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.

Word Cloud

Here's a "word cloud" displaying the 100 most frequently used words in this blog.

Created by Wordle, a toy for generating “word clouds” from text that you provide. The clouds give greater prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text.

What thought is this little chick thinking?

What emotion is this little dude feeling?

Polyamory for Two

Seven posts later...

After seven days chasing the tail of compulsive curiosity, I finally pulled its arrow from my heart. I embarked upon a quest to answer all of my burning questions. Today I set a new course to question all of my burning answers. I invite you to join me.

Suppose a man is struck by a poisoned arrow and the doctor wishes to take out the arrow immediately. Suppose the man does not want the arrow removed until he knows who shot it, his age, his parents, and why he shot it. What would happen? If he were to wait until all these questions have been answered, the man might die first." Life is so short. It must not be spent in endless metaphysical speculation that does not bring us any closer to the truth. Thich Nhat Hanh, in Zen Keys

Jana's turn-around

(Continues previous post.)

Jana finally woke up. She felt much better, but knew that she'd probably fall into the same nightmarish state again if Jolene didn't show up that night.

A few months before, Jana's best friend from high school had offered to introduce her to The Work of Byron Katie and go through the Judge-Your-Neighbor worksheet with her. Jana gave her a call and arranged to get together that afternoon. To prepare, Jana downloaded the worksheet and answered the questions in writing:

1. Who angers, frustrates, or confuses you, and why?
I am angry at Jolene because she disappeared and didn’t have the decency to let me know what happened.

2. How do you want them to change? What do you want them to do?
I want Jolene to stop hiding from me and let me know who she really is.

3. What is it that they should or shouldn’t do, be, think or feel? What advice could you offer?
Jolene shouldn’t be afraid to commit to our relationship. She should let go of whatever made her run away from me and then she should come back.

4. What do they need to do in order for you to be happy?
I need Jolene to come back to me.

5. What do you think of them? Make a list.
Jolene is smart, funny, beautiful, sexy, adventurous, imaginative, assertive.

6. What is it that you don’t want to experience with that person again?
I don’t ever want to feel abandoned by Jolene again.

Later that day when her friend arrived, Jana went through the Four Questions and the turn-around:

1. Is it true?
2. Can you absolutely know that it’s true?
3. How do you react, what happens, when you believe that thought?
4. Who would you be without the thought?
Turn it around

Here's a transcription of Jana's work that day:

Friend: Alright Jana. To start, read the worksheet out loud all the way through.

Jana: (reads work sheet)

Friend: What stands out to you? Which line has the most punch?

Jana: That's easy. It's "I don’t ever want to feel abandoned again."

Friend: Okay, so Jolene abandoned you, is it true?

Jana: Yes. It is true.

Friend: Jolene abandoned you. Can you absolutely know it’s true that Jolene abandoned you?

Jana: (sighs) No. She could be dead for all I know.

Friend: How do you react, what happens when you believe the thought “Jolene abandoned me."

Jana: I freak out and go nuts.

Friend: Describe the feeling that happens physically when you think the thought "Jolene abandoned me."

Jana: I get short of breath. I feel like I can’t breath. My throat gets dry. I feel nauseous. I feel hot.

Friend: Anything else?

Jana: I feel nervous. Scared. Terrified.

Friend: Who would you be without the thought “Jolene abandoned me.”

Jana: I’d be happier. Calmer. Back to normal.

Friend: Who would you be with Jolene?

Jana: Probably less desperate. Now that I think about it, this started before she disappeared. I would feel flashes of abandonment, but I just ignored them. So I guess I’d be less clingy. More secure.

Friend: Turn the thought around.

Jana: What do you mean?

Friend: Statements can be turned around to yourself, to the other, to the opposite and occasionally other variations. So one example would be “Jolene did not abandon me.” Is that true or truer for you?

Jana: Damn. Yes. Sitting here now, it doesn’t really make sense that I labeled what happened as Jolene abandoning me.

Friend: Give three genuine examples that Jolene did not abandon you.

Jana: I’m not her child, so even if she left it wouldn’t be abandoning me. She’d just be leaving.

Jana: I don’t know what happened, so she may have had a good reason not to be able to let me know that she wasn’t going to be there.

Jana: Nothing really changed except that I got upset. So, our relationship is what it always was as far as I know.

Friend: Turn the thought around to yourself

Jana: hmm? I abandoned me?

Friend: Can you find three examples that would make it true or truer than “Jolene abandoned me”

Jana: Well, part of me knew that I was getting upset about something that could easily be untrue. So when the part of me that knew better gave up and stopped contradicting those thoughts, I abandoned myself.

Friend: Another example? It could be with this situation or with your life in general.

Jana: I don’t know why I gave so much power to Jolene. I mean, I really hardly know her and it felt like I wanted to die just because she didn’t log in for a couple of days. So I abandoned myself when I let myself believe I wasn't enough without her. Like she was my air or my heart.

Friend: Third example?

Jana: There were probably a lot things I could do to snap out of that crazy feeling. But I just gave in to it and let myself be possessed by all that shit. I could have called some other friend or calmed myself down and thought through everything. But I just got to a point where I gave up on myself and let it all happen.

Friend: I hear you. Find another turnaround. “Jolene abandoned me”

Jana: I abandoned Jolene. Ha, that’s pretty funny.

Friend: Find three examples. See if it’s true or truer.

Jana: Well, like I said, she could have been dead or hurt or in trouble. But I didn’t worry about her or how I might be able to help her, I just cared about what it meant to me.

Jana: Maybe if I was more open with her, she would be able to be more open with me. I guess I was just interested in how she made me feel, not who she really was or what she needed.

Friend: Find another example. Imagine yourself crying, hurt over Jolene and find “I abandoned Jolene.”

Jana: I abandoned my good thoughts about Jolene so that’s like abandoning her. I closed my heart to her the minute I felt abandoned. So I abandoned her. I know that. And I really have no idea about what happened on her side.

When Jana logged into Second Life that night her perception had definitely shifted. It was possible that she'd short-circuited the chain of troubling thoughts and feelings enough to prevent the cycle from recurring. If not, she had learned a simple method to strip them of their power. By the way, it turned out that Jolene's electrical power had been out for two days after an ice storm. Coincidence?

Forgiveness is seeing what I thought happened, didn’t.
Bryon Katie

One more post to wrap this baby up and then we're out of here.