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As always, an essay that gets right to the heart of what it means to be human, and free. Thank you, Karen.

Our imagination is our greatest power, and anything that disrupts, co-opts or otherwise interferes with it will destroy us. Period.

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Nov 9, 2023·edited Nov 9, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

This is at the heart of the trans issue for many in that predicament. My son went trans suddenly last year. In the years leading up he was exposed to very strong online cultures. Imagine first how many children have separated parents and so are given smart phones in order to keep in contact with the other parent. Imagine all of the kids who flunked out of crappy lockdown virtual school and learned to live online, because access to friends there was an escape from being stupid (lockdown school), isolated (no social), nihilistic no-future prospects (climate doom, covid contagion murder, the world is racist and bigoted and f'd), and an increasing discomfort with the body (virtual life begets dissociation and an increasingly negative physical experience).

I realize later the disastrous consequence of these factors, and some more, upon young people like my son, my son who now wishes to surgically remove hated parts and lives closeted by the feared whims of mundane actual people who might not *see* him for the woman he *really* is.

Imagine access to porn as a gateway to discovering first that you are gay (because why else would a boy respond to those kinds of videos), then that you are a furry, then that you are not even your own body..... In addition to an infinity of fetishes and dangerous sexual attachments. Imagine how the young have been taught to righteously affirm each other over identity, without any embodiment to their interactions.

If you want to imagine what these kinds of experiences might be like:

E45. October 15, 2021 Helena a detransitioner on Gender a Wider Lens podcast. Very interesting insights about trans culture and what the trans experience is like and about.

Look up Helena Kerschner, including mothers day article 2023 ON PITT

Also this:

16 year old wrote an incredible essay to wake us up to how ubiquitously children are accessing porn, and how it is shaping and influencing them.

https://www.thefp.com/p/why-are-our-fourth-graders-on-pornhub

Now imagine the import of the developing virtual world after reading the above essay. Some unknown They could manipulate them into hellish insanity. Even without a They, the structure is enough for disaster.

I'm working hard to imagine the Back to Basics movement where young and old detox from fake life in favor of adhering to embodied knowledge and relationships. Grass has already become a woo woo earthing phenomenon (you can pay to be guided through the experience), and maybe it could for some become enhanced only by an imagination exposed to simpler mediums, like the written word, and less by the imagination shaped by more engrossing fake mediums.

When my son was little, he was part of a play school in which a hot topic for the parents and staff was the effect of movies and media on not just the child who watches, but on the greater community of children. There was a strong sentiment that children's fantasy play and behaviors became overwhelmed when even one or two children were on Disney. The children became Other as they would play out what they had seen. They would obey the mandate to explore being (not pretending) the characters. Play was not simply what each person naturally was, but became an artifice of play.

For my son the impact was profound. One encounter with kung fu characters led to acting out fighting upon peers. Scary things became spirits which could be seen and spoken to. Friends had to engage, and be corrected to align with the manipulated other-created fantasy, or disengage when overwhelmed.

What does maturity look like, even for us adults of a prior generation, in encountering these kinds of manipulations upon our imagination, framing, meaning-making, self-concepts?

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Nov 9, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

I imagine that if this dystopian Metaverse were to materialize, humanity would rapidly collapse into a vegetative state.

Need some greenery in and around your home? Don' bother with a trip to the nursery and the hassle of tending real plants. Simply put on the VR glasses and enhance your surroundings with holograms of lush vegetation.

Likewise, the the need for paint (both the type for the walls in your home, and for art) would vanish. Perhaps even a boon for the environmentalists due to decreased VOC's floating about.

Find yourself in a middle of a war zone? No need to rebuild, as your VR glasses convert rubble into stunning architecture......of course, for this last situation, a way to harvest electrical energy from humans will be needed.

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Exactly. The melding of synthetic realities with physical material reality is only possible if we consent. If we surrender our minds. The trouble is, smartphones encourage this.

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Nov 10, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

"And he gave them eyes that could not see and ears that could not hear"

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author

That's right.

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Nov 9, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

Sign over a friends desk at work, in the 1990's; (when virtual reality hit the markets)...

IF YOU THINK VIRTUAL REALITY IS GREAT, YOU SHOULD TRY ACTUAL REALITY.

Words to live by. Best from Oregon

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Nov 9, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

Hard pass on the transhuman agenda.

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Nov 10, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

Great essay. Too bad for us innovative technology leaves no room for wisdom.

