The virtual reality just mentioned is another hieroglyphic horror story for some Orthodox leaflets. What's it? A person is immersed in a world simulated by a computer, his thoughts and feelings work with the images that the machine prompts him. Dangerously? Yes, you can play around here! It may turn out that the sensations acquired in the virtual world seem more acute, more real and more desirable than those that a person experiences in everyday life. But I will say again: anything can be perverted. Abortions are performed with a surgical instrument. But this is not a reason to condemn all surgery in general and demand that scalpels be beaten into censers.

Without virtual worlds, it is impossible to train people of many professions today. Pilots, cosmonauts, submariners are trained on complex computer simulators. Today, Russian aviation has no money for fuel. The rocket men have no money for real shooting. And what will happen if the Department for Cooperation with the Army of the Moscow Patriarchate suddenly listens to the "ultra-Orthodox" fighters against computers,275 and the General Staff listens to the advice of its church interlocutors? Through the efforts of Orthodox radicals, Russian military power will be finally ruined...

In general, any culture is a virtual game with artificial images.276 Reading any book moves a person from the world of everyday life to the world of other names, other plots, other problems, anxieties and joys. Even our worship (which is by no means reducible to its "cultural-symbolic" side, but undoubtedly has this side) includes this moment of man's removal from his everyday thoughts and feelings and his transfer to the world where "today Jesus is coming to Jerusalem."

And there is a danger of playing with the secondary reality of culture, forgetting that it, this reality, is not primary. There is a danger of getting carried away by collecting and comparing the shades of the palette, the features of the composition – and through absorption in the aesthetic, forget about the ethical. Archpriest George Florovsky, even before the invention of the computer, called this danger "the heresy of aestheticism."

Man has always overestimated the creation of his own hands – he has created idols. There are no new sins in the virtual world. Everything is old. Does a person not want to leave virtual reality for the real world? But what is in this passionate captivity of the new? Was not the dream of "Anna around the neck" the same passion, the same excessive absorption of man in a completely imaginary world? Isn't it in virtual reality that a careerist lives (even a church careerist who dreams of a "cross with decorations")?

This is a manifestation of the most banal paganism: the worship of the creature instead of the Creator. And it doesn't matter what this creature will be: an idol, an order, money, human glory or some other "virtual reality"... But it does not follow from the fact that creation can deceive us that God's creation must be hated or destroyed. You just need to learn how to use it correctly. The fact that an idol can be made of anything does not mean that we should create a desert around us, destroying everything that can, hypothetically, become an idol. In the end, the struggle with idols can itself become an "idol" when a person makes the struggle "against" the meaning of his life.

But if a person has not learned to cry in virtual reality – over a book or a movie – he may never learn to have compassion for living people. After all, the maximum that a book character demands from you is feelings of compassion. It does not require real deeds, real help (whether it is prayer or charity), it does not require any sacrifice. And yet, as one poet said, "why does the word cry take your breath away. Does it mean anything – on paper, and not out loud?" So, if the virtual cry of a fictional character left a person indifferent, did not cause the slightest response in his soul – will such a person notice the pain of a real neighbor, especially if it is not written out so artistically and openly, but is hidden or manifested not at all "aesthetically"?

After "chats", it may be more difficult to communicate with real people. And this is an escape from reality, from complexity. But for someone who finds it too difficult to talk to others face-to-face, online dating can be a stepping stone to breaking the ring of self-isolation.

Virtual worlds of computers help many people to overcome the barrier of alienation, make up for the lack of communication, help to find like-minded people (through the same Internet networks and e-mails), teach them to listen to others, hear their words, teach them to defend their opinions and beliefs. Electronic computer mail and the Internet can help to find interlocutors who, by virtue of their faithfulness to Orthodoxy and humanity, are alone in their real everyday environment. But they can meet each other in virtual space.

Of course, there are also dangers on the Internet. They are primarily related to anonymity. The person in it is often nameless. What Alexander Galich once said about the Soviet country can be applied to the electronic world: "Over block-panel Russia, like a camp room, the moon is like a camp room." A number instead of a name. An Internet user is an invisible person. He sees everything – no one may know about his presence.

The Internet is a reality to which you have no sense of duty. Anonymity makes it possible to treat the Internet as a reality devoid of a moral dimension. This, again, is nothing new. In the past, people often sought to lose their name, to gain anonymity. They – at least for a while – "got lost" in foreign big cities and "pulled back" there. Remember the behavior of Soviet "business travelers" or "New Russian" tourists in Europe. So the Internet is not to blame here again. You just need to remember that even in virtual reality you have to be a human being and you have to be a Christian.

The task of religion at all times has been to give a human, morally meaningful, value-based dimension to the world in which man is immersed. It is important not to fight against virtual reality and the computer world, but to give them a vertical – a human, moral and hierarchical dimension, it is necessary to ethicize this sphere.

If the Orthodox leave the Internet, its world will become flat. Sects will remain there. So isn't it better to show your own activity instead of cursing their activity? Not to condemn printing houses for printing "depraved" publications, but to create their own printing houses, where the same technologies for reproducing texts will reproduce church texts.277 Not to condemn the demonism of television, but to invest church money in the creation of their own TV channel. Yes, there are nasty pages on the Internet. But it is all the more important to create our islands of light there, so that a person wandering on the Internet can catch his breath on them. Precisely if we leave somewhere, this sphere becomes completely hostile to us.

A computer and its networks are simply a technique that helps people transmit and receive information. And what kind of information it is depends on us. If some Orthodox Christians have nothing to say to people face to face, they will not be able to do it remotely, with the help of a computer. As you know, there are people who, "if they keep silent, will pass for smart people." But the means of modern informatics and journalism make our world transparent. They require words and arguments from a person. If one has neither, what can one do, the world of computers and television simply exposes one's lack of talent.278 And there is no need to sulk and be offended by cars! In the beautiful words of M. Markish, through the Internet "people are given only the opportunity to use technology for good. We cannot control the behavior of others; we can use this opportunity ourselves."279