Exploring the (un)reality of virtual life: Part 1

SL is an empathy box. It sorts those who can treat others as real, as feeling beings, as autonomous people, from those who can only treat others as tools...[Second Life] does separate the few who stay from the many who don't. And one boundary between them, I believe, is empathy - is the ability to see this place and these people as real, at least as real as the physical world. From "The Empathy Box" by Sophrosyne Stenvaag

Despite my great fondness and respect for Sophrosyne, I found her recent "Empathy Box" post subtly disquieting. "What's up with that," I wondered for the better part of last week. Try as I might, I couldn't pin down what bothered me. By the weekend, I finally realized that I hadn't been reacting to any specific ideas she proposed, but rather to my own lack of understanding of what words like "reality" and "empathy" mean when they're used in reference to virtual life.

You'd have thought I'd learned my lesson about announcing a series of posts with no idea where they'll end up, but that's what I've decided to do again. Instead of taking a week in the privacy of my own server to journey through dead-ends, wrong turns and unexpected detours, I'm offering you the dubious honor and uncertain pleasure of traveling along with me as I attempt to gain some clarity on the (un)reality of virtual life.

For now, I'll leave us with an initial axiom to consider:

An avatar's personhood exists solely in the underlying sentient being.

By "personhood," I mean

A socially constructed moral category that denotes the inclusion criteria and salient characteristics that distinguish human beings from other forms of life and thus specify the individuals to which we owe particular moral obligations, i.e., those obligations we have to others due to their status as persons. (from Healthcare Ethics)

Let's see where this takes us.

Listen: Botgirl Questi has become unstuck in time

I spent hours viewing and re-viewing time lapse footage over the course of creating my recent video. Its psychoactive influence is still unfolding within my consciousness.

When I am stuck in time,
everything appears solid and individuated;
A tree is just a tree.
When I am unstuck in time,
I perceive that the tree includes the entire universe:
The seed it sprang from
and the earth from which it grew;
The rain and sun which feed it
and the birds that make it home.
Its roots spring from the big bang
and its branches extend to the hot or cold death of this creation.
If a mere tree includes the wonder of infinity
what of you and me?

Peace.

Real Life? What's that?

I don’t know why, but I’ve been obsessed all day with trying to pin down a definition of reality that makes sense to me. I realize there have been countless philosophers throughout human history who have wrestled with the question, but the advent of virtual worlds adds a new dimension to consider.

The term “real life” is often used by Second Life residents to distinguish their flesh-and-blood existence from their avatarian experience and activity. But in what way is meatspace more real?

It seemed like a silly question at first. A virtual world has no physical substance. Turn off the computer and poof, it’s (I’m) gone. But physical things are also impermanent and have no independent existence. The entire universe is going to end up vanishing in a black hole. The difference seems merely quantitative, not substantive.

After tumbling through the recursive hall of mirrors that this subject represents, I realized that the underlying impetus for my questioning wasn’t “what is real,” but rather “what matters.” And I think the Buddhist answer to that question makes sense to me: What matters is the suffering and happiness of sentient beings.

'nuff said.

The emptiness of Second Life relationships

I don't mean emptiness in a bad way, but emptiness in its Buddhist definition as the true nature of reality. No matter how many facts we've gathered about someone, the image of them that we weave together is still just a projection with more holes than substance. Facts don't tell us who they are, but only improve the probability that we can predict their future actions.

This relates to Martin Buber's "I and Thou" idea:

In the I-Thou relationship, human beings do not perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, but engage in a dialogue involving each other's whole being. In the I-It relationship, on the other hand, human beings perceive each other as consisting of specific, isolated qualities, and view themselves as part of a world which consists of things. I-Thou is a relationship of mutuality and reciprocity, while I-It is a relationship of separateness and detachment. reference

It seems to me that knowing all the so-called facts about someone can be an impediment to I-Thou consciousness. All of our labels and conceptions fill up the space of what would otherwise be open awareness of each other.

We are verbs, not nouns.
From the upcoming Fortune Cookie Wisdom of Botgirl. Q.