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Nov 11, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

“They draw us

deep into a world where no lips press,

no laughter peals, no talk of love disturbs,

where the only sound’s a tuneless humming,

and, there, a cold that stops the heart”

---Jon Roberts

Like I said it before your drawings are beautiful,

they have the kind of soul and depth that AR/VR utterly lacks

Have you ever watched the 'Black Mirror' series?

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author

Thank you. I've watched some of the Black Mirror series. Very disturbing stuff!.

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Nov 10, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

Another excellent and insightful article. Thank you for all that you do to wake people up to the very real dangers of these seemingly innocuous machinations all around us.

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Nov 9, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

Great article - if we don't wake up technology will rob us of our humanity. I believe there is - man's /artificial world & GOD's/Natural world. I choose to live in GOD's world, alive with ALL emotions that are real & true reality. Blessings to you Karen ...

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author

Thank you. Blessings to you.

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Nov 9, 2023Liked by Karen Hunt aka KH Mezek

I was surprised when one of our diagnostic health labs were sold a virtual reality package on how patients were to be approached when being treated in their offices. Like you need to put on your visor as in doing video games to learn this- really?? Somebody just suckered for a lot of money. Bunch of BS.

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War trains on video games. Once you establish the pathway, whether with real people or obvious fictions, you are prepared and limbered to walk that pathway in real life.

They are training doctors all through the pandemic how to sell the shots. They know all about superficial vaccine apologetics, but little about the particulars. Why do you think so much funding goes to studying messaging and nudging? Virtual reality is just an extension in this case of role-playing, which they've already been making good use of.

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Except that the "suckered" money expenses will be passed on to all the rest of us in terms of higher costs. And by the very people who supposedly decry the "costs of health care" to the most vulnerable citizens.

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Thanks for Hardy Boys stories. I needed the laughs!

My hope is that these Raybans will fail in the same way that Google Glass failed. But these very smart tech idiots aren't asking themselves why these products might be a terrible idea. Instead, they're asking, "How can we make these products even more sneaky so that we won't have the Glasshole problem?"

You can see where this is going: having the tech stuff built directly into your head.

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I'm writing a fantasy/sci-fi novel about this exact future... I'm chatting with so many people who are realising the terrifying future that is just around the corner. And what you said about 15 year old boys absolutely nails it. When this reality hits, most people will just not have the discipline to not give themselves over to it.

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author

Good luck with the novel!

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Zucker is sugar (as ya know) in German an' I think he's on a "sugar high" with hiz own hyperactive crazed toddler-self on top of the world-sundae with a cherry, humans below just so many choco-sprinkles gettin' drowned in the whipped cream--seriously, this is DELUSIONAL in perspective, insane in ambition--an' I just HOPE an' PRAY the normies ('specially the young'uns) ain't gonna buy inta this sicko "phantasy" which leads to the end of humanity in one big sugar rush an'll ultimately make 'em all depressed an' sick.

Yer postin' here--bout "real" imagination (via yer art an' yer fun sister who knew yer "likes" so well) vs the saccharine absurd-ditty of the deranged cyber-minds reminds me a bit of the hobo camp song, "The Big Rock Candy Mountain" where:

There's a land that's fair and bright

Where the handouts grow on bushes

And you sleep out every night

Where the boxcars all are empty

And the sun shines everyday

All the birds and the bees

And the cigarette trees (ha!)

The lemonade springs

Where the bluebird sings

In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

Actually, it's a swell song an' both the original writer an' all've us that sung it at summer camp enjoyed imaginin' yet knowin' it warn't reality kinda like all yer sister did ta lead ya on a wild goose chase. Today Mister Zucker Berg (funny, Mister Sugar Mountain!) doesn't wanna distinguish the two--the truly sweet that only the human mind kin envision--an' the slick sick too sweet computer generated vision that he wants to literally enforce on folks via Metaverse Ray Bans (funny, cuz that means ta "ban" the rays of the sun which he an' Gates've Hell are doin'...). Literally Zuck wants ta control vision--an' reverse it so as ta see inta the minds of all us human beans (an' make us what? jelly beans?) Between him an' fElon I'm truly wonderin' how these toddlers have so much power an' so much sugar fuel... it's not good fer any of us!

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I LOVE your artwork and your stories! I wish I could see and read all of them. You have such a beautiful gift. Thanks for sharing ❤️😁

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