An Indifferent Chickadee and the Metaverse
In the woods along the river which sweeps down out of the mountains to cut through town, the world met me with indifference, and I was thrilled.
In September and October it was easy to get out for a walk in the woods. I’d just defended my dissertation, and work was in a natural lull. And unlike today, it wasn’t -20 degrees Fahrenheit when I got out of bed. Don’t get me wrong, I like the feeling of the cold, how it crawls up your frozen nose hairs and pokes at all of your toes, but to be out for a while in -20 takes equipment, and if I’m being honest, dedication which I don’t have. But yesterday, it was 12 degrees, the air was still, and the sky was sunny. That’s good walking weather. It felt good to move. The excess heat generated by my swinging legs eventually worked its way through my chest to my fingers and finally to the stinging tips of my ears. A mile or so into the hike, and 12 degrees felt like summer. And the way I walk when it feels like summer is completely different than the way I hike in winter. In winter, you have to walk like you have some place to be, even when you don’t. It’s the only way to not freeze. In summer, you have to walk like you’re not in a hurry, even if you are. I take slow steps. Often, I stop for long pauses, partly to listen but mostly to stay cool. Now that I was warm, I paused where the trail reached the entrance to an old, yet well maintained, cemetery. This part of the trial was mostly pines. The snow was thinner and flecked with orange needles. A red sandstone wall half contained and was half subsumed by the woods. The creaking of my boots on the snow stilled and for a single moment there was silence.
Then, like rain beginning to fall on a lake, noise dropped and rippled and poured from the trees. Resilient leaves rustled as they still held to their branches. The faint scratching of a nuthatch’s hooked feet on tree bark alerted me to its presence before its nasally bugle call. Chickadees emerged and chipped and called aloud their names. Chick-a-dee. Chick-a-dee-dee-dee. They flitted into my field of view. Ears handed over awareness to eyes. Several flew over my head, but one lingered on one of the twigs in front of me. It seemed to look at me with curiosity, tilting its head like a child that feels no shame in figuring things out. I longed for it to come to another tree, another branch, another twig closer. Chickadees can make you magical, they can make you a saint. With enough patience, stillness, and birdseed they will land on your fingertips and eat the seeds out of your hand. Once at a nature preserve, the rangers told me it was possible. I didn’t believe them until I was holding a chickadee in my hand. It’s small feet pricked painlessly on my fingers. Even though I know it’s not true, they were completely weightless. The rangers thought that this was unique to the chickadees at their preserve. But I just tried it at my home, holding my hand out of the window, and within a minute a chickadee was standing on my outstretched fingers. So I stood in the woods, hoping that the small black and white bird would alight on me, that it would be as delighted with me as I was delighted with it.
A flash of black wings, a flare of hope, and the chickadee was gone.
It went to whatever bird business had brought it to my path in the first place. And the fact that I, with all of my needs and wants, and hopes and dreams, consistencies and contradictions, was barely worth a chickadee's passing glance made me laugh.
What am I that a chickadee would think of me? It is good and vital to be seen and known, yet in that moment it was amazing to be nothing to the uncaring woods. When I’m not in the woods, the world is mostly constructed by humans, and the human constructed world is intensely interested in me. I get dozens of emails every day which want me to buy new things or somehow engage with a company I’ve expressed even minimal interest in. I get solicitations to submit papers to journals and conferences. Every hour of every day, my phone desperately desires my attention. It is a jealous lover; my eyes must only be for my phone. It stalks me, counting my every step, clocking my hours of sleep, tracking my physical location as I live my life. The majority of my time (even right now as I’m typing) is spent connected to the internet and the internet is the channel through which companies, news sites, influencers, and people just trying to make it all express their intense, passionate, obsessive, interest in me, my eyes, and the hours of my life. If that chickadee was a company, I’d get a follow up email. For the next month, every ad I see would be an add for chickadees, or birding binoculars, or bird feeders. But it was in the end just a chickadee. It took one good look at me, cocked it’s head, and apparently decided that look was more than enough. It had my interest, and thought, nah, I’m good.
There’s excitement for and a dread of but above all an inevitably to the metaverse. I’m trying to prepare myself. Inevitably it will come to exist, and inevitably it will be a new opportunity for whatever university or company I end up working for, and some part of my work or life will end up awkwardly taking place in this coming virtual reality. There will be nothing like my walk in the woods in the metaverse. There will be no indifference to me or my presence. This planet is for trees and rivers and chickadees as well as humans. A small bird, a finch or a sparrow, has its own life that persists independently of my attention. A life that more than persists. A life that is vital, full of small surprises, sorrows, and joys. That chickadee had other things to do, and so it went on its indifferent way. I, a human, participate in and play a role in the complex world, but the whole life of the world is far beyond my tiny corner. Bacteria, fungi, birds, foxes, weather, stars all go on without any demand on or need for my attention.
In the metaverse, I don’t expect there to be any bacteria. Stars will just be stars. There will be no wondrous possibility of them being a distant sun. Everything that exists in the metaverse will exist for me. A chickadee will not be a chickadee. It will be something, a tool, that the humans behind the metaverse know that I’m interested in. Instead of a bird with a vital life, it will be an object designed to drive my engagement. Chickadees will not be chickadees, and they will never be indifferent.
This is why I felt a release when the chickadee left. The metaverse is not yet here, yet already I live and work in a world constructed for my attention, intensely interested in me in order to better snare me. In the woods, there was no human intention, design, or ploy behind the joy and hope I felt in seeing that chickadee. The chickadee was just a chickadee, and I was delighted by just the existence of this tiny, lovely creature that gave no more than a moments thought to me.
