Our Own Metaverse
I’ve been seeing the memes about the Metaverse lately. You too?
So, let’s see if I have this right. We’re going to have expensive electronic suits that mimic heat and cold because, what? We can’t go outside and experience that for ourselves?
We’re going to have metaverse WalMart shopping experiences because our lives are so empty that we need that kind of extra stimulation to buy toilet paper online?
Isn’t this just another way to avoid asking ourselves how we got so trapped in the Matrix hamster wheel that our best choice for escape is surrounding ourselves with machinery to help us pretend we’re not really here?
I get the appeal of being able to create fantasy worlds that we can viscerally experience, but did you know that you can do that without any expensive machinery, with your own imagination? If you don’t believe you can do that, then I’m going to let you in on a little secret — you have a lot more imagination than anybody has led you to believe. It’s a muscle, and quite a powerful one — use it, and see just how far you can go with it.
I do get the appeal of creating 3D interactive fantasy worlds. Put me on the Avatar planet and I’ll just stay there and never come out of the box.
Which is a problem. Because we are perfectly capable of creating whatever we can imagine, right here on this planet. It’s not passive though. It takes you using your own imagination rather than experiencing someone else’s, and then you working to manifest that vision. Of course, we’ve been well trained to expect passive entertainment experiences via movies, outrageous commentators telling us what to feel and think, etc.
As a whole systems designer, I get to create entire worlds for people regularly. The thing is, I never thought of myself as a designer before I did a Permaculture Design Course. I didn’t fully understand what a designer was. What I realized in the process of my training is that we are all designers. We design our lives with every decision we make. A designer is one who makes decisions based on information and creative imagination. We can design ourselves to be passive intake devices, or we can test the limits of our capabilities and consciously design some pretty bitching real life metaverses of our own.
I don’t just design for other people, I train people to do this too, including design clients. Because a truly regenerative, holistic design requires ongoing creation by those participating in it. We are all creating our realities, all the time. We can do it consciously, using our full imaginative abilities, or unconsciously. And that is what permaculture design is — holistic, conscious, life design. We can design our universe, a much better one than the one we live in now.
And everybody can do it. Virtually. Everybody. Some people may be more out of practice than others. Maybe they’ve been told their whole lives they can’t do it. But all of you can create universes in your minds and make them real. It is one of the abilities we all have.
I see the pros and cons of the metaverse (everything has both), but am feeling concern about the cons, especially when we all know that a lot of the commercial content is going to be pure crap, distraction, porn, exploitation, cheap substitute experiences, violence, and weapons grade emotional manipulation. And why is that? Because we’ve been consuming that kind of stuff for a while now instead of creating a better version in our own minds. Our “create a better version” muscle is flaccid, as a culture.
I will say that the metaverse I’ve seen that isn’t corporatized but is just us getting together and being creative has some fabulously artistic, wonderful stuff going on in it. People are taking the lid off of their imagination, for sure! That can help inspire us to do wonderful things in real life. I believe the potential is sky high, just as it is in real life.
It’s just that we need to do so much right now to fix the mess we’ve made of our home. And it’s good to be conscious that the metaverse (like me checking out and just living in the Avatar universe) can so easily become an addiction and a way to avoid that.
The cool thing is, using our imaginations — really developing our own imagination muscles as designers and creators, and making our visions manifest in real life is a real high! It’s super fun and joyful and a rush. Everything the metaverse is supposed to be is right in front of us already offering its magic. And we get to co-create that magic every day, once we realize that it’s already there, within us.
So try this exercise:
Every day, write or draw or picture in your mind something you’d love to experience. A way you’d love the world to be. Add details to it. Add a story to it if you want to. Populate it with people you want to experience it with.
Doesn’t matter what other thoughts pop up. Just go back to your vision. Or end off and do it again tomorrow.
You can also take one act that you feel will move you closer to having that experience in real life, if you want. But for now, the important thing is to just visualize it. Exercise your imagination muscle.
And then share your vision, if you want, with others. It’s a game. No need to get perfect agreement about all aspects of your vision. Keep it light and playful. It doesn’t even matter what you envision, or if you change the vision. You’re exercising the muscle. The point is, practice this like you’d practice anything you want to get good at, or just like doing. This is powerful stuff if you do it long enough.
Let’s create our own metaverse, together, in real life, shall we?
It’s pretty thrilling stuff.
More, soon.
https://news.yahoo.com/i-pod-inventor-tony-fadell-on-metaverse-144442902.html
