How do you find happiness in the Metaverse?

Hello intersectional thinkers 👋

Greetings from Whistler ❄️ where I’m taking reading up on the Metaverse.

Apparently 35 is the dividing age line between two fundamentally different types human beings.

Those who are 35 or older see reality as the physical world. Anything digital is an add on, and frequently denounced as a distraction. Screen time is to be reduced wherever possible.

Those who are younger embrace the digital world as their primary reality. Why talk to ‘friends’ who don’t get you IRL when you can hop onto a discord server with those who actually share your interests? Living happens online. You go offline to take care of basic needs like food, water, shower and sleep.

Age wise, I’m in the digital world is reality group. But my old soul wholeheartedly embraces the Gen X and older analog paradigm. Even though all my work happens virtually, even though I’ve never met most of my Twitter friends and clients around the world, I still think of the digital world as a convenience, not a reality. In fact, I don’t know anyone who thinks their online world is their primary reality. Do you? (Note to self: find Gen Z YouTube channels to understand their world view. Maybe make new friends…)

Regardless, once the Metaverse is here, we’ll all have a chance to opt into the digital world as our primary reality.

Will you opt in?

Because opting in is to embrace the fact that our minds have collectively evolved at lightning speed. We’ve outdone ourselves yet again. No other species on Earth have achieved dominance over ourselves and our environments like we have.

But the further our futuristic minds go, the more obvious our earthly bodies drag behind. The internet allows us to perform more tasks quickly and effortlessly. Yet by forcing us sit for longer, our under-evolved hunter gatherer bodies respond with chronic neck and back pain to working “less”. We can improve productivity by listening to audiobooks on 2x speed while driving, eating, and/or day dreaming all at once. Yet by drowning ourselves in a sea of stimuli, we find it hard to focus, let alone retain just drops from the information waterfall.

So how do we find happiness when it’s hard to reconcile the widening gap between our physical supply and digital demand?

The clue lies in architecture.

As Alain de Botton says: “We seem divided between an urge to override our senses and numb ourselves to our settings and a contradictory impulse to acknowledge the extent to which our identities are indelibly connected to, and will shift along with, our locations.” – The Architecture of Happiness

Like the Sims, perhaps we can increase our mood bars once our physical and virtual spaces are intentionally designed to bring happiness. Add some plants, +5 points. Hang up an abstract painting, +12 points. Change your home screen to your dog, +50 points.

Choose your environment wisely. Or at least, furnish with happiness in mind.

I’ll opt-into the Metaverse once they get some standing desks and dog parks in place.

Have a great week!

Vicky