Narcissistic Cities to Psychopathic Metaverse
Channel: Sam Vaknin's Musings
Date: 2022-02-24

The transition from agriculture to cities (urbanization) fostered narcissism. The transition from reality to the Metaverse will engender psychopathy.

The Metaverse wouldn’t be the first time humans have transitioned from reality to an artificial environment or an unprecedented instance of virtualization.

Thousands of years ago, urbanization drove millions of people from nature to cities: the reification and quintessence of fantasy rendered in bricks and mortar.

Agriculture requires an intimate acquaintance with and relatedness to nature, the capacity to delay gratification and prepare for the future, the tolerance of adversity, and humility in the face of the elements - in short: maturity.

All these benign traits and behaviors have been lost in the transition to denser, non-natural dwellings.

The city had infantilized its inhabitants and had rendered them narcissistic and psychopathic.

Megalopolises also precipitated and facilitated the environmental calamities that enshroud the planet today and threaten our very survival as a species.

The adverse outcomes of the Metaverse will far outweigh those wrought by the mass migration to cities.

In physical human habitations, societies, institutions, and other individuals constrain each other via intricate and ever-evolving webs of checks and balances.

Not so in cyberspace which is solipsistic, self-sufficient, self-contained, asocial, competitive, self-centered, and aggressive.