Posted by araucaria
(here)
The notion of a ‘separate reality’ suggests a transcendent, hence seemingly insoluble problem. If it is in fact soluble it must have an immanent aspect upon which we can act from within the hologram. In other words, if outside influence is possible on the inside (the projector on the projection), this implies the possibility of inside influence on the outside (the projected manipulating the projector).
Part of what this would involve is tuning in to the immaterial aspect of this matrix and altering it from that angle. This is the aim and operativity of the spiritual approach being enacted on this forum and elsewhere.
Another part is being attentive to the material aspect, notably its imperfections (for it is far from perfect) and acting to change it in certain ways. This is where the scientific approach comes into play.
Combining both aspects, you have the ‘thought experiment’ which, apart from being used by scientists, is a staple of art and literature for example. Say you write a story about a holographic situation, all you have is an elaborate thought in concrete form (a book) but one that can explore the nuts and bolts of how this might actually work.
As it happens, there is a novella written in 1940 by the Argentinian writer Adolfo Bioy Casares, ‘The Invention of Morel’. The rest of this post is both a summary of the novel and my personal analysis of it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Invention_of_Morel
Morel is an engineer implementing holographic technology at an island property to immortalize his friends: unfortunately the process involves some harmful radiation that will kill them all. This filming process is followed, post mortem, by an automatic playback triggered by the occasional spring tide.
Twenty years later, the narrator is caught in what is a dual reality: his own reality where he is alone, and another where he is not. Being a fugitive from the law, he at first thinks he is being spied on. Then he sees for example people diving into a long disused swimming pool crawling with vipers and such: they were of course filmed years earlier, when the place was inhabited. Another strange feature is two suns, one the real sun, the other the holographic image. Much of the story is devoted to his coming to an understanding of what is happening to him. He has his basic normal reality, and then now and again this hologram superimposed on the original site. As he catches different points on this spacetime continuum in different places on the island, his perception is always partial and in random order; the jigsaw puzzle is a precise analogy for his investigation. Eventually he finds himself in a room at the same time as Morel has gathered everyone together to explain the situation. Morel is not worried about filming himself, as he has not long to live anyway.
Hence the narrative, which is already a metanarrative – it is devoted to explaining itself from an outsider’s viewpoint – contains this other metanarrative stating the insider’s viewpoint. Whether from the perpetrator’s or from the repairman’s angle, the story involves both transcendent and immanent elements. The technology is imported from elsewhere, but the whole show is stage-managed by the inventor as one of the actors. Then his audience of one decides to become involved in order to transform the whole narrative, at the cost of his own life. This means discovering the machinery and implementing a so far unused feature: a rerecord function whereby he can play his additional well-rehearsed part.
The machine-room is rather special in that it is the only place on the island that is not holographically recorded, and yet it is protected behind walls that are holographically recorded. This means that he can knock a hole in the wall to get in, but when the machine comes on with him inside, he cannot get out again, because the holographic illusion of the intact wall is perfectly solid. To restore the hole, he has to work out how to switch off the machine, which he somehow does through a stroke of inspiration perhaps brought on by sensory deprivation.
Hence there is a central immaterial mystery governing the activating or otherwise of all this hardware. We can only take this as read without trying to understand, and realize that the pseudo-transcendence is actually included within the illusion and relies upon the illusion for its protection. When the narrator becomes an active protagonist, stepping outside of the illusion into the machine room, he can divert the machine to his own purpose, and so on triggering the rerecord feature he can climb out through the hole in the wall, then come back and switch the machine off again.
After that the hologram continues to exist, but with a whole new storyline. The basis of the action had previously been Morel’s unrequited love for Faustine and her avoidance of him. This forced separation is the motive behind Morel’s making of the fatal film, which ultimately involves replacing a flesh-and-blood person with a holographic image; but it has left a gap for the narrator to fill and express his own love for her. As he does so, he has the opposite effect, bringing her back to life in the sense that his presence gives new meaning to hers, to the point that he fancies that this non-physical form in turn on some level becomes aware of him.
So we see how the whole situation is folded inside out. The inventor is reduced to being a minor actor in his own film; he is caught up in and devoured by his own illusion. The narrator commandeers the technology and rewrites the scenario with himself playing a leading role in what is potentially no longer an illusion but the reality of the novel he has composed.
This is of course just a novel, naturally limited in its scope, but as a thought experiment it provides food for thought notably with regard to the idea that we are both inside and outside of the illusion, and thus able to act to change it both from the inside and from the outside.
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