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The British science fiction anthology, Black Mirror, depicts a world where the distinction between “real” and “virtual” is no longer relevant: people live as a totalizing symbiosis with digital technology. In the episode titled, “White Bear,” participants at the White Bear Justice Park are given three instructions: no talking, keep your distance, and enjoy yourself. These are the attributions and injunctions of the virtual world. Talking now means writing and texting, while relational bodies are separated, and everything online is for our own, selfish entertainment: 1. No talking 2. Keep your distance 3. Enjoy yourself. Across the series we find a thread line: consciousness, e.g., memory, is dis-embodied: the ego or self is solidly constructed and able to be downloaded and uploaded without a body. This is where the first-glance subversive appearance of Black Mirror collapses into conformity with the dominant ideology of hyper-individualism: a metaphysical “me” that acquires, possesses, and dominates “the world.” Zen offers a not-two perspective of body-mind: consciousness and physicality are not one, not two. The ego as an object with subjectivity cannot actualize its own inherent lack (manifests as craving) as the subjective agent of itself (as an object). Forever grasping for the reification of itself and the denial of its own life-and-death, the ego wills itself to exit the body. A will to virtuality.
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