I sent this as an e-mail to a friend:
Second Life = Plato's Cave
The Indianapolis Star had a front page write up on Second Life. Linda showed it to me. I didn't read it...didn't have to. Linda was so dumbfounded by the whole concept she told me about it. She has never heard of Second Life. Apparently there's a gal in Indianapolis that makes virtual clothes and sells them in Second Life. Last year she made $150K. It's almost tempting to go into the program and see what I can sell, except the whole thought of creating clothes in Photoshop and selling pixels to other pixels or vectors seems ludicrous to me. And buying "real estate" that exists in some kind of ether world makes no sense to me.
You may hate Second Life because it's clunky and inefficient. I hate it on principle. I see how we are creating a place where we can go and fall asleep. It is soooooooooooooo anti-buddhist. The point of this life, according to my beliefs, is to wake up. But virtuality is a sleeping pill.
Why do we (we=the masses) hate the material world? Why do we hate our bodies? Why do we hate bumping up against anything that is fully material? This has always been the case. When Christianity began, the hermits left the world to try to live with spirit...to be "one" with God. Even buddhists will take themselves out of the world to try to get that "oneness." Christians mortified the body, trying to subject it to Spirit and we see residuals of that today. "We" truly hate the material world and it saddens me.
You are familiar with Plato's Cave, right? That's what computer gaming and Second Life and all this virtual stuff reminds me of. I see backs turned away from the world and watching shadows on the monitor.
So, on principle and according to my beliefs, I cannot and will not enter a "second life" whether it be the online community of that name or any other kind of virtual addiction.
My concern for myself is that I have entered the virtual community. You are reading it. I e-mail. I use Photoshop. I sit in front of monitors most of the day.
My concern is to not become addicted...addicted to the opium of virtuality.
5 comments:
I understand and agree. But I think people are so hungry for interaction and feel so free to be their "real" selves with one another that places like Second Life will always exist, in one form or another. The anonymity afforded in this environment lets people share their inner selves - the taboo thoughts we all have - in a way that there are no real repercussions to their actions. I am both intrigued and repulsed by this notion. I wish people felt they could be free in the real world. But then there would be chaos and social unrest. We can have any of that if we want society to function.
This makes me think of all of Plato's Republic (home of the cave theory) and a whole lot more. I recommend that everyone read it and we can all discuss it...
I meant to say that we can't have any of that if we want society to function...
OOPS! :-)
It is a conundrum, I agree. We as a society don't accept the social misfits...or even those who are socialized but still have their "dark" side that they feel the need to express. And so they (we) go looking for a safe place to express it.
Second Life, in and of itself, is not a bad place...nor is it a good place. It is just a place. We make it what we want.
What I see, though, very intimately is the addictive qualities and how people choose to give up their material world for the virtual one, how they turn their back to the world and face the monitor. Yes, for them, the virtual world is far more exciting and doesn't hurt them as much as the material world. But for me, I choose to live in the world I incarnated in...this world. It is my intimate instructor and savior. I'd rather live facing the world and turning my back to the monitor.
I don't think Buddhists seeking oneness attempt to escape anything as you say... When they seek "oneness", they go to great lengths seeking to forget the self so that their minds will stop pointing inward and start pointing outward towards a greater awareness of both themselves and the world and how they fit into it... if they go off seeking solitude, they are trying to escape the constraints of society which usually isn't so understanding of such pursuits
the first and sometimes only step of most meditation exercises is to practice as much awareness of and focus on every one of your physical senses at the same time as possible
As for the rest, I'm just not sure I understand your perspective. I come from the perspective that the only reality we have is our pure, individual experience. The only thing which divides virtual experience and "real world" experience, in my opinion, is the range of physical senses which are commonly involved in each. Eventually, that divide probably won't even exist.
In the last few years, I've been slowly exploring the thought that the world revolves around storytelling. Every life is a story in itself. We spend so much time and energy trying to share our stories with other people. The internet, books, plays, movies, games, etc are just ways of expanding our range of experience by incorporating other stories. The greater the range of experience in our lives, the more fulfilling they are and the wiser we become. "Real Life" only allows for so much range or quantity of experience. We spend so much of our lives engaged in repetitive, bland, unrewarding, and non-expansive experience -- things like going to the bathroom, commuting, cleaning, and doing the same meaningless thing at work every day. The advances of the virtual realm, the study of storytelling method, the pursuit of convenience (i.e. less time spent engaged in unrewarding experience), medical science... all this, to me, is the pursuit of more experience.
Escape is one aspect of the virtual world, I admit, but not all escapism is reprehensible. Off the top of my head, I recognize two major kinds of escape that the virtual world is involved in -- escape of problems and escape of limitations. I see issues with one, but I see beauty in the other.
Btw, your blog has been really interesting to read. I admire how open you've been here. I wish everybody were as involved in the class as you have been (even though you're not technically taking it, right?)
Right. I haven't been in the classroom itself for weeks. I do hope to come for the final presentations, though.
As to Buddhists and all that you said...yes, that is my understanding of what they do. They have the Sangha and the Dharma...the Sangha is the community and the Dharma is the teachings. The community is the community of monks and nuns and from what I remember. The "lay" people participate in the Sangha by supporting those who have gone into the monestary to find enlightenment. It is their understanding and belief that not all people will attain enlightenment in this life and aren't supposed to because they aren't called to that yet. But in supporting those who have retreated from the world, they are actually preparing the world for enlightenment because every person who attains enlightenment can then take that back out and help others. The Boddhisvata. I am butchering this horrendously because I'm trying to fit the universe in a nutshell and I'm not equipped to do that (yet...or perhaps not during this lifetime).
I apologize because I misrepresented the beliefs of Buddhism by collapsing their Way into Western religion and that wasn't fair nor was it right.
As to virtuality...frankly, I don't believe anything is real...it is what we believe it is. So my "real" world is an illusion anyway.
Unfortunately for this post, I didn't explain why I am so upset about "virtual" life and why I am adverse to it and don't want to participate in it. And I won't go into it because it is personal and involves others...not just myself.
I love how you talk about storytelling. I am very much a believer in stories. We do not survive without our stories. But I want my stories to involve tangibles. I want to have touched the tree that I talk about rather than describe it. I don't believe that we will transcend the material for the spiritual...that goes against my love of the body and my love of this earth. I believe the spirit yearns for the body (the material) because without it the spirit cannot come up against itself and see itself and I believe it needs that. The corollary is that it then needs to be released because the material world can be so heavy and confining. Both work together through lifetimes.
Maybe the escape from Samsara is possible. I'm not ready for it. I don't want it. I want to incarnate fully and freely first. I need this world and I need the body to be fully alive and full of love. I'm not capable at this point to do so in any other way.
I don't know if I am making sense at all. There's only so much you can express when the whole of it is inexpressible. And when there's so little space here....
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