[-empyre-] II (

[Jonathan Marshall]

Alan writes:

>For me, re the discussion, the virtual and the real are inconceivably
>entangled; on one side, subject/abjection and on the other /virtual
>elementary particles/particle properties/pheomenology of inscription on
>the llevel of the life world/inscription itself. 

Let's just assume that i don't know what the virtual is, anymore than i know what the real is
To me, they look like two (distorting?) views of the same events.

(And i'm not sure the binary helps)

Taken abstractly they mean nothing, taken together they may mean something

Taken together they may be paradoxical. I suspect that all axioms imply paradox, although i cannot prove this.
If so, then the real and the virtual are useful to the extent they unsettle each other or open the user to receive something.

Same for subject and object - although it seems to me that the subject is as 'virtual' as the object or the particles.

Although, if we use it this way, is the virtual becoming the illusory?
Or is it fortifying illusions? 
And we have the problem of what is not illusory. Is pain illusory? Perhaps sometimes, especially if  some VR diminishes it.
Perhaps not, but we are not perceiving the nerves, 'only' a translation, but there is no pain perhaps apart from the translation... and the interpretation of what is happening and what is being done.

> years ago
>there was talk of Eddington's table or the physicist's table, which was
>full of holes, etc., subject to quantum mechanics, etc. That was the
>'real' table; in fact, though, I think the table today would be seen as a
>cultural object, a collocation of particles, etc., just as well, and one
>can develop ontologies that pertain to or are relevant in relation to
>particular domains, physics, mathematics, the lifeworld, affect, etc. etc.

What the table 'is' depends on the contexts brought to it

>But there is for me the practical problem, on the level of ordinary talk,
>how to work within virtual worlds and social media online, and bring pain
>and the misery of slaughter, torture, etc., not only to the table, but to
>the subject hirself who is viewing etc. the materials. 

For me this is by situating the pain, and the misery in the context of what 
pain and misery mimght normally mean. And to emphasise that what people call 
 'virtuality' does not diminish, it is not an abstraction, it is not an absence,
it is not an essence of something else.  
Neither are words *not* sticks and stones, and they can break your bones and your 'spirit'.

Which is why i prefer 'online' to virtual. Living online depends on social-psychological-technical dynamics, and that combination clearly includes pain, suffering, melancholy, distance, incomprehension, failure, bonding, joy, intensity, exchange, response, etc.

Even 'real' VR depends upon software written by people in interaction with a socio-cultural background, it still depends on social dynamics and social understanding - and social dynamics always changes and is changed by its environment - again they intertwine. So VR expresses some social dynamics.

Simply we are hurt by words and images and people. We can be tortured by words and plans, as well as by tools. We can suffer as a result of some intention and suffer unintentionally
we can feel people die in words, in images. We can feel our world being destroyed by indiference or direct cruelty.

All life is there online, and not diminished.

And the problems are not perhaps the same, as the environment differs, but they are similar.

jon

UTS CRICOS Provider Code: 00099F
DISCLAIMER: This email message and any accompanying attachments may contain confidential information.
If you are not the intended recipient, do not read, use, disseminate, distribute or copy this message or
attachments. If you have received this message in error, please notify the sender immediately and delete
this message. Any views expressed in this message are those of the individual sender, except where the
sender expressly, and with authority, states them to be the views of the University of Technology Sydney.
Before opening any attachments, please check them for viruses and defects.

Think. Green. Do.

Please consider the environment before printing this email.