Mariam is, as Peter described in his introduction, a ‘Polymath’ with a broad range of experience and accomplishments in Leadership, Science, Education and the Arts. Her presentation ‘Metaverse or Reality’ is about how Avatars can help with our understanding of Reality in relationship to the Metaverse. 

In a perplexing world – that looks for the histrionics in our myopic technologies  – it appears, Mariam explains, that our digital universe – though being driven by pixelated humans – has an ancient narrative past that governs our behaviour and our intrinsic neurological responses to community through the lens of digital technology.

Where, she asks, does our reality and our subconscious programming divide begin, perhaps more importantly where does it end? Mariam takes us on a journey that explores the psychological drivers for the human species and relates this to anthropological data. Our inheritance of subconscious bias and skewed pre-occupation with competition – means we raise tensions with resource aggregation, people and propriety wealth. These notions belong to Darwinian ancestral algorithms that impact economics, society and our wellbeing today.

Our Innovations lie between the often non-co-authored extremes that are juxtaposed between reality and fiction, a dream like state that is a trend, a fad if you will – we call ‘the metaverse’ – a misnomer that acts as a nebulas bridge for the mind to define, interpret and recalibrate. The victor, we are reminded, writes the narrative. 

Mariam explains these insights through the eyes of a philosopher, a truth seer (and seeker) and an awakened spirit. Perspectives do matter – depending on who you are and where you are coming from. We have to hold and create space for dialogue like this because truth and the wellbeing of our civilization matters… for the sake of our children and our children’s children. However, we might define the ‘Metaverse and Reality’ – we need to be mindful of its schisms and the inevitable impact on human behaviour – that it may bring about.

It is an understatement to say that this a most rare and insightful contribution to the Lunar Society talks. A Fantastic contribution to our Knowledge and Wisdom Mariam. Thank you, so much.