Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you can’t have missed the tech trend that essentially straps a television set to your head and gives you the ability to walk inside it. However, it doesn’t stop there. Soon, these virtual reality players, which can already detect body movements, will feed stimuli to all five senses, thereby creating the effect of living in a different world. In fact, it won’t be long until people will be living in the metaverse, a world seemingly as real as the one we currently inhabit. At that point, Plato’s Allegory of the Cave may no longer be just an allegory.

In our metaverse life, we identify with our avatar (digital persona) and its many attributes and accomplishments. Everyone has a role to play, or the whole thing falls apart. The players earn virtual badges for visiting important people and places. Some even become presidents and kings of countries. Many have metaverse families and even metaverse jobs so they can earn virtual currency and buy virtual rewards.

It all seems so real!

But just like all stories, all metaverse lives must come to an end someday. And oh, how the players fear that day of reckoning, when they must disconnect and awaken from the dream. This day of unplugging hangs over their heads heavily. A virtual demise is guaranteed. However, no one is allowed to stay in the metaverse forever—not even the best of them.

Many of the players have forgotten that they are not real, that they are only digital avatars in a digital program. For them, even worse than being unplugged someday is the thought of not being real. They’ve become so identified with their avatar that any possibility of being something other than it seems utterly impossible. Anything beyond the metaverse feels like a void, an empty black hole.

What’s the point of going back to such emptiness? they think to themselves. How could I leave after having invested so much? How could I possibly exist without that which I am now?

Many of the players panic and look for a solution—anything for a little peace of mind. 

This creates a whole new set of roles in the metaverse. There are priests, rabbis, shamans, monks, nuns, gurus, scientists, talk show hosts, pod casters, and many more self-proclaimed truth sayers. They’ve devised elaborate stories with many doors. Some of those doors, they tell their believers, are not to be opened. Their followers comply without question—anything to quell the dreaded fear they hold inside.

Meanwhile, the avatars go on with their VR lives, applying layers of meaning and significance to it. They form groups and devise political structures, rules, and governments within the metaverse. They begin to design and build products from virtual stuff and sell them along with other services to other players. Some of them are businessmen who accumulate a great amount of virtual goods, making their eventual passing even more painful to accept.

“It’s all just ether!” one sadly proclaimed as he was leaving the metaverse.

There are even philosophers who write important treatises on the nature of the metaverse and circulate their ideas like user guides. In all these ways and many more, the players become entrenched. New ones are simply told, “This is the way it’s always been,” and are quickly assimilated.

“But it all seemed so real!” remarked one player who had spent what seemed like eons in the metaverse. It’s always the same comment, no matter who goes through it.

“‘Real’ is whatever is perceived to be real,” is my usual non-response.

In a few days, they’ll be back for another session, another life in the metaverse.

They always do—they always come back.