Ethical Reflection on Ready Player One

In this post I would talk about some ethical things related to the book, Ready Player One. written by Ernest Cline, let’s start with this passage of the book.

Morrow wrote in his autobiography that he’d left GSS because ... he felt that the OASIS had evolved into something horrible. “It had become a self-imposed prison for humanity,” he wrote. “A pleasant place for the world to hide from its problems while human civilization slowly collapses, primarily due to neglect.” (p. 120)-Ready Player One

I really agree in every part of this quote, in the sense that this happens in our real world, maybe we don’t have something as Oasis, but we have the Internet that is mostly like that, we escape from reality via internet, because in the internet we can be anyone we want by the anonymity of being online, the people see what we want them to see of ourselves there, but I’m deriving of the point. What I try to say is that, most people that get addicted to something is because they found the comfort there, and it’s their way to escape their reality, their problems, and just live in their fantasy, we see this in the videogames, cellphones, computers, or even work. This people don’t want to see what is happening around them, and I really can’t blame them, because I’m part of the problem, sometimes I “imprison” me in videogames because I want to forget about my daily life problems. Maybe we need to find the balance in living in the real world, affronting the real problems in our lives, and taking some break of the struggle that is real life with the own form of escapism.

(Halliday speaking) “I created the OASIS because I never felt at home in the real world. I didn’t know how to connect with people there. I was afraid, for all of my life. Right up until I knew it was ending. That was when I realized, as terrifying and painful as reality can be, it’s also the only place where you can find true happiness. Because reality is real.” (p. 364)-Ready Player One

This second quote, it is really a lesson, I find it hard to unravel it or explain it, because I think it does a good job transmitting what it wants to say, but each person interprets it in a different way. For me, the happiness in enjoying life is living adventures, mostly with my friends, and although I could do that in videogames, the real experience in living is in the real life… Ok I couldn’t say what I really wanted to say, but I understand that quote in a spiritual level, that I find hard to express.

Now for the questions:

The first one, do you agree with the two previous quotations? Well yes, and I already wrote why, so I’m skipping this one and going straight to the next one.

Do you personally see any virtues in a system like the OASIS?

I really saw the potential of the system with their schools, everyone got access to education, well almost everyone, of course the poor people who could afford to enter oasis could get it, but hey in that world almost everyone could enter, so it was a good point in the favor of the system of Oasis. And like I previous said, it was a form of escapism, with a regular dose of entering Oasis, it could be healthy for the mind.

Do you think our value system (personal and cultural values) could be altered if we spent most of our time in an OASIS like system?

Well, I could argue that it is already happing with the internet, no? I mean, with the globalization and all the social justice warriors that are emerging, most values are already changing, some are for better and others are for worst.

At the end I really enjoyed the book for the references that it has, and It would be really fun to have a system like Oasis, but not with the expenses of a decaying world.