If you haven’t seen The Truman Show, a 1998 movie starring Jim Carrey, go out and rent it. It’s a clever movie in which the main character named Truman Burbank is the unknowing star of an ongoing virtual reality TV show called “The Truman Channel.” Adopted at birth by a television corporation, and raised on a set built as a town on an isolated island where even the weather is controlled, the show is the ultimate piece of performance art directed by none other than Cristof, the performance artist. Truman’s real life is a virtual world watched by millions every day. Everyone around him, including his wife, is an actor playing a scripted role.
I’ve been thinking lately about what goes on in cyberspace. The internet is a virtual world populated by "avatars" (from the Sanskrit word for "descent" referring to a manifestion of a deity in Hinduism). Avatars in cyberspace are personae representing real people in a virtual world. When you enter into a conversation on the internet, whether in a chat room or a forum or a blog, you are not actually dealing directly with people. Your avatars are interacting in a virtual world, a game of Dungeons & Dragons. Virtual role play. Many people get drawn into the internet world in the same way some who role play lose touch with reality. If you think you’re engaging real people in a chat room, you’re just like Truman in The Truman Show.
Avatars may be entirely fictitious with names adopted from the characters of Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or even video games. Or they may just be little nicknames like “Fred23” or like the one I use on a scuba diving forum “scubarev.” An avatar may be an alter ego or it may be a close approximation to the person hiding behind it. One never knows for sure, and therein lies the problem. You never know for sure.
Avatars are created for life in a virtual world. They are like the masks worn by actors in Greece to hide their actual identities. The Greek word for actor, by the way, is hypocrites (pronounced hipo-cri-táce), one who hides behind a mask. You never actually know with whom you are dealing; you are dealing with hypocritai. Some avatars are projections of a person’s actual personality, a mini-version of the real person. Some avatars are alter egos. A shy, withdrawn girl might take on a very outgoing, sociable avatar. A weak, insecure boy might be an action hero. Some even swap genders in creating their avatars, but let’s choose not to go there. Even when we purport to be “ourselves” on the internet, it’s only an avatar representing whatever we wish to project to others.
Avatars are what reader response critics call the “implied author” in literature. The implied author is the person the real author projects through his text and with whom the reader actually engages when he reads. Have you ever met your favorite author in real life? In all likelihood, he or she was nothing like what you imagined. People occasionally come to our congregation because of what they read on the internet and are surprised at our simplicity and ordinariness. The implied pastor and congregation were much different in their own minds than the real ones. Most of us usually look better on paper.
Avatars range from transparent to opaque with varying degrees in between. Totally transparent avatars accurately reflect the person behind them. For example, my avatar here is “revcwirla” which reflects my actual name and title and can easily be traced to the real me. I write the way I always write, which is pretty much the way I speak, save a few colorful phrases that the Higher Things mommy filter won’t permit. Most of this blog is simply sermons and writings that have actually been preached and published elsewhere. And I’m accountable for every syllable, even the off-color humor.
Opaque avatars completely mask the real person behind them. You have no idea with whom you are dealing. In The Truman Show, Truman’s best friend, Marlon, says to a distraught Truman who is beginning to catch on that his life isn’t real, “You’re the closest thing I have to a brother; the last thing I would ever do is lie to you.” Marlon’s lines are being fed to him from the control booth through an ear piece. That’s what opaque avatars are like. Don’t take them seriously; it’s a game.
Even avatars with real names can’t be completely trusted, since they may not be run by the people who own them. Identity theft happens in the virtual world. The apostle Paul had to write the last few sentences of his epistles with his own large, clumsy penmanship in order to demonstrate that the letters were actually his and not a forgery in his name. His letters were also carried by real people who knew him, and he always included extensive greetings as “insider information” to ensure that the implied author of the letter was the actual author Paul.
In the real world, people are accountable for what they say, do, and write. When I write an article or preach a sermon, I’m accountable for my words. People can question what I mean or challenge what I say. As a pastor, if my words violate my ordination vows, I can be removed from my office and stripped of the authority to preach and preside in my congregation. What I write, even in jest, can deeply affect the spiritual life of a member of my congregation or any random person who happens to see my post. If an employee of a company writes something that is damaging to the company, he can be fired from his job. Human society depends on personal accountability; it goes along with personal liberty. I’m free to say whatever I want, but I’m also accountable for what I say in freedom.
Words written cannot be unwritten; words published cannot be controlled. Whatever the author’s original intent might have been, once published, his words are now in the hands of readers who will do with them and conclude from them whatever they will. When Luther posted his 95 thesis in Latin on the campus bulletin board to announce his academic debate, some people copied it, translated it into German and published it on their version of the “internet” (ie printing press). People, ripe for revolution, used Luther’s writings as a manifest for the Peasant’s Revolt in 1525, much to Luther’s chagrin.
The old Adam in us likes to hide. Hidden behind a virtual personality, we can say things we otherwise couldn’t get away with in real life. There is very little personal accountability, unless you know the person behind the avatar. This is why porn is so huge on the internet, and why cyberbullying and cyberstalking are such a problem. What would be considered sociopathic behavior in the real world is acceptable, at least to some, under the cloak of anonymity in the virtual world. And the compulsive click of the computer keyboard doesn’t help the chronically obsessive.
