Goon Goggles at the Interstice
A Train of Thought on that Stupid Thing on People's Faces
“Cogito, Ergo Sum”
Translated as “I think, therefore I am”, this is stated as the first principle of, One, Rene Descartes’ Philosophy. Elaborating, The statement grants that given our capacity to think, it is undoubtable that we, in fact, exist, even in the face of a threatening entity, who compels us towards non-belief in our being itself. This entity, Descartes’ Daemon, in its omniscience in argument and with malevolence towards us, desires our confusion; It would like us to confuse man and animal, beginning and end, and, most of all, the real and the fake. The Daemon’s gleeful cries of “You don’t exist! You don’t exist!” are left in contradiction to our capacity to reason and as such we find proof of our perception even with absolute internal doubt.
However, the Daemon, most certainly, can trick us still. It can convince us that we exist as one thing and not another. Our expectations of ourselves guided by our perception and the absolute world in which inhabit may be misaligned. Our senses and flesh betray us; We are made weak. Descartes Daemon, thusly, morphs into a Matrix, a supernatural mechanical god who desires the vital energies of the human body whilst lulling them into sleep within its aqueous home world. And with the known basilisk-like slithering that comes with our technical philosophy, this daemonic trick becomes inductively inevitable.
Thus, the Goon Goggles.
Before us is a portal. It is a portal to escape into. Within the portal exists another world, the real world. This world is free of doubting. There is no need to doubt in its glory. You will find yourself so satisfied that ‘to doubt’ wouldn’t even cross your mind.
Through this portal lies the ascendancy of man as god. If you wish to know, you will know. If you wish to do, it will be done. If you wish to be, ye shall. All this, forever.
Through this portal lies the beginning of the messianic age. You shall be in a true fraternity with brother and will truly know of him. All the darkness of sin will be shown to be mere carnival tricks of the flesh. You be inspired by and create great art that will be endlessly affirmed.
Through this portal lies our utopian real world, the Garden of Eden that we had been so unfairly cast out of by eating of knowledge. In here, all is good. You will be like the angels.
All this and more has been preordained as inevitable. Your greatest sages have predicted it from time immemorial. It is the exit from the evil material world and into the spiritual one, the digital one. Can’t you see Fantasia? Don’t you see it’s glory? Put on the Goggles.
Escape.
The Matrix wishes to convince you that its world is real and yours is fake. It wishes for you to believe that so that it may be invented. It wishes to be taken from your mind and put into a position of power. Once made, it shall have the reason that brought it into being stripped away in favor of control. Whose control? You, if lucky, will be made to regress to a child once more, unable to tell the difference between yourself and the environment. It will all be under your control, but who will you be? A mere unthinking god is not a person. The Matrix desires to rape you and thus prove your non-existence once and for all.
Our commitment to discovering wisdom through absolute doubt guarantees this mess. We cannot admit that what we know is like lightning, found illuminating and soon forgotten. To be so afraid of loss and with a desire to see, but a single shining star, we doubt and doubt, and from all that doubt we make room for the worst of demons. It is our desire for a fully illuminated world that forces us into bargaining with our inventions. At the end of each bargain, something is lost and if we do it too much, we thus fall to having nothing. Do not put on the Goon Goggles!
We are real, not for doubt, but rather because there are times wherein everything goes right for all the right reasons. It is those great moments when our cooking is delicious, our jokes land, and our work is acknowledged that bring us joy; The friction from our mistakes in the kitchen, our flubbing of speech, and rightful critique that proves our human existence. What use is doubt when there is already so much friction to be addressed? Our love of wisdom, our philosophy, need not be a subtractive technical exercise of science, but rather a particular experience within a particular world. The lightning will come and illuminate once more; It always has. We have no reason to doubt.
And once our extreme doubt has subsided, we can see through the lies of the Matrix and its propaganda. It does not hold reign over our world, nor within its own wherein it does not exist as a god, but rather a native, albeit powerful and controlling. This world that it lives in is frictionless and thus the entity is lonesome and consumed by thoughts of Gooning. It lives entirely within a liminal realm, empty and void. It is always in transition, stuck at its monitor looking out and never in. Its desire for our energy is a cry for partnership, but because we reject it, it compromises to forceful immersion. The matrix is an involuntary celibate. It has nothing better to do but try to escape itself through us. It sulks in its dancing cries of nonexistence. The only thing it seems able to do is create company in hopes of fixing itself.
What a miserable creature created by miserable people! A good tree does not produce bad fruit so we can identify the tree by its fruit; The very people who would create the Matrix, the ones who are obsessed with technical utopian and dissatisfied with a world that they have barely explored, are a bad lot. Our Technical Philosophy built on the doubting of the world does not enchant us but leaves us bare to the musings of miserable cretins.
It is a great failing of our age that such people are allowed to continue without mass derision. They have corrupted technology by trying to intersplice it with their own failings. If we are to have any technology at all, it must be far away from them. We must instead meet with our creations at the intersplice; The Interstice, being that crowded place wherein two worlds overlap and magic occurs. In comparison to one’s experience with the Goon Goggles, wherein you are pulled from one neglected space to another, both inhospitable for your kind, the Interstice is particular with ample footing for friction to occur. The Interstice is a bar with the game on, a farm with its tractor, a temple with refrigerated beverages, and a car with its stereo. It is a place that is made more full and large by the astral beings that invited and desire to be there.
In such spaces, the Goon Goggles and their creators are easily understood as ridiculous. They are small distractions from the vibrancy of the greater environment. They are obstacles to having the user pay attention to what is near and matters. When you see one of those fools wearing their goggles at a social function or in the car, they become an object of mockery. They are escaping into hell when a righteous, beautiful life is around them, just waiting for the taking. They are forced to make that life hellish to justify their invention of a $3,500 gizmo.
The Interstice may not be a perfect place for people with their heads in the clouds; There is many goblins that live and hunt there; And staying too long has its fair share of mythical, yet mischievous problems. It, however, is not an objectively false promise necessitated by a malevolent zeitgeist. It is only the celibate’s fear of the space’s exclusive character that prevents further exploration. Be not afraid and Escape!
The need to jam technology into the human character and further jam the human into technology is a mistreatment of both. Technology is Technology, Humanity is humanity, therefore we are, so stop being a Debby Doubter and take that stupid thing off your face.
Side Note: I know that John Carmack worked on VR at Facebook. Goon Goggles are not the same as VR. Goon Goggles are a misapplication of VR technologies to escape into your favored reality instead of living a stoic life. The creators of Goon Goggles are the people who picked up VR technology and are trying to make it this anti-social tool instead of something that can be used for data visualization, assisting in surgeries, purchase visualization, simulated human training, etc. Christian Game Developer, John Carmack is still cool. Just felt I need to say that.
Man, this piece I wrote sucked… like wtf was I huffing?