Possible Risks of the Metaverse and the Posthuman: The Separation of the Economy and the Money
Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: This study examines the reflections of the integration between culture and nature, which is promised in the philosophies of technology, in the context of metaverse and posthuman examples. The dichotomy between culture and nature can lead to many new dichotomies in the contemporary daily life. Especially with the modern period, some dilemmas have emerged between mathematics and humanity, technology and social life, science and religion, social media or metaverse and real life, and money and economy. In order to solve these dilemmas, individualization has been developed in the contemporary period. In fact, 20th century societies are largely individualized and middle-class societies. While individualization promises to solve existing dilemmas, it can lead to increasingly deeper human problems. The most important of these problems is that virtual life, which was invented to assist real human life, has turned into something that suppresses and manipulates the real life. For example, the money, which has four different functions, is now destroying the financial economy with a single function - the symbolic exchange value function. In addition, like the social media platforms, the metaverse is presented in a format that is more real than real life. Here, there is also an intervention in the function of religion. There are serious efforts which are made to substitute simultaneous virtual belief and ritual logic instead of real time and life experiences of the religion and the belief. Especially Islam is not a religion suitable for this intervention and target. Because Islam is primarily a worldly religion and remembers the afterlife in terms of what it promises. For Muslims, the religious rituals cannot be performed on a virtual level and separate from the real lives of other people. This separation from real life is the most advanced version of alienation and the most radical version of individualization. After the descriptions of metaverse, posthuman and economy, the article deals with this alienation and also criticizes alienation, which also means the separation of economy and money.
Author: Muhammet Özdemir
Institution: Mersin Üniversitesi
Language: English
Subfield: Communication
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4414021090