The Internet's virtual worlds offer us diversions on a much grander scale. Indeed, thanks to virtual worlds like Second Life, we can lose ourselves in a rich, safe metaverse. We now face a clear choice between a captivating life of diversion, which existential philosophers like Pascal consider inauthentic, and the authentic life they favor in which one faces up to one's wretchedness.

But how much misery should one confront? In contrast with Picard's rescue of Kirk in Generations, consider the 1966 Star Trek episode "The Menagerie." Spock "delivers" Captain Pike, whose body has been terribly deformed in an accident, to a dream world created by the Talosians, who are masters of illusion. Pike decides to remain in his virtual world, young and handsome, dallying with the beautiful image of a fellow deformed crash victim.

In this extreme case, illusion may well be a wise choice. Diversion only looks obviously wrong if one holds that facing the truth is our highest duty, or, more specifically, believes like Pascal that we are all called by God (or, as Martin Heidegger would say, our ontological conscience) to take on the hard work, risk, and sacrifice required in answering our calling. After all, we do admire those, like Franklin Roosevelt, Itzhak Perlman, or Stephen Hawking, who, instead of identifying with an invulnerable avatar and diverting themselves by enjoying virtual successes, have struggled with their disabilities in order to respond to the call of something that matters crucially to them and gives their life meaning.

To existentialists like Pascal, indulging in a virtual life is the ultimate form of diversion to avoid facing the vulnerability of a real-world life and the joy that can come from doing so. When your second life is not going well, you can simply abandon the troublesome situation—your fickle friend, your lost love, even your avatar body and your identity. What you do has few consequences, so you are free to make commitments with fewer risks. After the failure of a virtual marriage you do not have to go through a real divorce. When your business fails in the virtual world you don't have to face bankruptcy. In short, you don't have to clean up the mess you leave. You can always just walk away. But as usual there is a trade-off. Nietzsche would presumably say that Second Life is like a masquerade. It offers cautious experimentation but misses the rewards of the bold experimentation only possible in the real world. Risk-free experimentation does not give one serious satisfaction. What, then, might be missing?

According to Søren Kierkegaard, lasting meaning comes from a hard-earned skill for which one has made a life of sacrifices, or a love that defines what matters in one's world, or an enterprise to which one has dedicated oneself. At the same time, such commitments make one vulnerable to accidents, humiliation, and, grief. In answering a calling you must be ready to risk everything for what defines who you are. Only then are you aligned with and blessed by an authority greater than any merely human authority, be it a god, history, a tradition, a lover, or something else that our practices show us is worth our total devotion.

Starting with Nietzsche, many post-modern thinkers have claimed that such an unconditionally committed life is rigid and restrictive and therefore less and less appealing, while a life open to experimentation and change has come to be seen as more and more attractive. The rapid growth of Second Life itself confirms this observation. But an experimental life lacks seriousness and focus. So the question arises whether our culture, or any culture, has practices that support a rewarding way of life that avoids the narrow focus and immutability of traditional unconditional commitments as well the hyper-flexibility and dispersion characteristic of life in our post-modern world.

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