Vision Pro is Not Pro Life

I'm not referring to abortion although kids' -- and all our -- lives are affected.

Who else saw this incredibly depressing image 3-4 years ago (when the UnPsyOppables were circulating it on social media), and immediately understood the world it foreshadowed? That our real lives would become dreary and tragic if we embraced the shiny Metaverse direction?

A timely interlude from my appropriately-named third album — Dark Sight of the Moon — whilst you contemplate the question:

For me it was heartbreaking not just because poverty, hunger, and isolation are so clearly depicted but also because I interpreted that the future young person¹ represented in the image is not even able to comprehend how truly awful, how soulless, how fabricated their circumstances are. No matter how dire real life is, many are currently being primed to let themselves be assuaged by an infinite fantasy universe. Once lost in the virtual, it will fast become an addiction, added on to the others that we have been persuaded to purchase.

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Yikes, I just read this excellent piece on the dangers of Vision Pro by

Insanely Free

(no relation).

An excerpt:

Let’s look at the word. Vision classifies as a sensory function. Humans don’t use their senses; our senses are an intricate part of our physiology. Which leads us to the following realization:

Apple doesn’t want us to use this product; they want us to fuse with it.

“Fuse? What do you mean?”

Imagine wearing VR goggles for some time. You wear them for business meetings, immersive 3D movies, TV shows, games, and FaceTime calls. Now, imagine removing your headset. Try to contemplate how dim, unexciting, and unyielding the natural world becomes when you cannot visually tap and edit your surroundings at will.

Give it a couple of years and the physical world will turn into an impenetrable, unforgiving place mired by fixed limits, frustrations, and dangers. Step into augmented reality, however, and everything is, once again, malleable, safe, and under your control.

There is no undo button at that point. Synthetic vision will have become part of being human.

Speaking of vision, Insanely continues later in the piece:

Do you see it now? It’s a two-step trap:

1. Make reality insufferable by means of manufactured poverty, contrived disease, lockdowns, and so on.

2. Make illusion compelling by means of disposable VR headsets, infinite AI universes, mind-meds, and so on.

A seriously good read, do go visit. Here was my comment:

Thank you for writing about the dangers of this immersive technology. Every point you made about where humanity will be heading as a result of embracing it is correct. Those of us who see through the technocratic agenda(s) know that what you describe is what is coming for us, unless we manage to break free.

Your advice re unsubscribing from everything is 👌🏾!

I barely have any paid subscriptions to large tech companies (not counting good writers on Substack); have gradually been weaning myself off them the last 5-6 years. Amazon Prime, Netflix (have sometimes been given access to a kind friend’s account though), Spotify. Not had a TV in decades, so I’ve never paid cable charges (bonus: I was not brainwashed in 2020).

However, recently I’ve found myself considering whether I should get a YouTube subscription as I crave listening to my favourite albums in their entirety and I can also get podcasts. I particularly cannot abide the constant interruptions to the music flow by the obnoxiously chirpy ads. I’m a musician and I’ve been telling myself this last month that I could perhaps allow myself to have this luxury, just the one. However not only do I detest the thought of making YouTube — one of many big tech companies that have zero qualms about abusing the 1st Amendment — richer by $18.99 a month but I also own most of these albums on CD and could, in theory, listen to the digital versions. Except I can’t easily do that as I cannot save the tracks on to my smartphone.

Even though it’s going to take a while to figure out (hopefully they still make MP3 players?) and will require me to buy the albums I don’t possess (which is fine as I want to support the artists, something we all used to in the old days, about 10 years ago), I’m going to strive to do it the less convenient way.

I currently pay for an annual Adobe Premiere subscription as I’m a filmmaker too. Actually, I pay for the whole Creative Suite since I use Photoshop and many of the other apps frequently. I think it used to cost about $300 to buy Premiere, but after Adobe switched to the subscription model, I’ve probably given them thousands of dollars over the last decade). As of this year, I'm learning DaVinci Resolve, which, if you buy the Studio (aka pro) version, you only pay once (again, as was the case in the old days when you could pay for something and it was yours, for life; you even got a certificate of ownership), so that I can eventually leave that company behind too.

It’s never going to feel convenient, but one by one, slowly, over time, each of us should strive to let go of all these corporate subscriptions and realize how much better life is not being a slave to these companies and their rental products.

We will own whatever the hell we like, not give them our money and, for sure, ultimately, we will be happier.

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Hi, Sane person, how many subscriptions do you have? (Perhaps some of you will say “Zero”).

Can you let any of them go?

Which ones are the easiest to give up?

Which ones are the hardest?

I encourage you to do it…

One by one, slowly, over time.

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Completely on topic, about six months ago, I watched this video by a YouTube creator called Moon². I was saving it to share for the day when I wrote a piece about Vision Pro but Insanely Free beat me to it (thanks IF for getting there first as I have a lot on my plate these days).

A commenter on that video:

During the Apple launch video they showed a father 'interacting' with his small kids whilst wearing this thing on his face. At that moment I realized a lot of what you've said in this video. The way that Apple tried to normalize child/parent interaction through a holographic bit of glass was dystopian.

Ugh.

Dear Sane reader, like you no doubt, I have felt immensely sad for the last decade as I bear witness to the fact that most children have become glued to smartphones and tablets (and parents can’t help but want to make their lives easier by doing so). Adults too, of course (and yes, I can be one of them when I find myself unconsciously using) but at least adults over the age of 30 know what it is like to not have grown up with such addictive gadgets. Simply by having had that experience it gives us an alternative scenario to long for, and desire gives us humans motivation. A smartphone-less me is one that I often crave in the same way I crave being able to listen to my favourite albums from start to finish, without the noise pollution of ads, when I go for a walk.

So much unlearning to do in this lifetime, sigh. But I’m glad to be on the path, knowing that it takes one step, then another...

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Finally, I just saw that there is a new AVP video by Moon, only a month old, which I’m bookmarking to watch sometime (yep, on one of my gadgets).

1. I say it’s a future young person because, despite how old and dingy the clothes and habitat are, for me this image brilliantly captures the manipulative visions (aka social engineering) of our wannabe controllers.

2. Gobsmack Alert! Did I prophetically name my third album after this YouTube Creator (?!), or does its title have something to do with my family nickname since birth, Mooni? The synchronicity defies belief but as MPX loves to sing “it’s not either/or, it’s both and more.”