Four: Time
All I would write here is “the sense of Time” and I would not go any further not because I cannot or I would not like to but because if I do, I don’t know when, where and how to stop! So just for the record “the sense of Time”!
Plot Five: Place/Space
For the very same reason, I just stop at “sense of Place/Space” (and yes the two are totally and completely different not only in their colloquial “sense” but also in their academic and/or scientific “sense”.
NB (to myself): Good topic to come back to in future blogs (email requests accepted! 😊)
Main Plot: 5 or 32? No! 33
Sight, Sound, Smell, Taste, and Touch, what does these bring to your mind? Five (main) senses through which we get sensory information from the world around us; correct, but if we want to be more precise that’s mostly the physical world we are talking about here and when it comes to (sensory) information about non-physical world, the best we have done so far has been an unknown, vague, unidentified “Sixth Sense” we assign anything else, which we are not able to make any other “sense” of, to it!
In some of my melancholical (this is not even a word, I just made it up, and don’t worry, I am perfectly fine, no need to refer me to a psychologist or a psychotherapist whichever is least scary!) moments in lockdown and pretty recently I was reading something which said that the “scientists”, whatever it means, have suggested that we do not have 5 sense but 32 (now)! Which pretty much looks like bleeding the obvious but more to the point that’s the reasons for my points in this blog so far.
Now for all my sins, I wish to add the 33rd sense as “the sense of Virtureality”, don’t you agree? Afterall 32 or 33 doesn’t make a big difference, right? Sorry, but wrong I’m afraid, it does make a big difference. But why? OK here is why… up until the point that Virtureality resembles many if not all other 27 newly announced senses in their dealing with non-physical (sensory) information like hunger, fear, sickness, happiness, melancholy – no matter how known or unknown, known unknown, unknown known or unknown unknown they are to one or all of us – there is nothing special about “the sense of Virtureality”. But the differentiation starts where it does not retire itself fully and utterly from the physical world (I did not use actual world intentionally in here). And that brings us not only to some points I made in my previous post on Virtureality but also to the fact that this 33rd sense is becoming more and more important than ever before not just from a pragmatic, practical, need, necessity or requirement point of view but also from a pure physics, thinking and philosophy of science point of view. And this is most certainly because Virtureality thrives on – most of the times intentionally but sometimes also unintentionally and more worryingly sometimes cunningly and deviously – blurring the boundaries between physical and non-physical worlds (and I can comfortably use actual and virtual instead of physical and non-physical in here). Most importantly it is when in doing so the sense of Virtureality disguises itself in or exploits the sense of time and the senses of place/space! Yet another evidence how creepy Virtureality is in crawling out of its own territory and in taking over those of others!
On that note I think I’m going to rest my case at least for now till another time when I may come back to it again but before that I’d like to finish with:
Epilogue:
As creepy as it may look like, while we are on “senses”, for the record I’d like to write a sentence or two about the “sense” of life and more importantly the “sense” of death! Imagine how could we (in theory) mix and match the sense of Virtureality with the sense of death! Mind-provoking it is, isn’t it? Another interesting topic we may come back to later? What do you think? Let us know.
MAVRiC 