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Cyberspace offers a retreat from the lonely existence of the modern metropolis. It is safe and comforting being oneline. All it takes is a click of the mouse.
Being online is a way to satisfy the yearning for human contact as a defence against despair and the wounds of a damaged life. Intense emotions can tear our being part. It is better to be online. The network of relationships in cyberspace offer the hope of belonging to a community of people bound into a nework of responsibility.
Lonely and emotionally unfulfilled lives. That is the normal life of so many people living in the inner city. Especially the older ones who've lost family, do not drive, and can feel the darkness coming in from the edges. Mutual comfort is what they lack and yearn for.
In such a life the fear of going crazy is all too present. We are consumed by painful longings, the pain from a tragic past and a deep sense of loss and regret. Many are too poor to afford a toy boy or toy girl to satisfy their need for longing.
And they know that there are not too many suprises anymore.
Death looms ever closer. You can cry too much.
Many are not ready to die even though their body aches with pain.
Cyberspace with its network of relationships and a common world gives us hope. It sustains us, keeping the chaotic fear and terror at bay. It offers something more than the soft porn in the mainstream magazines that fill the ethical vacuum in a nihilistic culture.
Cyberspace. It may be the only myth we have left that can rescue us from empty fragmentation and forge a community of solitaries.
It may be illusory. But it is preferrable to the path of Bataille: forming a secret society (Acephale) to empower myths anew through a sacrifice of its members. Putting one of its members to death would be the foundation of a myth and ensure the survival of the community.
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at November 3, 2003 03:40 PM | TrackBack