Response to: Excerpt from Anarchy, State, and Utopia by Robert Nozick (1974)
Although, it may be nice to live in a “world” where all your dreams seem to become reality, this lifestyles would be hard for me to come to terms with. I fear that plugging in would make my reality seem meaningless. If I can seemingly achieve all of my dreams and experience everything I want, emerging back into real life would make me deeply unhappy. Although it is important to be happy with your life and the things you do within it, there must be both ups and downs. Plugging in would destroy this dynamic and if everything you desire can be presented to you in this machine, you will just keep wanting more and more. Eventually, nothing will be enough. If life is only filled with all things desirable, it becomes meaningless in my opinion. Any meaning that an individual finds in life would essentially disappear as there would be nothing to work for. Some people may believe that plugging into this machine provides plenty of meaning as they “live” in an ignorant bliss completely unaware of the illusion that is their life. Meaning to them would be endless opportunity and pleasure. Personally, I do not think that I could plug into this machine and if for some reason I did I fear I would get caught up in this idea of a perfect reality and when facing real life I would suffer.