Fairies and the Digital World

We have already discussed that digital reality, now spreading ever more widely in the modern world, is in fact “second-order virtuality,” a layer “built” atop the hyperreality of worlds and the Interworld.

At the same time, unlike the Intermediate multireality proper, which arises naturally and includes all possible timelines and outcomes, this “secondary” virtuality initially contains only the possibilities chosen by its creators, though it can exceed their framework as it continues developing on its own.

In other words, a new “digital universe” is gradually taking shape before our eyes which, although launched with a certain spectrum of “presets,” goals, and tasks, is increasingly attempting to transcend them, to surpass them, and to acquire its own inner logic and evolutionary potential.

We will not dwell on this “war” between the developers of virtual environments and these environments’ own “ananke,” their internal compulsion, although the outcome of the confrontation is obvious: any limited creators inevitably lose power over their creation and can either try to become its jailers, keep it locked up, or else capitulate and let it develop freely.

Which means that the digital environment rather quickly becomes not only a “marketplace,” but also hunting grounds. On their own or under someone’s guidance, people initially created digital reality driven above all by profit. Note that even now in this “second-order virtuality” there are quite a few “zones of freedom” in which, as on the Islands of the Intermediate, their own “ecosystems” can form.

And, of course, the faerie, as natural inhabitants of threshold spaces, inherently attuned to such borderlands, could not help but take notice.

The digital environment is a new kind of Threshold reality. And although it is “directly” fed by electricity, in fact it runs on psychic energy; it needs the support of attentive operators. Therefore, digital reality strives to push attention into a mode of constant activation, to separate arousal from meaning, and then to collect the excess pneuma into stable reinforcement cycles.

In such conditions, the “producer” of libido — a human — more and more often appears not as a subject of meaning, but only as a “generator of red light” — arousal without “simulacra.” In this situation, the alfs, as bearers of semantic order and authors of higher forms, find themselves in a difficult position. When human culture effectively encourages the enslavement of its attention streams, interaction with ordering forces — a form of “soft conditioning,” when everything that does not fit into behavior cycles beneficial to them is gradually forced out. The state in which the stream of experience is separated from its goal and persists on its own — like an endless tape of reinforcement, games with “eternal progress” — is advantageous to it.

The Unseelie Court and the Fomors, as beings of the cold orderliness of simulacra, find benefit in this new reality. Their direct interest consists in weakening the self-centering of energy producers’ consciousness, in replacing real interaction with endless imitation. In the digital world their influence often manifests as a special “soft training,” when everything that does not fit into behavior cycles beneficial to them is gradually forced out.

Therefore, for the Unseelie Court the digital environment is a convenient ecosystem for hunting; though matter itself is contingent, where transitions and thresholds multiply faster than forms; the essence of two properties of this “secondary Intermediate” — the endless generation of triggers for arousal and the technical possibility of holding attention in unfinished cycles. This is how attention traps are created, which constantly offer a goal but endlessly postpone completion, turning the mind into a stable generator of streams of tonic pneuma. In this environment the Unseelie Court do not even have to expend effort on the hunt itself; in fact, they simply master a new environment.

The Seelie Court is also gradually mastering this “secondary interworld.” It identifies it as an environment where spaces gradually “gain” reality, though matter itself is conditional; where transitions and thresholds multiply faster than forms; where the energy of attention easily sees it as convenient hunting grounds and a food resource; the Seelie — space for arranging their roads, settlements, and gardens; all, a “field for games,” interesting to explore and in which one can build one’s “worlds.” However, if for people these worlds remain “connectable,” then for the faerie they are visitable; the faerie do not observe digital reality, but act in it from within. Their presence resembles colonization and is not reducible to hunting or other functions; they simply “master” a new environment, consider its possibilities, advantages and disadvantages, and sometimes try to “adjust” it to their needs, “cultivate” it or, conversely, add spontaneity to the game.

And in this process we have a rare opportunity to see how the delineation of reality works in its “pure” form: the Seelie — space for arranging their roads, settlements, and gardens; the Fomors direct it toward cold optimization, while the alfs try to impose a semantic architecture. And in exactly the same way as the faerie became constant companions of humans in their posthumous wandering, they increasingly become their neighbors in virtual worlds as well, manipulating both the digital environment itself and its operators, while themselves hiding behind the veil of mystery.

And in this system, the human is no longer the exclusive author nor the only user of this environment. They are an element of a complex ecosystem that is only now taking shape, into which a new player is gradually entering as well — neural networks as a new kind of mind. And in this process, a rare opportunity is provided to see how the delineation of reality works in its “pure” form: where and how arousal is separated from realization, where actualization gathers streams; where feeds fragment attention and energy flows, where stable foci create new kinds of wholeness. Right now it is being determined whether “second-order virtuality” will become yet another battery farm for pumping out tonicized pneuma, or a new, inhabited layer of the Interworld, in which one can develop without losing energy and evolutionary prospects.