It's time for all of us to 'get real'

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound? If a woman dies in cyberspace but not in the real world, should she be mourned?

Notre Dame football star Manti Te'o's now notorious "heartbreak" over the online death of a girlfriend that never really existed is a prime example of how technology has tossed a monkey wrench into philosophy, a major negative side effect of our super-connected world and the Internet at its axis.

The solid proof that was once required to separate fact from fiction has become entangled in the World Wide Web and has fallen victim to the virtual world at our fingertips. For all of the advantages the various social media have offered us, the disadvantages are considerable. Consider Facebook, for example - a major convenience that causes mass confusion.

Before the birth of Facebook and its cyber-siblings, a crook had to literally break into your home to rob you; a bully was someone who gave you a real black eye and not just a black eye to your reputation in a social network; and a lover was someone whose hand you held, not an image on a handheld device. For that matter, face time was when you talked to someone face-to-face and not screen-to-screen.

The term "virtual reality" was once a redundancy and not an attempt to mimic real life so closely as to confuse those virtually addicted to connective devices. "Addict" is an accurate term for anyone who grows uncomfortable when not online or on a cell phone or lost in a video game or website. You're a junkie if your self-esteem is generated not from within but by the junk said about you in an online posting.

So what is reality anymore? Certainly, heartbreak still hurts even if it is the result of an online hoax. Fear, too, feels real, even if it is your Facebook image and not your face being threatened. Thus, today's philosophers are forced to factor virtual reality into their attempts to clarify modern thought, since suffering in cyberspace has become synonymous with real suffering. But - really - it isn't. Nor is cyber love the same as real love. That is unless, like Manti Te'o, one is lost in the fog of cyberspace.

In reality a non-existent person or a hyperbolized online persona should be treated theoretically. Until encountered in the flesh, a mere computer image should not be able to tempt or threaten me unless I am confused enough to have blurred the line between reality and virtual reality. But such confusion, sadly, has become a modern malady, and too many people now suffer the neuroses caused by home invasions and intrusions into privacy when the cure is simply to push the power button to "off."

My wife and I maintain a Facebook page. It's our refrigerator door. It contains images and information visible only to those allowed entry into our home, and that does not involve typing a password. It may seem quaint, but privacy really is a simple matter. So is true friendship - which does not happen just because someone has made you a "friend" on Facebook.

To those who are philosophically conflicted about reality, who have allowed video violence and internet porn to influence their lives, who have made into masters the tools and toys intended to be aids, whose laptops are so glued to their laps that a Google Earth visit feels like a real vacation, who think that every aspect of daily life must be turned into a public posting on one social network or another, who can't even drive down a real road where real accidents claim real lives without multitasking on the latest electronic gadget, I offer this healthy advice: get real.

It's an easy thing to do, though some may suffer withdrawal symptoms for a while. Take a walk and leave the gadgets at home. Disconnect for a long enough time to reconnect with reality. And in reality you will learn that young Mr. Zuckerberg will not go broke if you are absent from his Facebook dynasty for a few hours while you get some fresh air. And as you breath real air, you will likely realize that no one really needs or wants to visit your Facebook page to learn if you had oatmeal or corn flakes for breakfast. Instead, you will have food for thought, and it will be good organic thought-food providing the philosophical clarity that those of us who value privacy and a clear division between reality and fantasy enjoy each dawn when the sun rises on reality and puts the dream world to sleep.

Such a simple cure may sound like nostalgia for the old days when a tweet was the sound of a bird and twitter was what your heart did when your lover was just a touch (and not the touch of a keyboard) away. It may seem as archaic as old-fashioned philosophy, but if Manti Te'o and others suffering techno-addictions spent less time in cyberspace and more time in open spaces, they'd know the sound a tree makes when it falls and they would waste no part of their real lives mourning non-existent deaths.

Mike Ruskovich is a Blanchard resident.