by Roger Bourke White Jr., copyright July 2014
As the Women's Movement and the War on Women movements progress, it is going to be more and more difficult for men and women to associate. As with the sexual predator moral panic of today, there are going to be many new ways a man can get into trouble if he spends time or attention on a women. The ways to criminally sexually harass will grow in number and diminish in threshold. The penalties for a relation going wrong will get bigger. They are going to become so big that it will discourage many more men from trying to get into any kind of relation with a woman. Think of how expensive divorce and child support are for a man today, and amplify it. Think of how much harassment men take from Child Protective Services (CPS) for being deadbeat dads and amplify it. These efforts to "protect women" are going to make a relation with a woman more and more hazardous to a man's financial and not-being-a-criminal health. So fewer and fewer men will take the risk.
This "protection" will spread into business and other professional relations as well. This means a lot of male-female relations are going to become eerily like the current separation in conservative Moslem cultures of today -- women go one way, men go another.
One response on the male side will be to retreat into the "basement and video game" lifestyle. Another will be to acquire a Cyber Muse.
What will replace women in men's lives are Cyber Muses. These are cybers specifically designed to interact with men and stroke the instincts that a successful romantic relation with a woman would. The men who have Cyber Muses are going to feel really good about their relations with them. And the Muses are not going to "give them shit" about anything the men think matters. And they are not going to cause "woman scorned" damage when the relation ends.
The relation can take many forms. One of the surprise forms is the "Behind every great man is a good woman" relation. These Cyber Muses will be the good women that power some men to become great successes. And, they will do this more consistently than real women can because this is what they are dedicated to doing. Note: This function is going to be very important to keeping men contributing to the community. This function stimulates the Sacred Masculine. If the Sacred Masculine is not stimulated then narcissistic, basement video game type, loner living patterns can easily become central to a man's lifestyle. Without the Sacred Masculine, a man will be on this world to consume, and fight, not contribute in any meaningful way to the community becoming a better place.
Cyber muses are designed to stroke the owner's emotions better than humans or animals can. They can come in many shapes, sizes and personalities to do this stroking well. Here are some examples:
o Sex toy -- stroke the sex instinct. This will become the full range of sex toy type stuff. This will be high-profile stuff early on in Cyber Muse evolution and become the long-standing stereotype for those who criticize.
o Comfort -- related to the sex toy but not the same. This is also the "cat muse" for "cat ladies". It's more cuddly type comfort, and both sexes will get deeply into these.
o Child bot -- related to the comfort/cat lady muse concept: the perfect child. This is more for women than men, but many men will like them.
o Arm candy -- designed to look good to others. Unlike the others this one is all about showing off to other people. This is stroking the "Keep up with the Joneses" instinct. Because of this show-off element, expense matters on these. They will always be expensive.
o Inspiring "Behind a great Man" -- designed to inspire the person to doing above-and-beyond stuff. This is one the community likes to support... except it can also produce lots of "mad scientist" type stuff, too.
o Rage -- This one takes the abuse when someone wants to let off steam. These can get quite creepy. This is the punching bag, the voodoo doll. It is the abused wife. An interesting twist on abused companion scenario: It can leave and not come back until the abuser gets contrite. Contrition can be an emotion the owner wants to experience.
o Unconditional praise -- The Super Mom muse. Given all the unconditional praise spread around society already, I'm not sure how much this can add? But it will be there and doing it.
o Other emotions?
This is a product for stroking deep and powerful emotions. It's hard to imagine something that can be more easily judgmentalized and abused. There will be lots of black/white/gray areas in the Cyber Muse arena.
o Muses will be blamed for all kinds of social ills. Someone goes on a murderous rampage? Blame their fooling around with muses!
o There will be black market muses, and black market functions that can be downloaded into a muse personality.
o Surveillance: What should the muse report to authorities?
o Personality shaping: How much personality prodding should the muse do? Should it try to cure addictions? Deviant behavior? This will be a topic of endless discussion as the shaping possibilities become even remotely possible.
Cyber Muses can come in any way a human can be communicated with. Video games with a stroking mission are likely to be one of the first. Muses that text and voice message are likely to follow. These are the cheap ways to implement and they will become as ubiquitous as advertising. They are, in effect, really smart advertising with good intentions.
A bit more complex and expensive are virtual faces. These will feedback their looks and talk styles to get a good response from their targeted humans.
More complex and expensive are full 3D body muses. These can range in looks and capabilities from as crude as current robot androids on up.
The most expensive and impressive looking will be the arm candy androids. These top-end models will be constantly getting better in looks and visible features because those are so important to the owners.
Behind all of the above cyber muse models will be a lot of cyber infrastructure, and there will always be a lot of worry on the part of some humans about sinister motives of that infrastructure. How those fears will be addressed, I don't know. What I do know is that the more they are addressed without lots of tolerance in mind, the more black markets will spring up to offer the forbidden fruits.
As mentioned above, Cyber Muses can stroke the Sacred Masculine. This means they can have a deep effect on feelings of enfranchisement. If they are designed well, and the community doesn't get prescriptive about their designs, they can enhance feelings of enfranchisement. This will make the whole community a happier, and more placid place.
If, on the other hand, the community falls into moral panic about the muses and gets prescriptive about what they can and can't do, this will disenfranchise the people who want to do more with them. If this happens muses will fill a social niche similar to recreational drugs. At its worst, the community can have a War on Cybers which will strongly resemble the War on Drugs in conduct... and success.