Sometimes I have a dream that plays like a movie, and sometimes I write it down or comment on it. A few times I’ve had dreams that I eventually wrote into whole books or stories.
Anywho, I had a dream and, in the dream, there was a technology/social/app thingy that lets you 3D virtual reality into other people’s homes and lives (with their permission.) I don’t know what the program was called in the dream, but for the article, we will call it PEEPZOOMWORLD. In PEEPZOOMWORLD anyone’s life could become a reality show of sorts if they wanted it to. If they were on the service, you could 3D-visit their world without any real corporeal presence for yourself. You become an observer. You can’t participate or comment, but you can float around and steer through the scene, change perspectives, and watch the scene from different angles. Kind of a voyeur-esque online virtual reality thing.
Listen, don’t overthink this. It was a weird dream, and usually my dreams involve a stark warning about the dangers of technology and where it is heading. There wasn’t any sex, so stop thinking that you perverts. Also, I know that this kind of technological development would be a legal/privacy rights nightmare. I didn’t get into the legal side of it, but this is where we are heading. Someone can already walk around in their own life with a camera and live stream everything – projecting their lives outward for people far away to watch. In this dream, in PEEPZOOMWORLD that is all reversed. People everywhere can project themselves invisibly into the lives of people and watch. Interesting people? Maybe. Mundane life? Maybe. Depends on what you’re into.
Somehow this is a metaphor for how we stalk people on social media, but stick with me.
The next thing you need to know is what a fractal is. I’ll define it and then explain it to dumb people like me. According to Wikipedia, a “fractal is a geometric shape containing detailed structure at arbitrarily small scales, usually having a fractal dimension strictly exceeding the topological dimension.” In dumb-people-like-me terms, a fractal is a shape/object/picture thing that when you zoom in or out, the infinitely small portions of the original thing are also the same as the original thing. So, you’ve seen these images where it looks like maybe a coastal shot of some beach from space, and as the image zooms in, it just repeats over and over? That’s a fractal. Just keep that in your mind for a few minutes, then you can forget it later.
In the dream, I see this social post about a guy and he’s just a normal fellow, it seems, spouting off on social media his political views. And although some of his views are ones I share, this guy is a dummy, but he doesn’t know it. He thinks he’s smart and that he’s educating all the dummies around him. And everyone is dumber than him in his eyes. It’s a Dunning-Kruger thing, which I’ve written about extensively on my blog.
Anyway, I find this interesting because I am constantly asking myself… am I this guy? Is this guy me? So, I get on the PEEPZOOMWORLD service thingy, whatever we want to call it, and I start following this guy through his life.
He’s a little man in a little town and he is a narcissist. Napoleonic. In reality, he is afraid of everything so he has blown himself up to be a fearless hero, a giant of a man who looks down on all the people who (if they knew enough) should listen to him and follow him. He’s done a few things in life – some interesting, some mundane, some weird. But to him, his life story is the stuff of blockbuster movies.
He’s a little below average on the IQ scale, and he’s got some mental issues. But he’s read some books and “studied” and he knows everything he knows, so in his own view, he is a genius. He is hyper-political and sees the whole world and everything in it based on this very extremely polarized worldview. In addition to hating everyone on the other side of the spectrum, he hates everyone on his own side for being weak and stupid. Unless they are in his orbit. If they see him (or pretend to see him) as he sees himself, then he loves them. In very real terms, Leo’s life is a disaster, but he can’t see it. As a sociopath, he has burned through relationships, marriage, and friendships because, face it, he’s an a-hole. But none of that is his fault. He will even tell you over and over again that he is an a-hole, but when he says it, he is bragging. He would be all alone, but there is always some new dummy coming along to join him for a bit and feed his illusions, so he always feels like he’s the hero in his own story.
Alright, on with the story. This guy – we’ll call him Leo (since I don’t know anyone named Leo) – goes through his life and I’m watching him and watching his interactions, his declarations over and over again that he doesn’t care what anyone thinks (except his loved ones,) which is the clarion call of the narcissist, his dismissal of anyone he perceives as seeing through his smokescreen, his screeds about having no fear (which are all fear based.)
Leo believes in God (as I do.) He is a Christian (as I am.) But even this is the Walmart brand. He has adopted the creed of every street corner church, but he’s adapted it so that it fits him. He has a “god,” but Leo’s god is just like him, only perfect. Leo’s god has grace for him, but he’s got a bone to pick with all you other idiots.
After a day or so of studying this guy in the dream, I began to have a Job-esque feeling that everything is vanity. That everything is nonsense. Then, in the 3D virtual reality world, I pan out. I float up and out of Leo’s house. Goodbye Leo!
Upward and upward. I’m looking down on the small town. Then I float higher, and another town comes into view. I zoom in on that other town and pick a random building, a business, and I zoom in until I’m in the breakroom of this business. There’s a guy who looks just like Leo, and he’s pontificating about what he thinks about the world. He has all the opposite opinions of Leo. We’ll call him anti-Leo. He thinks people like Leo are dangerous idiots (and he’s right.) Mentally ill. Anti-Leo is on a rant. Anti-Leo hates religion, because modern religion, as Anti-Leo has interpreted it, produces morons like Leo. And I can see the faces of his co-workers and they’ve had enough of Anti-Leo. Anti-Leo (and now we’ll call him AL) thinks that if you agree with him, you are smart. If you disagree, or even if you just want him to shut up and moderate his certainty, then you are an idiot.
Oh, my goodness. I pan out yet again. Outward and upward and the more I see the more I realize that the world today is fractal. And then I think… am I Leo or AL? I don’t really talk about politics at all, and I find it all frustrating, but still… surely I’m just a Leo or AL in a fractal world?
Oh, my goodness, again! Am I stupid? Is it all vanity? Is the world just a huge morass of hopeless interactions with Leo and AL? Then I look at the PEEPZOOMWORLD interface. There is a button that will, for a short second, let you see all of the other people who are following YOU. Just a blink. You can peel back the veil and look at who is watching you. Can I push the button?
I push the button. And I see… there is no one following me. I breathe a sigh of relief. Everything is ok.
Unless the button doesn’t work.
Have a nice day!
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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear on Wednesdays and Sundays on the website.