sociology – Page 2 – A Piece, of the Sky

Love Alarm, a Korean show, on Netflix, is like social media meets science fiction – Ghost in the Shell, for the romantic drama genre. The titular app works on various indicators like heart rate, respiratory rate, perspiration, and so forth.

Love Alarm and Heart Shield are fictional apps that operate like the mind and the heart are a computer or a phone, that needs cyber defense. The Love Alarm can be held back, from matching two people, by another software – a Love Alarm plug-in, from that app’s developer ecosystem.

The core debate at stake is what is love? And who gets to define it? An app? Physiology? Hormones? Society? If someone thinks they are in love, are they not in love? It’s an ongoing discussion, from Facebook, to Tinder and Grinder, to The Circle, to now, Joh-a (Love, 좋아) Alarm.

It is said that ‘perception is reality’ but if someone’s circumstances cause their perception to be unreliable, or if a group of people are mislead or misinformed, is what they perceive truly reality? This of course begins to segue into philosophy, medicine (including psychology), sociology and ethics.

I’ve been on the fence about whether I would support a Love Alarm, if it were a real app. On one hand you’d be able to figure out if you truly liked someone, and weren’t just fascinated or intrigued by them. On the other hand, as the show aptly illustrates, there would be many societal and cultural hang-ups and drawbacks, to having such a software say for sure, scientifically, whether two people actually like each other – or not.

haunter lol

The parable of “Majora’s Mask” explores the real-world concept of masks. Boss Remains are masks and the masks you wear in the game are all of the legendary dead. Masks are artifacts that seal the spirit of the entity, sealing also his, her or its power.

Wearing an entity’s mask gives you said being’s “other memory” (Dune), and mindstream. The spirit sealed in a mask can be good or evil. Sealing in general, much less sealing an entity to distinct physical form, takes a great deal of magic / chi (qi) / virtual energy. Seals can be place on pieces of paper, cards and amulets, as protection or to lock away evil spirits.

Masks are also sculpted to look like gods, and embody gods – who are really just immortal spirits – and dead heroes. In Jim Carrey’s ‘90s movie “The Mask,” the supernatural mask is of the Norse trickster god Loki. The film was based off a book series published by Dark Horse Comics (“Hellboy”). The soul of The Mask, like most masks, reacts to the soul and the state of the heart of whoever wears it, turning some into monsters and others into champions.

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