285. Real And Virtual

We call the world where our bodies exist the “real” world. This is the world of structure and society that has mostly been given to us, and which we have learned to understand in order to live productively. It is also the world where we have obligations and roles to fulfill. Often we focus so intently on this world that we cannot even begin to imagine any alternative to it.

But sometimes we also get lost in virtual worlds. We immerse ourselves in games and other media products that take us away from the ordinary and grant us an entirely different way of existing. Our desire for escape is sometimes so powerful that we become obsessed with our virtual worlds, and we start to value our existence in these worlds more than in any other.

We usually try to keep the real world separate from our virtual spaces. We do this to minimize conflicts between our flexible imaginations and the more rigid structure of reality. We give our imaginations a fenced-off space to run wild, while our bodily existence remains calm and orderly, which keeps us protected from any kind of change.

But the distinction between what is real and what is virtual is not always clear or obvious. The real world contains a plethora of virtual constructs — all of the norms and systems created by human beings, which we share through our laws and traditions. Our deep concern for real success is often actually a concern for virtual success, in terms of artificial markers like status, wealth, or fame. At the same time, our virtual spaces are profoundly influenced by the mechanics of real human experience, as this is a basic requirement for us to be able to understand them. Always the real bleeds into the virtual and the virtual into the real.

Creativity is the process of making the intertwining of the real and the virtual more explicit. Rather than trying to keep the real and the virtual separate, the creator aims to collapse the distinction entirely, by bringing what is imagined into reality. In doing so, the conflicts between our imagined worlds and the real world are made evident. It is by seeing these conflicts that we also learn to see how they begin in ourselves, and we can then start thinking seriously about how the real world could be made different than it presently is.