Blue Skies and Green Grass
by ted2112 HSM team writer
A favorite Buddhist saying of mine tries to shed light on how we perceive things:
The sky is blue.
The grass is green.
The sky never said it is blue.
Neither did the grass say it is green.
So is the sky blue and the grass green?
Neither did the sky say it is sky nor the grass that it is grass.
So what is the “sky” or “grass” really?
The “sky” and “grass” just IS.
IS-NESS.
The moment you define it, you are wrong–
that is conceptualization.
Reality is to be experienced – not conceptualized.
I have been writing a while now about the reality part of virtual reality It is a subject that really fascinates me. It amazes me how we have taken something so cold and technical and turned it into something warm and personal. Millions of us share in this reality every day. To many it is an important part of our real lives. To others it is a fake cartoonish casual playground. To most, however, reality lies somewhere in-between. For each and every person, it is something totally unique to themselves.
Like it or not, virtual realty is becoming a fixture in our everyday lives. Look at the impact on society of Facebook and Twitter. Even my grandmother has her own virtual social life. If social media is dipping one’s toe into the waters of virtual space, then Home is a giant cannonball plunge into the deep end of it.
Home has its own communities, fashion, media, and even its own economy. We know it when we see it, but yet it’s difficult to express this experience in words, and that is one of Home’s major problems. Home is simply called a virtual community by the people who don’t share it, and feel the need to define it. For the rest of us, it is simply…Home. Facebook is called social media, but have you ever met someone that has said, excuse me, I must check in on my social media? In both cases, the definition falls short. I feel it’s far more than the sum of its parts, and more like the sharing of our own unique reality with others, but then again who am I to define it?
Our lives have become a hybrid of the virtual and the real, and like life itself, the mix is always changing. How we feel one day isn’t necessarily how we will feel the next day. I love how in Home you can press R1 and a banner over your head proclaims your mood, like feeling Happy. The funny thing about this is our need to express our feelings with others. It is satisfying to do, and this is the core of on-line gaming in a nutshell. The need to share this experience with others has changed and transcended the single player game, and we are moving in a direction where this is the new norm.
Virtual reality is just down the road a ways from cave paintings. To the Neanderthals, painting on the cave wall was there way of saying, woot, check this out! with the tools they had available at the time. Today, we post a picture on Twitter. Maybe some day 35,000 years from now, people will look at the millions of Grumpy Cat posts the same way we look at the Lascaux cave paintings. By then, I’m sure we’ll all be walking around with a processor implant chip in our brains (made by Sony of course) playing Final Fantasy MCXXII and still not being able to define it.
The next generation console, the Play Station 4, will have a share button right on the controller. A simple press of the button will allow us to instantly share our triumphs and tragedies into cyber space. I hope we will be able to add comments like: Killer! or Sweeeeeet!!!! to help define the experience. As with the R1 button in Home, we will be able to share our feelings — and this is why I feel that virtual realty works. It doesn’t matter if we define it correctly as long as we share it correctly, and in that sharing we define the IS-NESS.
We don’t really know if the sky is blue and the grass is green, but we will all agree on it for argument’s sake. However, it’s all the more satisfying to tell everyone about it, and if you can post a picture to Instagram, even better. It’s about the experience — it’s why we see movies and watch TV. It’s why we paint and write. It’s why we are gamers and citizens of Home. We express the experience of our own reality and share it with those around us.
As for me, you can follow me on Twitter. I would also suggest checking out HomeStation Magazine on Facebook and Twitter. We have some really funny animal pictures.
April 17th, 2013 by ted2112 | 5 comments
ted2112 is a writer and a Bass player that has been both inspired and takes to heart Kurt Vonnegut words...."we are here on planet Earth to fart around, and don't let anyone tell you different."
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Saying this is a great article isn’t saying enough; I love your “take” on our virtual world. I wish more people could see Home for its possibilities,as well as its “realities”.
I love perception discussions, especially when light is involved. The idea that something doesn’t exist until it’s perceived by someone, that defines not only it’s being but is then categorized and boxed by us is such a fundamental, telling part of the human condition and our need to make sense of the (our) world. Kinda makes me smile when I meet someone who’s so sure of their reality, that they see it as a simple, logical, factual thing. Like, the grass is green; no questions of light bouncing, or colour cones in the eye, or pathways of neurons linking that info to their brains, or even questions of microscopic or sub-atomic -- just, green, grass. Must be nice to have that certainty. But, I digress, I’m heading into Cox discussion territory here, so yeah, I’ll shurrup about that for now…
As for virtuality being our legacy, the weird thing here is that our Neanderthal ancestors had a much more time-resistant way of documentation than anything our space-year-2000 technology can manage. Our records of achievements will degrade and succumb to time’s ravages long before the story scrawlings of the ancient humans that came before. It’s kind of poetic irony if you ask me.
And yet again Ted, you’ve got me WAAAY too deeply for 8:40AM! Nice one man, I do like readin’ your stuff.
Once again you show us all a new way to look at Home. Like most things in life Home is what you make it, what you decide it is, your own reality either good or bad. Those outside don’t understand its complexities, nor do many who are on the inside. I think that is sad in a way for they are missing a lot if their concept of Home is so shallow. Home is a virtual world, not just a virtual reality. Great article as usual Ted.
Yes! That really is a cool article. I would have to agree with KrazyFace. After years of consideration, the questions still hold weight.
Love to think about them. 8)
Great article Ted. You always come up with great perception discussions. I agree with Burbie, Home is what you make of it. If you are into fashion and want to be in the fashion community, you join it. You can search for interests and find other people with the same interests and join clubs. Or you can have just a few friends and want to chill out in one of your spaces and if you want you can press the R1 button and tell everyone your mood!! Anyway, looking forward to your next article!