Nothing Virtual in Reality (Really!)

            Portland Head Light, Maine

Is it just habit that when I arrive in Maine, I cannot pass by Portland head Light?  I'm not talking about the respite from 12 hours interstate driving to catch the view or smell the salt air.  It's the closest you can get to life--the living sea. You have to climb down the steep hillside, make your way over the slippery rocks, and go right out to the water's edge. Once there, the water comes for you--and it is alive! 

What a contrast with this virtual reality craze.  There's nothing virtual about life--engaged, grasped, diving in head first.  But, there's plenty of warning about virtual reality and our technology which we have always known, seldom heeded for convenience--to be there, but not really; to experience, not completely; ecstasy, but not quite. 

Frederick Franck nails it:
 

We have become addicted to merely looking at things and beings. The more we regress from seeing to looking at the world—through the ever-more-perfected machinery of viewfinders, TV tubes, VCRs, microscopes, stereoscopes—the less we see, the more numbed we become to the joy and the pain of being alive, and the further estranged we become from ourselves and all others.