In “San Junipero,” an episode in the third season of the Netflix series Black Mirror, two lovers are given a chance to reunite in a simulated digital reality. Unable to find happiness in the real world—which, alas, is fraught with wounds physical and spiritual—they are “saved” in the next life. Indeed, the episode’s final scene features Belinda Carlisle’s 1987 hit “Heaven Is a Place on Earth,” indicating that, despite Black Mirror’s general pessimism toward modern technology, the show envisions God-like potential in the creation of 3D virtual reality.
“San Junipero” was released in October 2016. Five years later (indeed, almost to the day), Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, Inc., announced that his technology conglomerate was to be renamed Meta Platforms, Inc., reflecting the company’s desire to transition from a social-media platform to a company dedicated to '“building the metaverse.” By “metaverse,” Zuckerberg means something quite similar to the simulated reality depicted in “San Junipero.” Here’s a recent commercial for the Meta Quest 2, a VR headset developed by Meta Platforms.
Not only does the ad borrow heavily from the 80s ethos of “San Junipero,” but it suggests that simulated reality can serve as a means of recapturing lost happiness. What Black Mirror envisaged has now arrived, and it brings a slew of philosophical and theological questions in its wake.
From Peter Sloterdijk’s After God (2020): “Where there were gods, human beings should come to be. Where there are human beings, artificiality increases.”
I haven't watched the episode Black Mirror, but thanks for providing the entry to the theological questions. Big reach here! But, there is a certain melancholy irony, perhaps, in how the rhetoric of thinkers of the Enlightenment often condemns the theological notion of redemption in an afterlife as immature when compared with shouldering the burden of progress in the "real"
historical world, but then ... in these times, the irony is that redemption through consumer tech products and experiences becomes a way of evading losses, suffering, and failure in the "real" human world.