The following essay by Nick McAvelly is the second in a series about virtual reality (see Part 1). It was originally published at The Frozen North in a slightly different form.

The Addictive Nature of Virtual Reality
by Nick McAvelly

The addictive potential of virtual reality will come as no surprise to anyone with experience of addiction. Life is a gey rum do at the best of times, and as any serious drinker will tell you, there is nothing better than altering your consciousness so that life no longer matters. The experience of addiction is described in Jack London’s autobiographical book, John Barleycorn. London writes: “I achieved a condition in which my body was never free from alcohol. Nor did I permit myself to be away from alcohol. If I travelled to out-of-the-way places, I declined to run the risk of finding them dry. […] The gravity of this I knew only too well.”

London was not the only writer who knew what it was to use alcohol. Charles Bukowski also laid the facts down for his readers:

“Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.” (Charles Bukowski.)

There are a lot of people who have experienced full-blown addiction, and there are many more who have yet to do so. We have all walked into a Starbucks or a Café Nero and discovered that everyone in there is busily swiping their agile little fingers across the screen of an iPhone, with only a peripheral awareness of what is going on around them. Many of us have binge-watched our favourite TV shows and identified, to varying degrees, with the main characters. In ye olden days, some of us will have read and re-read our favourite books, and built up an image of what the characters looked like in our own minds. How many of us who saw the actor Gary Sinise appear in the film adaptation of Stephen King’s The Stand initially thought to ourselves, “That’s not Stu!” And how many of us now approach a Michael Connelly novel with an internal image of Harry Bosch that bears a remarkable similarity to Jimmy O from the Sons of Anarchy? There has always been a crossover between a fictional world created by someone else and our own imaginary experiences. If it is possible to have that crossover experience, and to interact directly with the characters in a fictional world, then our own lives can be temporarily forgotten. The new virtual reality will be the most addictive experience of them all, more than the finest whisky in the whole of Scotland, more than medical grade opiates.

It’s a given that a globally accessible VR system will have a pornographic aspect encoded into it, so that users can have virtual sexual encounters with virtual porn stars. This would make the owners of the new system a fortune, so it is inevitable that this will happen. Users of the new system will also be able to indulge in revenge fantasies, by virtually throwing their bosses out of an office window and so forth. It should be noted that people can already live out such fantasies, in the understanding that they are nothing but fantasies, because violent and sexual scenes can already be found between the covers of a supermarket paperback, or accessed online at the click of a mouse. However, in the new virtual reality, experiences such as these will serve as a gateway drug, and long-term users will be able to progress to deeper levels within the system, where dark and previously undreamed-of fantasies can be virtually fulfilled.

The world around us is becoming more dangerous and corrupt with every week that passes, which makes an escape into an addictive state of altered consciousness even more appealing. But we need to understand that a global VR system will be used by the rulers of the darkness of this age to serve their own purposes.

“Be sober, be vigilant; because your adversary the devil walks around like a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour.” (1 Peter 5:8)

“Again there was a day when the sons of God came to present themselves before the Lord, and Satan came also among them to present himself before the Lord. And the Lord said to Satan, “From where do you come?” Satan answered the Lord and said, “From going to and fro on the earth, and from walking back and forth on it.” (Job 2: 1-2)

The adversary has always tried to corrupt human beings, so that he can try to escape his own fate. If Satan can demonstrate that reality, as it has been experienced here on earth, cannot be judged according to God’s moral laws, then Satan can defend himself before the Creator.

Here is the Luciferian defence:

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