Know then thyself
Internet finds its limit in self-actualization
MATT PETERSON is a
senior English and news
editorial major and a Daily
Nebraskan columnist.
I’ve been told that it’s possible to
find whatever it is you’re looking for
on the Internet these days. News,
products, jobs, love - the Internet has
it all.
After an exhaustive search for self,
however, I found the information
superhighway to be sorely lacking.
This isn’t an earth-shattering reve
lation for many users, but for millions
of online automatons the world over,
it’s sacrilege.
These lost souls compulsively don
electronic obscurity and take refbge in
chat rooms and newsgroups, search
ing for something that has eluded their
corporeal lives: a sense of self.
Anybody with access to a comput
er has die power to wander the endless
planes of cyberspace either without a
face or with an assumed identity. The
Internet offers everyone an alluring
escape from responsibility for words
and deeds.
It would be easy to simply write
off Internet junkies as misanthropic
“Dungeons & Dragons” aficionados
who work the night shift at Gas ‘N’
Shop and live in their parents’ base
ments at the age of 35.
Instead consider how you use the
Internet.
Have you ever entered your name
into a search engine? Have you ever
taken an online personality or IQ test?
Have you ever spent time in a chat
room? Have you ever flamed someone
or had cyber-sex?
People often confuse the interac
tion of die Internet with genuine par
ticipation, but the inherent anonymity
of die medium undermines any claims
of communion.
Indeed, like its technological pre
decessor, television, the Internet can
never truly be a medium of reflection,
personal or otherwise.
Several philosophers, including
Marshall McLuhan and Neil Postman,
have referred to radio and television
as media that avert reflection, and
their theories apply just as well to the
Internet.
For example, in his book
“Amusing Ourselves to Death,”
Postman discusses the oft-used phrase
“Now... this” in newscasts. He notes
that regardless of the import of the
preceding segment, this phrase effec
tively realigns our attention for the
purposes of the newscast.
“There is no murder so brutal, no
earthquake so devastating, no political
blunder so costly... that it cannot be
erased from our minds by a newscast
er saying, ‘Now... this.’”
The same can be said for follow
ing a highlighted link or banner adver
tisement by means of a simple mouse
click.
The Internet is a medium that is
being presented to a mass audience -
mass media in its most pervasive
manifestation. Because it is being pre
sented en masse, it cannot pause - as a
reader can pause for reflection on a
passage in a book or a viewer can stop
to reflect on a painting in a museum -
for the individual.
Indeed, the Internet has never been
terribly concerned with individuality
but with collectivity. It is the realiza
tion of McCluhan’s global village:
humanity drawn together by the power
of God into one collective conscious
ness.
Judge the necessity of religiosity
to this definition as you will, but there
is little question that collective con
sciousness is the logical potential of
the Internet.
While the Internet would seem to
be drawing humanity closer together,
however, it is simultaneously compro
mising personal understanding for an
arguably dubious greater good.
My intent here is not to portray the
Internet as a malevolent technology or
even as a necessary evil.
Who can condemn the sort of free
expression that has thrived as a
byproduct of this medium? Even
online anonymity would seem to
serve a purpose, providing the sort of
out-of-body experience that may be
just what the psychiatrist ordered for
egocentric modem neuroses.
If this seething mass of electrons
and binary code eventually translates
into a deeper understanding of the
human condition, then it will have
served a benevolent purpose.
However, if people continue to
define the medium as a means to per
sonal actualization, as would seem to
be the trend, the ideal potential of the
Internet will become a self-perpetuat
ing waste of time.
There seems to be a growing
apprehension with regard to the
Internet in the belief that the develop
ment of such a pervasive information
medium demands that the individual
know more proportionately.
It would seem wiser instead to fol
low the advice of Alexander Pope:
“Know then thyself, presume not
God to scan; The proper study of
mankind is man.”
The third eye
Weekend of discord and tarot cards open new dimension of reality
CLIFF HICKS is a senior
news-editorial and English
major and the Daily
Nebraskan opinion editor.
It was Saturday afternoon that I was
finally inducted into the High Order of
the Illuminati, the title bestowed upon
me as Grand Conspirator.
I can hear you laughing already, but
the eye in the pyramid has taken over
my life, ever since the Goddess found
me and bred me into the realm of
Discord.
Somewhere behind Time, there is a
shadow turning over Tarot cards. First
- The Magician, my significator - New
beginnings, confidence as action over
takes thought, the concept of ideas
flowing from some external source.
