Travieso Sella, Adriel Ronas, Scott Nizna, Christiana
Senovka, and Pluton Karas, ready to go insane.
"If you have a history of mental illness, particularly a psychotic disorder, you should not tour this facility". Thus begins the tour of the Virtual Hallucinations facility in Sedig, a simulation which provides a glimpse into the schizophrenic's perception of reality. Thanks to the work of Dr. Peter Yellowlees, professor of psychiatry at UC Davis, and his peers, avatars are able to explore a medical ward in which aural and visual hallucinations transform what should be a sterile and safe environment into a maddeningly terrifying one.
The maddening experiences in the ward are based upon the very real experiences of schizophrenics interviewed for the project, and include the following:
- unnervingly calm voices repeatedly reminding you that you're dead, that you don't exist, that you know none of this is real
- a poster and newspaper whose printed messages transform, distorting not just your perceived world but also the value of your own existence
- a television broadcast that directly addresses you, and which attacks and devalues your existence
- a mirror in which a healthy looking man smiles at you as you watch him die and begin to decompose; this is based on the experience of a patient who stopped shaving because every morning he would see his reflection dying and decomposing
- a gun which suddenly appears beneath a spotlight, with voices trying to convince you to take it and kill yourself; also based on a patient's experience, the man was arrested for attempting to take a police officers gun after the voices he heard gave him the instruction to do so
- a hallway whose floor suddenly disappears beneath you, leaving you to precariously make your way over an abyss by hopping on floating stones
Obviously listing the 'experiences' does them no justice, so I won't go into length about them. You must experience them yourself. And let me warn you, the experience can be terrifying.
I took a group of avatars I met at Philosophy House on a field trip to the sim. I had been through the simulation on two separate occasions, both times unaccompanied. This time I was touring with a group. Very early into our tour I realized that touring with a motley crew like the one I gathered reduced the impact the tour had on me, and thereby must also mean that my fellow tourists' first experience here would not be as meaningful as if they were touring solo. Yet, despite this and all our irreverent commentary, my fellow tourists found the tour to be impacting and frightening. Here are just a few excerpts of our conversation:
- "Damn, this is insane."
- "Ew, that's awful... this guy... no wonder the guy went nuts." (referring to mirror)
- "Wow... all these voices... tell them to stop :-("
- "What [this sim] cannot convey is the *absolute conviction* you feel when the voices speak, that THEY are correct."
- "Wow... That was the craziest shyt [sic] I've ever done in Second Life."
- "That was fun. Can we do it again?"
That last quote is not meant to be frivolous. You see, what terrifies me about this sim is that I can choose to experience this, and that at any time I can stop the experience. The schizophrenic cannot. For the schizophrenic, this is reality.
Going through a simulation like this provides us with the opportunity to broaden our real world perspectives, to bridge the gap between our 'normal' world and this alien world of madness. This is of great importance, for if enough of us can gain even this slightest shred of understanding of what the experience of the mentally ill 'may be' like, even if it's just an approximation of that reality, then society can be constructively impacted, for western society not only misunderstands the mentally ill, it also marginalizes and abuses them.
This has been the case in western society for millennia, and it is still the case today. We may no longer burn them at the stake or publicly humiliate them in the town square, but the mentally ill, and their counterintuitive experiences, are so alien to us that we, as a society, ignore the horrors they go through, force our own perspective upon them, then leave them to cope with their terror all alone.
I do not mean to devalue the work of individuals such as Dr. Yellowlees, his colleagues, and the countless number of medical and legal professionals who advocate for the mentally ill. Nor is my intent to alienate all the organizations and individuals who actively work to protect, care for, and advance the rights of the mentally ill. However, despite all this valuable work, I feel the general population still has a distorted view of the mentally ill that stems from fear and ignorance.
In a post-tour note Travieso Sella expressed similar views:
"We can also see the vastness of the gap between the suffering individual and other people, the difficulty one may find in attempting to function in society with such an illness as well as the lack of understanding others may have for them, or their condition. Mental illness and what we call mental disorders are still something of a mystery to people I believe."
"I think [this sim] can reveal to people why those who are schizophrenic may not be required to endure the same kind of punishments, for certain crimes, which other are. Some people are in a state of mind dominated by certain urges, and voices fueling these urges. And therefore they have to struggle in ways that others don’t. So naturally they should, and usually are (at least in my country,) subject to special legal treatment and rehabilitation involving the respective crimes."
Sincerely,
Pluton Karas
PS:
No comments:
Post a Comment