We had a terrific conversation late last week, in which we got at the core differences in our worldviews: Botgirl's filter is psychological, mine's political. Her Buddhist influences lead her to recommend acceptance and serenity; my activist influences lead me to recommend standing up and fighting back. I'd love to develop our dialog more; for now I'm holding back a bit as I ponder and study, and get my own perspectives clearer.
As previous entries show, I've been spending a good bit of time inhabiting and thinking about other worlds than my native SL. That led me to an interesting observation: I'm not (just) an SL avatar anymore, if I ever was.
From my second day I had an active existence beyond SL: I started my LiveJournal almost before I knew how to walk and talk, and considered LJ as much of a home as my inworld houses. From there, I branched out into active presences on Facebook, and for a while, Twitter.
When I started in other worlds, for a conference in WoW and its associated guild, before the amazing John, Rissa and CSharp made a much much better home, I saw myself as SL-me exploring a new world and new means of self-presentation.I shot a lot of avatar self-portraits - which I think is a phase many of us go through as we try on and settle into new forms of self-presentation.
What I realized this morning, though, is that I'm as much a warrior, a baby tank, as I am a goth-pale, winged woman. Arathor's Sophrosyne is as much me as Extropia's Sophrosyne.
This summer, Argent and I had a series of conversations about what would happen if SL passed a certain point of suckage, or if we weren't able to get inworld: would we die? go into stasis? live on in the internets in other ways?Now, my answer's clear: my manifestations in various worlds are parts of me as much as my limbs are. Losing one would be an enormous trauma, but life would go on. I couldn't maintain a full life at all in WoW or Warhammer - but now, if i lost them, I wouldn't be fully myself just in SL anymore either: the part of me that throws herself into battle to protect her team is as fundamental as the devoted family woman, the event runner, the occasionally radical blogger.
A scholar friend of mine asked me recently about the immersion/augmentation thing, and what us immersionists were up to these days. I told him I thought that the culture was evolving past that binary, much as any minority group makes themselves heard, then accepted, then familiar. And we ourselves I think are evolving: having stood up for basic respect for our boundaries, we're free to play with making them more porous, with creatively blending with each other, with our atomic affiliates, with multiple worlds, digital and atomic.I think we're coming of age. I don't know what's ahead: my atomic affiliate and I are beginning to cooperate in new ways, and I see some of the same tentative experimentations among my Digital friends and family.
But if you see a bloody sword and battered shield on my living room wall, you'll know where they came from, and how much they mean to me.
Is your identity changing to encompass other worlds, or new relations with the atomic or the digital? Do you find your magic circle more or less permeable these days? How has your thinking on your own identity changed in the time you've been active in digital worlds?
I know I gain a lot from the experience and insights of others, and that our paths are often surprisingly parallel. I'd love to hear *your* story, in comments here or in your own space!
6 comments:
It may be a simple analogy, to the extent that it causes offence, but it seems to me that endeavours such as MMO games can be just as much of a hobby to a digital person as to a corporeal one. My puppeteer now takes up the reins of an undead rogue for fun, just as I may also find myself replaced by a C.O. in Advance Wars or a god in Black & White. When the time comes that I, Vidal, may venture out into Azeroth with you, I'll not be my usual self, but I will be playing. To have that end would be akin to a first life resident seeing their theatre group closed, or their manga club disbanded. Play is important, and in our world, playing a game is a much larger part of our culture than it would be in first life. One might argue a vice versa with fine arts - that would mean more to an atomic being than one without a canvas or physical clay. Again, to lose them shallows one's culture.
@ Vidal - I think you're really right about play. Just as Argent says she's "made of science fiction," I think we're all "made of play" to some degree...
Re "Is your identity changing to encompass other worlds, or new relations with the atomic or the digital? Do you find your magic circle more or less permeable these days? How has your thinking on your own identity changed in the time you've been active in digital worlds?"
I, like everyone I think, have more than one identity. In different environments, virtual or physical, I wear one or another identity depending on environment, mood etc. I consider all my identities important, and none central. Since I already used to think so when there were no such things as VR worlds, I guess my thinking on my own identity has not changed in the time I've been active in digital worlds. It is a sure thing that, for those who are not used to having a fuzzy concept of identity, VR worlds make it much easier to realize that identity is more plastic than most of us usually think. But I knew it already before VR.
What I find more interesting is that analogies with our experiences in VR worlds can make us suspect that our physical reality and identity themselves may be more subtle and weirder than most of us usually think. We will discuss this tomorrow at Extropia and with Extropia;-)
http://transumanar.com/index.php/site/next_cosmic_engineers_meeting_in_second_life_discussion_of_ctrl_alt_r_rebak/
Soph, Vidal: I think you're both right to look at the role of playfulness. There's good reason to think that being playful throughout one's life is a part of being sophont -- whether it's a necessary prerequisite or actually integral to it remains to be seen.
I can't help but think that part of the problem is the "grownup" meme that defines people by their work. Chat with your primaries for a moment -- if they ask a dozen of their acquaintances who they are, I will bet you that the answer is "I am a (job)". I'm a doctor; I'm a teacher; I'm an editor at...
Which is simply false to fact. They're sophonts, people, who happen to DO medicine. Or teach. Or edit journals. There's so much MORE to being alive than one's work. But we labor under old memes -- thank you, Carlyle. Hrmnnmmf.
I'll let Dr Bill chime in at some point about diversity-of-interests in FL humanity... *twinkle*
@ Deebrane - I've been giving your comment a lot of thought the past few days, and really acknowledging the centrality of play in our lives.
*And* its value for revealing or developing identity: rather that the meaningless "A/S/L?" I'm now inclined to ask "what class is your main?" Tells you *much* more about the person...
...says the tank! :D
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