54. Bodies And Spaces

A human being is a body — a physical entity that takes up space in the world. This seemingly obvious fact is often obscured by the nature of contemporary experience. Physical bodies do not seem relevant in the realm of the internet. Here, we do not care about our own bodies, let alone the bodies of other people.

Inside the virtuality of online spaces, we exist as disembodied entities. We can forget about our bodies entirely and interact with others in ways that exceed our ordinary abilities. We can engage in situations where we would otherwise face harm. We can enter into contexts we would not be able to enter as embodied beings. Disconnected from physical existence, we engage with each other in these spaces as though we really are disembodied.

By extending the range of our experience, the freedom of virtuality makes us more powerful. But power is also dangerous. It can cause us to overstep our responsibilities and behave in ways that we wouldn’t were we in the same room with others. When spread widely across millions of people in an online space, this overstepping can be catastrophic.

Without the presence of our bodies and the bodies of others, we do not know how to recognize each other as fellow human beings. The result is that we fail to treat others as real people capable of experiencing pain and suffering. We instead behave like gods and treat others like objects.

When someone treats us like an object, our immediate reaction is to do the very same thing to them. Reciprocity is, after all, our most basic social instinct. The patience to inhibit this instinct and locate a more just response is not available when we cannot see another person as a person. The inevitable outcome is an environment that actively repels empathy and encourages a spiral downward into an abyss of hostility and harm.