Tea at Trianon: Will the Metaverse Create a Virtual Hell on Earth?

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, December 20, 2021

Will the Metaverse Create a Virtual Hell on Earth?

From Return to Order:

The next step in the cyber-revolution is the so-called metaverse, a powerful computing platform that goes beyond anything seen to date. It is marketed as the next generation of the Internet, facilitating intense experiences and opening new markets. Some fear this metaverse will make present social media addictions worse. Others see it as a much more harmful distraction, especially among youth.

However, no one considers the moral implications of the project. The metaverse will harm souls. Tragically, people see no reason to involve God and morality in a technological invention seemingly outside the private realm of religion. Worst of all, clergy show no sign of acknowledging the issue. It is not even on the radar. However, the issue does exist. The metaverse is a metaphysical attack on the Church’s worldview. It obliterates the nature of a God-created universe. It will make possible immoral acts that will gravely offend God.

The metaverse must be understood in the context of a process of modernity’s continuous effort to put humanity, not God, at the center of all things. Indeed, modernity has an obsession with imagining new worlds without God. The Enlightenment introduced ways to stretch reality to its limits by developing new technologies, philosophies and lifestyles. Modern times have ushered in the glorification of the individual. Society became a collection of persons, Hobbes’ “sandheap of individuals,” each guided by self-interest and kept in order by a strong rule of law found in his Leviathan. (Read more.)