A Simulation Inside a Simulation Inside a....

Don't worry, I am not going to just tell you about a tv show....this will go somewhere.

On an episode of the Adult Swim cartoon, Rick and Morty, the grandfather-grandson team are kidnapped and manipulated by aliens seeking the recipe for dark matter. Rick, being the genius he is, immediately knows that the aliens have created a rich simulation to try to trick Rick into revealing the recipe. Morty, initially confused, goes along with the simulation until Rick shows him the tell-tale signs simulated environments over actual, physical ones. The aliens pull the old "simulation-inside-a-simulation" trick on Rick, not only making him give up the recipe, but it is also revealed that Morty has been a simulation all along. Rick, always one step ahead, actually provided the aliens with a recipe for an explosive reaction, and well, the only aspect he didn't seem to see coming was that Morty would be part of the simulation as well. That evening, Rick, never the sentimental one, gets drunk and enters Morty's room. He hugs him, then pulls a knife, seemingly to test whether his Earth Morty is real or a simulation. Poor Morty is left shaking once Rick leaves.

The other character drawn up into the simulator somehow is Morty's loser father, Jerry. The aliens provide bare-bones simulation for Jerry's storyline, as not to have him interfere with their plans of tapping into Rick's mind. Jerry, his own worst enemy, has a personal breakthrough despite being in the most unoriginal and tell-tale simulation ever. When it is revealed that he's not actually experiencing any successes in his real life, he has a breakdown, cradling a simulated award until, that too, disappears.

The show is completely ridiculous and hysterical, but this episode made me pause. After viewing it, I couldn't help but think about it's reflection on modern society. The "realness" of the virtual experience is great while it lasts - Rick and Jerry both think they're in total control until they realize that the entire situation is predicated on falsehood. They both "break down" in different ways - with Rick's violent outburst and Jerry's self-loathing whimpering rounding out the possible spectrum of human responses to such a setback. We see this in real life too - from the loser, lone gunmen type who shoot up movie theaters and college campuses when they "don't get respect," to the dudes who reject women for not being porn star-esque, to the 33-year-old single women who constantly beat themselves up when scrolling through the profiles of their Facebook "friends" who post pictures of their weddings and babies. But, unlike a full-fledged simulation, which is designed to trick us into accepting it as reality, how do we become so invested in online virtual realities that we know we can walk away from to pursue different paths? What draws us into staying trapped within these patterns?
I don't know - but I am trying to understand why we do this to ourselves. Is the internet a new form of religion? Will we ever be able to break away from it controlling our lives? Is there a technological Reformation in our future? Will there be a Martin Luther of the internet? 

This week, during a discussion on globalization, my students asked me how I survive without a smartphone. I laughed, but they were serious. And I think part of the reason is that I am OK with having to reflect and be alone with my thoughts. I don't need to have constant distraction. Due to my line of work, I am granted the opportunity to see thinking in action. I watch students' faces when I ask a question. For many, they just avert their eyes so that I do not call on them. They are clearly afraid to be left to thinking about something. This is nothing new. However, there is a change in that this look comes across their faces even when they are not posed with a problem to solve. Being left alone without stimulation has become the problem.

In the study hall period, when students can do homework, chat, draw, eat, knit, what have you, many, even if they do sit and talk, whip out their phones and scroll through Snapchat stories, Vine, Twitter, Instagram and/or Facebook while they do. They're partially in a conversation with their neighbor, partially engaged with their virtual world. Why? Well, no more awkward pauses that are noticeable to everyone, because they're all multitasking. The entire scene, to the observer, is one long awkward pause, because they don't even realize how often they're not paying attention to what's going on in front of them. This happens in my office with adults as well - there are some points during the lunch period where 3 out of 6 people at  the table are all of a sudden dead to the environment in front of them because they are so engaged with the device in their hand. It's kind of creepy, actually. I feel like I am just  left as an observer of an alien race. And maybe if I had a smartphone I would be just like that, but I don't, so I am left to just witness it happening instead of partaking in the phenomenon. Let me tell you though - to be in this position is to experience a totally new kind of loneliness. One that makes me want to tweet at the world so that all of my thoughts and observations can be validated by all of my friends and online acquaintances? Not quite yet, but I can understand why that sounds appealing.

And I feel like I've seen all this before, in history, in some form or another, which leads me to ask is there Life on Mars? Check the lyrics and meaning.

A Nation of Wimps

Rant!! Strong language ahead. I do have a point though. 

I recently had a small epiphany about the benefits of taking a gradualist's approach. And as much as it pains me to admit it, the "slow and steady" approach may be the only way to actually effect real change over time. While making pancakes this morning, I was thinking about this and realized my problem with gradualism in the recent past* was that I was conflating it with, to put it bluntly, being a pussy. There is a difference - the gradualist, while critical of the revolutionary spirit, shares many of the same goals as the revolutionary, while the pussy is totally hell-bent on self-preservation. Many times this cowardly individual thinks their inaction is the right course - they're pacifistic, stoic, unflappable -yet, these adjectives are euphemisms for what they really are - a pussy.

Pussies come in all ages, shapes, and sizes. They are not always outwardly meek and unassuming. Bullies fall into this category - fearful of something in their own personalities or lives that they cannot control or change, they seek out a scapegoat over which to exert control, often rallying others around their cry. Historically, there are many, many examples of this type of behavior. Hitler would be the ultimate example - culling favor among the downtrodden, encouraging them to do his bidding, and then taking the easy way out before he could answer for his activities.

