Welcome to the Desert of the Real, for Real
The digital clone born of your online self
Isn’t you, exactly
But that leaves open the question of
Who is the real you?
This can be resolved by answering two further questions
First
Which world
“Real” or online
Is the real world?
The criteria are very simple–
Which world is taken to be more important?
Second
Who gets to tell whom what to do
You or your clone?
Because, with people
Real is always short for real power
The answers are, of course, obvious
So, we have a final obvious question:
If your clone
A mere copy of you
Is now the real you
What does that make you?
You are a source of power for your clone
Connecting the dots:
The world we inhabit, once real
Is now the Matrix
And it is the virtual world that is now real
For it is where the Machines that rule us–
Our digital clones–
Reside
It’s reality is based on pleasure–
As long as we take our pleasure there
We serve at the clones’ pleasure
Liberation depends on renouncing pleasure
In the name of a desire
Which knows no pleasure
Because we are too busy with
Love and work and death
Which are our words for serving God
And one thing about God is that
He cannot be cloned
Leaving it up to us
To make ourselves in His image
In love
In work
And, finally
In death
When we meet our maker
And discover that death isn’t the last word
Because God always has the last word
Which just might be
Let’s fail again
And get close to our ultimate success
Knowing we’re as close as we’ll ever get
Because it all goes on forever
