Better not Shout, Better not Pout, Better have (Virtual) Fun

Some time ago, the good folk over at Again Magazine asked me to write something on technology. In particular, it was framed within a launch of a new think tank headed up by Fr. Hans Jacobse and Fr. John Schroedel. They wrote some very nice pieces on bioethics, especially in the dystopian scariness raised by the prospects of human engineering.

My article, I think, went off topic, because I tried to shove the spade in the soil beneath the brier patch of technophilia -- a nettlesome culture that sucks on every new gizmo (with an aural fixation) that beams in from the Q Continuum. You know the programme at the Big Brother Theater: "Progress is Holiness." "Virtual is Scriptural." "No Blueness in Newness." "Device is Nice." "Perpetuity in Microcircuitry."

I'm afraid my piece was a tad disappointing. I doubted, publicly, that technological innovation was inherently neutral, and that the particular use and purpose of the technology was the only ethical meaning that could be associated with a technology. I said terrible things about Second Life and MySpace. In the aftermath, I was surprised at how protective people are about their doodads.

And I implicitly excoriated the idea of a virtual Orthodox Church, erected in Second Life or in any other virtual place.

(I cannot believe I just wrote that last sentence in the English language. The very syntax establishes more than one oxymoron -- with those last two syllables pointing in my direction: let me list them -- "virtual Orthodox," not to be confused with "virtuous"; "second life"; "virtual place"; and, embarrassingly, "implicit excoriation." That very phrase -- "virtual place" -- constitutes a linguistic Burma Shave sign denoting the absurdist, tragicomic decadence of our conversation in the public square: just as an aside nested in a bigger aside -- when Neuhaus complains that the public square is naked, I don't think he appreciates the fact that it is not only denuded of churches and synagogues, but human brains are already milling around, ickily, au naturel.)

I hearby remove the implication, and make my complaint explicit. The Orthodox Church can set up social networks on the internet, and can probably profit from doing so, although there are some dangers that ought to be considered. (On the positive side, the OrthodoXCircle is a very nice thing, with about 4000 people online.)

But there can be no Temple, no chapel, no porch, nave or sanctuary, on the blasted net. You can't put a church in hades, I think, by definition. You can print "Jesus Saves" and "Amen" in cyberspace (whatever that is or is not), but you cannot commune or converse. You can post a jpeg or tiff file, and manage a java script, but your efforts will not constitute an icon.

Simply put, where there cannot be the Eucharist, there cannot be a Church. Christians can write letters over snail mail, e-mail, fax machines, phones and social networks: but communication does not constitute fellowship or friendship. Fellowship, koinonia, sobernost, requires the exchange of molecules.

We must wage a holy materialism against this new outgassing of gnosticism -- which is the new uber-church on the Internet, if you ask me. In that cause, our skepticism about technology in general, and virtuality in particular, should increase. We should consult the likes of Wendell Berry and Philip Sherrard more, not less.

Cyberspace is a place of idiotic contradiction, and I intend the full etymology of the term. It fosters the half-baked discount day-old bakery of misspelled, fragmented, text-message-thumb-spelled devolution of the English language. Its culture, worldview and philosophy are extrapolated from an unbearable lightness of a junior hi mind. It has refused the catechism of the Word of the Trinity, and has thrown itself into the tattered-bannered Vestibule of Dante's Inferno, just bad in a pimply manner, not grown up enough to be evil, just bounced out of heaven and hell into an insubstantiality of a swarm of gnats.

Here's this from Abe Greenwald at Jewcy.com, commenting on Diane West's recent book on The Death of the Grown-Up (this book is about as scary as the third secret of Fatima). Greenwald reminds us of a recent milestone in entertainment history: in the video game boys' room chucklehouse of Spike TV, there is the contradiction of antiwar shibboleths on one side, but on the other side an Amen-choir for shoot-em-up virtual reality sorties against Quake  and Doom demons and arab-looking bad guys.

Let's see if I can figure this out: the more we train ourselves (and stultify our sensibilities and ratchet our passion-stimuli even higher) in the virtual hell of phosphorescence, the less likely we are to wage war?

Really?

When a friend of mine would return to camp from his patrol in Fallujah, he and his crew would usually sit down, network their laptops, and go back out on patrol, this time in the cyber den of Halo. "We got really good," he told me.

There's the death of English for you: "Really good." Eternal memory.

Comments

[Joseph]

In Second Life now. Standing in a virtual Orthodox cathedral. Someone is in fact making Hagia Sophia as I type.

[Fr. Jonathan]

What's it "like"? Remember, you are only "in" Second Life. The virtual world is a world of inverse commas, an universe of irony. Enjoy "yourself," for that's all there is.

[Fr. Jonathan]

Out of curiosity, Joseph, what poor saint has patronage of the virtual cathedral? Does he know?

[Joseph]

There are real life priests, friars, deacons, etc. in there... Orthodox and Catholic. I just watched a rosary gathering with a real voice leading it. Quite interesting.

[Ben]

I wonder if the time signatures on Joseph's posts indicate two hours of "virtual life." Is this what St. Paul meant when he spoke of "redeeming the time" in Eph. 5:16? I once had a friend who lost himself in the pseudo-community of cyberspace. He's 40 years old and lives with his mother in her mobile home, and works just enough to pay for his ultraslick cybergear. Is this where we're going with MySpace and Second Life -- a culture of disassociated drones? I once thought of hell as an endless casino filled by old ladies mindlessly pulling the lever on the slot machine. Looks like I'm going to have to update it. That is the future I dread.

[Fr. Jonathan]

Joseph, thank you kindly for your scouting report. I hope your journey back went okay (i.e., no layovers in the servers).

[Steven Paul]

I agree, Father. "Second Life" is an illusion, role playing and tantamount to a confession of what we wish we were and a projection of how we wish people to perceive us, in other words our "plastic faces" once removed and even more deviously altered for the sake of others who are similarly altered. It is digital SCA/Ren fest stuff. We cannot have a "Second Life" Orthodox Church simply for the reasons you stated: it is Eucharistic thus by definition, incarnational, not digital. One may see it as evangelism and introductory to the reality, in a sense an "icon" of the true Church, but the very nature of the medium caters to the fallen tendency to illusion and false pretenses. There was an old New Yorker cartoon of two dogs, one at a computer speaking to another sitting on the floor by his chair saying, "No one is a dog on the internet." Let us attend.