Meditating On Air @ Second Life Integral

[C4Chaos]

(Crossposted from www.c4chaos.com)

I've been brushing up on my Second Life skills since Conversation Week @ SL. I think it's high time that I immerse myself in this virtual realm. But before I do I wanted to catch up with the history of this metaverse. So I read the book The Making of Second Life by Wagner James Au on my flight from Dublin. Very good read. This book delivered on its promise.

My next task is to hone my SL skills so I can navigate swiftly and contribute to the creative minds in-world. In the meantime, I'm enjoying teleporting to cool places where integral peeps are hanging out. As you can see from the snapshot below you can meditate on air above the glowing Integral Multiplex @ Second Life Integral.

"The Second Life Integral group formed last fall, and located a few months ago to AMO, a new Second Life island created by Evonne Heyning and Amoration, a 501(c)3 project of the International Humanities Center. Amoration is a new media nonprofit organization dedicated to creating a culture of conscious compassion, and is based in Los Angeles."

Nice. Kudos to the integral group for creating a kosmically-juicy virtual world!

See you in-world!

[C4Chaos]

hi, thanks for riffing on this topic. i've posted a follow up to express a more detailed perspective. make sure to follow the links for more context. check it out when you get the chance and keep the ball rolling :)

~C

[marmalade]

BrightAbyss -

I'm sorry that it feels discouraging to you. I think I understand your general viewpoint. The development of technology has seemed to be outpacing social development ever since the beginning of the Industrial Age(If we as a society have gone mad, it happened long before SL... probably long before either of us was born). And with the Computer Age, this outpacing has been extremely magnified. The technology isn't specifically the problem, but rather that we aren't as quick and inventive with our social development.

But what is the answer? Can we stop the development of technology? And should we try? Or should we try to bring social development up to speed?

More importantly, can technology like SL help bring social development up to speed? I don't know if it can. But that is my hope... naive or not.

I also get discouraged by life maybe for different reasons. Because of this, I look for those things that give me genuine hope... like I'm sure you do. For whatever reason, such things as SL give me hope. For whatever reason, SL gives you discouragement. I don't know why that difference exists. Hope and discouragement are mostly non-rational responses to the world.

The negatives you point out are true, but I'd like to think that the positives will outweigh in the longrun.

However, the fact of the matter is that it discourages you. You don't need to explain your feelings. Discouragement is a very real response to the world as it presently is. And if it discourages you enough, probably the only helpful response is to ignore it as best you can... because we'll probably be seeing even more developments such as SL in the next decade. Like it or not, here it comes.

By the way, have you heard of Steven Vedro's book Digital Dharma? In it, he speaks of technological development and how society responded to it. This doesn't dismiss your criicisms, but he gave examples how every new technology was met with social criticisms and how often the same criticisms were carried over again and again. Certainly, many people have worried about tv having the same effect that you brought up about SL, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same hadn't also been said of the radio and telephone. Vedro, for example, wrote about the same worries about disrupting relaionships that were brought against the telephone are now being used towards the internet. And I'm sure those critcisms were true to an extent. But we seem to have finally have figured out how to integrate telephones into our normal lives and my guess is that we'll eventually do the same with virtual worlds.

I must admit I really don't know. I have no basis of understanding by which to clearly judge SL as good or bad. It interests me and that is all I can really say.

[Steven Nickeson]

I think the issue here is a little more complex than what can be covered by shooting from the hip with a yea or nay.

Perhaps we should consider the issue from as many perspectives as possible. For example, Integral SLs seem to be thoroughly Integral Folk, their cheerful tracks are all over the Integral Province’s web spaces. This makes me think that SL will be perfect for them. Briefly my reasoning runs thus:

—SL is currently the cutting edge of media technology that is generally available to the public.

—Media is highly integrative. (This is old news.) This is why Jean Baudrillard called his vision of the supremely mediated future “Integral Reality,” and its supreme media affacianados, “Integral Man.” (This is a spiralized type of evolution from Nietzsche’s 19th Century “Last Man,” through Marcuse’s 20th Century “One Dimensional Man,” to Baudrillard’s 21st Century “Integral Man.”)