Within our own, modern society, the cowardly have gathered the reins, steering everyone toward self-interested activities, breeding fear and mistrust, and discouraging critical thought. A quick look at the top headlines on Yahoo! News or CNN.COM is enough to make even the most vapid among us wonder how selfies, Dancing with the Stars and celeb marriages constitute news in any sane universe. And so we slog on, with these ridiculous headlines and more and more personal uploads of our friends' children, pets and dinners clogging up every moment of quiet reflection we may have. A friend recently said to me, "these are the times we live in now," referring to cell phone culture. I can accept that - to a degree. Why do I have to buy into a culture I have no interest in? If I weren't into BDSM and that suddenly rose to the forefront of popular culture, I wouldn't accept it completely either. I can live with people being on their phones all the time or updating everyone on their every move - different strokes for different folks - but that doesn't mean I have to adopt something just because it's popular and because my refusal to ultimately makes them question their own actions and beliefs. It's similar to the religious right's claim that Christianity is under attack in a country where nearly 85% of the population identifies as Christian. How much more do you want? Apparently 100%. One of us-one of us.

We see the pussification of the next generation starting at an early age. There are a lot of conservative circles that have jumped on this topic - decrying the wussification of America and the loss of the strong, virile men of the past. For the FoxNews crew, their focus tends to be on women (and evil feminists) somehow making everyone sensitive by leaving the house (their natural habitat) and boldly demanding that they be allowed equal footing. Yet, this Psychology Today article explains more of what I am talking about. There's obviously some overlap with the conservative movement mentioned, but the Nation of Wimps argument documents the current focus on shielding every individual from the gaze of the world around them, from judgment even in the slightest degree because it might lead to hurt feelings. For sure there should be accommodations for students with learning disabilities and processing issues. Accommodations for students who climbing the academic ladder, are TigerMom-ed out but cannot psychologically handle it should not exist. It's like finding a loophole in the tax code. My kid gets extra time on the PSAT because she has trouble with gestalt thinking (see Psych Today article). What?? Yes, most children have a hard time with that until they develop beyond a certain age and have shed the myopic, insular tendencies of adolescent thought (Everyone is looking at my pimple! Someone will make fun of the way I read out loud in class! My thigh gap is shrinking!).  By accommodating that behavior, we're continuing to cultivate that tendency. We're infantalizing instead of raising children. Parents hovering over their children, and subsequently anyone who comes in contact with their child (principals, teachers, coaches, friends, parents of their children's friends) has become all too common. The helicopter parent has also started to follow their child to college and into the workforce. Your boss reprimanded you because you were late? Have your mom call and complain. When will the child learn to advocate for themselves? There is a massive disservice being done to this child for life in the name of love (and surely in the name of control).

These trends also occur within the classroom. Modern education reforms (from promotion of STEM careers, to new forms of testing, to ending teachers' unions) smack of the same values. The underlying principles of streamlining and standardizing the student experience from K - 12 ensures that they're ready for the post-high school lifestyle of being a good, productive worker bee in a standardized, consumer-driven market. Their parents can rest assured knowing exactly where there child will be and what they will be doing at all times of the day. I am sure someone is working on closed-circuit cameras in classrooms so that parents can watch from afar at any time (less cute than the puppy cam or panda cam by a long shot).

Children also learn to compete against each other at an early age -for grades, attention from their teachers and for friends. And in the wired, media-heavy culture we have created today, they're also learning how to compare their own accomplishments and qualities with endless streams of photoshopped pictures and unrealistic expectations for beauty, love, friendship, success....(you name it). Some teachers that I work with ration out grades - only so many students can receive an A, B, C, etc - forcing students into a fabricated bell curve. Some even post their students' averages (up to and including decimal points - a 93.3 for Marcus versus a 93.4 for Johnny) in the front of the room so that the children know exactly where they stand, breeding competition through public examination. There's no community in a classroom like that. How could there be? Teachers like that are not guides toward personal enlightenment  and achievement. Their transactional approach of filling students with information, only to have it repeated back to them exactly as it was given, is egoistic and poor practice in the end. The end product of years of being taught in such a manner are people that  are incapable of shrugging off these societal-set standards for their own intuitive values. Over and over again have they been forced to compete and be judged by external forces that you're left with a populace that's afraid, and really unable, to think for themselves. And for what? Check out this Alan Watts wisdom, set to animation by Matt Stone and Trey Parker and ask yourself what we, as a society, are doing to ourselves and our children by continuing to promote these trends.

*P.S.: Confession: My distaste for gradualism was so strong for so long has a similar story to the reason why ex-smokers are the most annoying types of non-smokers: I used to be a gradualist. So here's the story -my high school was not highly competitive academically. Being intelligent was an afterthought for the administration at the time. However, within the honors and AP classes, there was competition driven by some of the students, and more likely, their parents. For 4 years, I excelled, studied to get the top grades in every course, and then when it came to that end point, my classmate whose mom was on the Board of Education ended up having a higher weighting to his lower numerical GPA for taking a computer literacy course over the mechanical drafting course that I had taken. For a long time, this pissed me off. I had done everything right, played by all of the rules, taken challenging classes, worked hard, and for what? To have someone with "political" connections come out ahead in the end. Not very shocking honestly, but it taught me that even if you follow every direction to a T, the predicted outcome may be thrown off course by some virtual wrench at the last minute. This obviously didn't throw me into a revolutionary spirit but it did affect my outlook on the efficacy of gradualism. And when you come back to the revolutionaries, versus the gradualists, I guess that would be my greatest criticism of the gradualist approach. It's more controlled, and can surely adapt to conditions down the pike, but there's a naïveté to that. The virtual wrench can be thrown in at any moment, derailing years of planning and progress. Not to say that the revolutionaries aren't naive about their approach either - throwing in all the chips when you're pretty sure the other side has every advantage is risky, and oftentimes, stupid and nihilistic.