Anonymity can protect the identity of the innocent on the internet. This especially applies to kids, though kids would be better served playing with some real friends. Forums and chat room for kids need to be closely watched on both the real and the virtual sides. The same issues still arise among the kids. Some are turning out to be among the worst cyberbullies and stalkers imaginable, a virtual “Lord of the Flies.” An opaque avatar provides a wonderful cover for the old Adam in all of us to wreak havoc without consequences. Go to any forum discussion, including the so-called “Lutheran” ones, and you’ll see precisely what I mean.
In my opinion, it isn’t terribly healthy for human beings who are made by God for communion to spend inordinate amounts of time engaging in compulsive, raw communication in a virtual world. In some cases, it can be psychologically debilitating. This is the downside of the technology, what Neil Postman analyzed so well for the television in his book Amusing Ourselves to Death. As human beings we are created for communion, not just communication. Communion embraces our entire being, involving all the senses. When you reach out to someone in the real world, you actually touch someone. That’s why there’s no such thing as “church” in cyberspace. C.F.W. Walther rightly noted that the proper distinction of the Law and Gospel is taught by the Holy Spirit in the school of experience. That would be the real world, not the virtual world you see staring at a computer screen.
The internet can be great source of ideas and information, not to mention the ultimate swap meet and shopping mall. Bargains abound. Just remember, virtual purchases generate actual credit card bills. And of course, caveat emptor, buyer beware. Email is a great form of rapid written communication, but its speed and ease are also its weakness resulting in flame wars and misunderstandings. Cyberspace can be a great library for research, provided you know what an actual source is. You can find all sorts of theology, too, but caveat emptor applies here even more. “Test the spirits to see if they are from God.” Just because someone claims to be “Lutheran” or shows up on a Lutheran blog role doesn’t make it so. What is actually “Lutheran” is measured against an actual Book of Concord, not a virtual claim of being Lutheran. That goes for Blogosphere too.
Blogging has become a popular form of self-publishing and public discourse. It's the ultimate free marketplace of ideas. For the cost of an internet connection, you too can be a published author and hear back from your readers in an interactive form of reading. Blogging is still in its infancy, and it remains to be seen how much of it is useful and how much is verbal white noise. I think it has great potential. Blogs by design are texts with commentary. A piece is posted - a poem, and article, or just a question or observation - and people in the worldwide blogosphere comment. Unfortunately, comments breed faster than rabbits in spring. Debates among commentators are less than successful since the flow is fast and loose in grammar, syntax, and thought. Logical fallacies abound, especially of the ad hominum and straw man variety. Hijacked threads rarely land at any meaningful destination. The same can be said of forum debates. Here’s a good rule for this medium of instant raw communication: Read three times and think twice before you hit “Send.” It isn’t bad advice with email too.
Personally, I wouldn’t waste too much precious time sparring with the avatars. They can morph at a moment’s notice and play games behind your back when you least expect it. You can try to practice your apologetics with them, I suppose, if you have a little free time on your hands. But don’t get sucked into the game. Not being real, avatars can pose hypotheticals and situations that don’t actually exist in the real world, and so the value of the exercise is greatly diminished. And since avatars can’t die, they can’t really be converted and saved anyway. Let’s face it. You don’t become a real linebacker playing Madden Football in front of your TV set. You may become a good shot at the firing range, but that alone won’t make you a warrior. Only the real battlefield can do that.
At the end of The Truman Show, Truman rows his way to the edge of the set that is his virtual life to a door that leads out into the real world and an actual life. He hesitates for a moment at the door. The real world is frightening to those who know only the safety of a virtual one - real blood, real death, real people, real sin, real salvation, real Body and Blood, real forgiveness. Truman is a real person, not an actor He walks through the door into a real life of uncertainties and responsibilities, as we all must, sooner or later.
And in case I don’t see you in the real world, “Good afternoon, good evening, and good night!"
Good thoughts all Pastor Cwirla. I've also come to realize that trying to have a serious conversation about theology on most blog sites is really a poor use of time.
Posted On: March 06th, 2007 at 5:41pm by revcwirla
Great point!
E=MC2 is still true even if Einstein wasn't really a physicist. Of course, it would still have to be tested against the standards of science and mathematics. Likewise theology is always tested against the objective standards of Scripture and Confessions.
Not exactly the point of the original post, but a great point nonetheless.
Truman show was a great flick - makes you wonder about your own little corner of reality. I mean - the people that we meet every day, whether in realworld or cyberrooms/blogs/listservs.
Perhaps, in many ways, we put ourselves into the Truman Show, gleefully ignoring reality, as did the heroine in CS Lewis's "Till We Have Faces". Perhaps that is part of what Paul disucsses in 1 Cor 13:12,
There is a partial cure, when the law strips away the false universe, and reveals us as we are, in need of grace - and then grace clothes us with a reality that is now, and not yet fully realied.
.jpg)