—Integral Philosophy, with its emphasis on transcend and include on one side of the equation, and on the other with its vision of a monolineal, spiralized evolution, is situated as a mediating, map-like interface between the territory (the object) and the Integralite Pilgrims (the subjects). It structures the “10,000 Things” into a sort of homogenized whole with its perspective and with that integrative perspective homogenizes its constituency into its monolineal vision. It is exactly what media in general accomplishes, but media in general does not have Integral’s single-point focus.

—I don’t know of any philosophy around that has become so adept at developing media as Integral. Integral/Media is a match made in Nirvana.

—Integral SL is the perfect paradigm for bringing Integral Philosophy into its full fruition—Integral Man, who like its evolutionary predecessors will always seek to be comfortable, homogenized, inert, superfluous.

[BrightAbyss~]

I don't think it's a matter of 'play' per se but rather what KIND of play. IMO, the ability to seriously play is a sign of maturity. That's not what I question.

I question the 'necessity' or even practicality of spending time on 'second life' and the metaverse when we could be out exploring, changing or otherwise engaging our fist life in the 'real-verse'?

Virtual reality by definition detracts (and distracts) from real life - that is what it was designed for and that is what that particular mode of technology in fact does. Virtual reality is a surrogate reality where the 'mind' is at play beyond one's real body. SL promotes ego interactions without bodies, thus separating the mind and the body, thus not authentically human, thus promoting pathological disassociation and the elevation of fantasy to an effectual status.

I'm sorry, but that is just the way it is. That's not an opinion that is an empirical observation.

The only potential that VR has is the continual alienation of bodyminds from themselves and from the ecology.

Just because a technology is inventive doesn't automatically mean it is appropriate or conducive to the health of nature, self and culture. Our generation has tended to believe that all communicative technology is an advance of civilization and mostly innocuous, but that is simply not the case.

Think about the modes of production and labor and resources it takes to support the widespread use of something like SL... How many microchips fill landfills to get where we are? Have we gone mad? TO say that there's nothing wrong with a technocratic simulation-addicted civilization is to ignore the ecological cost (thus ignoring the marginalized people upon which such costs fall) that is accrued.

So we have two levels of critique here: 1) critique of the psychological effects of the MODE of technology itself, and 2) the socioeconomic effects of embracing the kind of lifestyle/society in which such technologies/practices become widely available.

I don't want to go too far with this discussion because, frankly, it is quite discouraging to me to witness a whole generation of people abandon critical thinking and avoid ecological values for the sake of shiny gadgets and slick virtual simulations (basically ego-symbolic masturbation). There is a whole tradition of critical theory that speaks to this stuff (cf. the frankfurt school), and you can look to McLuhan and Baudrillard for some of the more philosophical nuances.

But to reiterate, I have no problem with creative utopian-fantasy (for the reasons you state) and certainly no problem with play - but to think that technology such as Second Life and World of Warcraft are "simply" extensions of novels and art is to seriously mistake the radical differences between these MODES and their effects on hominids, and to seriously abandon any commitment to an embodied integral life.

It is a sad world indeed where 'fun' is valued more that prudence.

[marmalade]

Well, I think anything taken to extreme can be problematic.

Why is spirituality so often opposed to imagination?

Why is maturity so often seen as being in conflict with play?

There is no reason why virtual realities need to detract from 'real' life. In fact, they can contribute to it. The people you meet in virtual reality are real people, and people all of the time meet in the real world people they first met on-line... even marry them sometimes. Of course, the whole internet is a new phenomena and virtual reality is even more new. Integrating new technology into normal life and mainstream society will take time, but the very newness of it is what makes it exciting and wondrous. The inventiveness of humankind is one of the few things that gives me a real sense of hope for the future. Virtual reality isn't important in and of itself, but its important in what the potential it represents.

C4Chaos mentioned in one of his blog entries about Second Life reminding him of his childhood. I think the world would be a better place if more adults were reminded of the excitement they felt in childhood. Jung, later in his life, re-learned the importance of play and he would spend hours building imaginary cities and drawing pictures.

I haven't been on Second Life. So, I don't know much about it, but I am interested. I've never been into that kind of thing... role-playing games, video games, etc. But I've always loved imagination and fantasy. And I'm overjoyed to see fantasy growing in popularity... in the movies and on the web. A part of creating a better world is first imagining it. We could all learn better how to use our imaginations and Second Life is the type of thing that teaches that.