Look, just roll with the punches
and flow with it, okay? It’s better if you
don’t resist.
The stories of my interactions with
Malaclypse the Elder (and Malaclypse
the Younger) will remain unspoken and
savored for another day when these
events will make sense, because they’ll
be in the past, not in the future, as they
are now.
Most people would have over
looked the signal, that faint yet intuit
message that was left for me in the gro
cery store: the golden apple.
Next, the Two of Pentacles - change
and altercations, as the ups itself on
one end and does a headstand.
Had I a less careful eye, one that
gleaned information in a less success
ful manner, then I might have skimmed
past that shimmer of gold within the
bundle of red.
Yet I did not.
I sneaked over to the mountain of
formerly forbidden fruit and plucked
the golden apple from the stack. The
surface was not metallic to the touch, as
I had feared, but soft and waxy.
Was this the fruit of knowledge, the
apple of divinity that had been con
cealed from me for so very long? Or
was it, in fact, just merely an apple that
was so far before green that it had
merely shaded into the realms of yel
low, and if so, why could I see my own
reflection in it?
What looked of gold, felt of fruit
The cashier didn’t treat the apple
any differently, nor was she disturbed
by the fact that I was buying merely
one apple, nor the fact that I did not
want to let it leave my hand (even
though it had never really touched my
hand at all.)
The Two of Swords, yet ill-digni
fied, inverted if you will - Falsehood
and deception, the need to take care in
a decision.
When I stepped outside, the world
was not as it once had been. I was
steeped in an urban jungle, one that
was on the surface similar to the world
I knew, but I could see things like I’d
never seen them before.
The buildings inhaled and exhaled,
the streets groaned and warped beneath
the cars, the vulture flew down from
the light post and landed on my car,
staring at me. J
A gorgeous redhead walked
towards me, carrying her quantum
physics book, and I could hear U2 blar
ing through her headphones. She gave
me one of those smiles that could have
flattened me through the pavement.
Then she walked right past me.
It couldn’t have been that far from
the real world, I decided.
And then, the Ace of Sword - a
power for good or evil, something great
or vile, yet all depending on who wields
it.
An elderly man in a billowing
brown robe walked up to me, and he
had stars for eyes. “Are you readying
for Descention?” he asked me.
“What is above is below?” I
responded.
“There is no reality, only illusions.
When you realize that die curtains of
life can be tom down, you will be ready
to leave.”
With those very words, I took my
fingers and pierced through the azure
tarp of sky and tore myself an exit, that
I walked on through.
On the other side of the sky, I
touched tomorrow. It was, to my glee,
the first time that I ever disproved the
existence of a coherent space-time con
tinuum. I was a bit giddy at the discov
ery.
Here, on the Twelfth Astral Plane,
my third eye opened and the secrets of
the universe, ones that society as a
whole had conspired to conceal from
me, were revealed with the casualness
of opening a book.
And so the cards finish with per
haps the most appropriate one, The
Fool - the adventure of several life
times, the necessity ofa leap of faith, a
jump headlong into an abyss that may
or may not be waiting.
No matter what people defined as
their common law reality, there wasn’t
anything they could ground it in that
was relevant to anyone else.
We are our own reality.
The light slowly begins to fade
from my eyes, while the answers fleet
from my brain, my fingers failing to
cling on to what the tendrils of my
mind cannot.
It all fades and flounders, and yet, I
remember the important
thing, that one fine detail
which lets every
thing else be
rediscovered at a
later date.
The only
reality is the
one we make
for ourselves.
Matt Haney/DN^^^
A pause, then one more card, mere
ly to fill out the thought, The Devil - the
ties that bind and the grounding of ide
alism in realism.
There are electric guitars gently
flanging in the distance, a warm reverb
flowing against my skull like a river of
tears and light, a embryonic throbbing
bass line like a heartbeat.
Colors overwhelm me and super
sede my conscious, there’s a rush of
moving-towards the edge of under
standing, then that adren
aline surge as I touch the starlight, then
am snapped back like a rubber band
that’s been stretched too far, from eter
nity to now, and all of it is gone.
The man in robes, the breathing
buildings and groaning trees - every
thing but the golden apple.
As soon as I tasted gold and felt it
slide down my insides like the Seed of
Infinite Knowledge, it all made sense.
How’d your weekend go?
Belgium.