Plus, from what I can tell, people enjoy it... they're having fun. We can't be serious all of the time... and I'm saying that as a very serious kinda guy.

[MetroPunk]

exactly brighty
seems like we have whole generations
of well intentioned young people
who take for granted the pros of tech
while not confronting the shadows

content to slide through slick mediums
of fabricated context
addicted to communication for its own sake
at play in the field of ego gratification

and without the foundations for
critical-social consciousness

I.T jobs and sweet gadgets subvert 'first life'
change
making for a smooth transition to a technocratic
disneyland of detached imaginal-ity

hyper-postmodernism
advanced capitalism

a surrogate civilization indeed

[BrightAbyss~]

R,

You seem to be missing the point. It's more fundamental than questions about the "how" people are using SL. I'm sure there are some very good people using the medium for very creative purposes - but the fact remains that SL is a superfluous extension (made possible through life conditions of exploitation) requiring only our conceptual minds, rendering our visceral bodies passive, and as such is an inherently alienating MEDIUM regardless of the supposed message. (cf. McLuhan)

In SL you get minds interacting with minds, for the sake of pure (purified/refined) ecstatic communication, as opposed to bodyminds interacting with bodyminds for that sake of embodied exploration.

And no doubt *this* website is just such a medium, but far less so. What I lament is 'surrogate' role that a medium like SL or World of Warcraft takes when too much (and this is the key) time and energy gets spent on such activities.

If we are too busy/distracted living a "second life" (without bodies) what becomes of our first life (with bodies)?

Ego-mind detached from body is NOT integration (as "expansion") but alienation.

[C4Chaos]

"In this case I will have to agree with Metro. "Virtual worlds" are extensions of EGO seeking gratification in hyper-conceptual aesthetic 'spaces'."

again. this would depend on *how* people use virtual reality and the underlying *intention*. for example, don't the Tibetans practice dream yoga (or lucid dreaming)? to me, that is similar to virtual reality, albeit in a different state of consciousness. nothing wrong with expanding ego as long as it's in the service a more embracing consciousness, whether in-world or in the "real" world.

my suggestion. give Second Life a try before judging it based on bias and hearsay. if you don't like it then it's probably not for you. but go easy on dismissing the explosions of creativity of millions of consciousness in the virtual world by labeling them as "ego inflation." don't forget that we're communicating *right now* in the digital realm using in the digital medium. virtual worlds just extends the communication by putting consciousness together in the digital mind-space in real-time.

my two cents.

~C

[BrightAbyss~]

In this case I will have to agree with Metro. "Virtual worlds" are extensions of EGO seeking gratification in hyper-conceptual aesthetic 'spaces'.

I would tend to believe that post-rational insights (waves of awareness) reconfigure our mental relationships with flesh - as a release of inflated conceptual habits (and the trappings of symbolical pleasure).

In virtual realms 'I' can fly - but in the primary world 'I' am limited by the background of the Real. Of course 'I' want to fly because 'I' wants and wants and wants.

Its all ego inflation - and it distracts from the problematic nature of the primary world, thus subverting authentic political actions and blinding us to the realities, structures and mechanisms of greed and power which allow and generate the very conditions from which virtual worlds become possible.

Who pays for the luxury of virtual ego gratification? What political and ecological dominations become necessary in order to produce such virtual opportunities ("products")? Virtual communication for its own sake detached from the very conditions upon which it is dependent? Who cares right?

Especially when Redbull [TM] is free in the multiverse...

[C4Chaos]

it seems like we have both have our bias here. i don't know where you get the idea of "fetishizing technology" but from my perspective, virtual world (i use virtual because second life is technically virtual and so is this social network we're communicating on). i see no fundamental difference. it's an extension of consciousness of people meeting in mind space. it's another channel of communication. people will use it depending on their intention, whether for play, crime, transcendence or whatever.

we're already doing it on *this* digital space right now, yes? are we fetishizing technology? or does technology enable us to extend expand consciousness?

narcissism is everywhere. digital, spiritual, even integral.

my two cents.

~C

P.S. but don't take my word for it. even Congress is now paying attention to the virtual world. resistance is partial :)