In SecondLife (also called SL) the Sun rises and sets every 4 hours. Which means at times it can feel like time lapse photography. It also means a day in SecondLife is 6 days in terms of in-world experiences. Not only are the days faster, travel is instantaneous and effortless. Other than the occasional crash and relog, all of these activities are completely safe to your virtual well-being.
With no fear of actual physical harm and your true identity disintermediated, relationships are accelerated. Things you would never consider doing in real life are easily considered because it's safe. If you are using a free account you can even reinvent yourself if the experiment goes wrong and create a whole new you.
Unlike the streets of New York where people are reluctant to take on other people's problems, it is rare to find a situation where some avatar won't stop and take the time to help someone in trouble or learning the game, often even giving them Linden (the currency of SecondLife).
This faster paced life combined with the freedom to experiment with new things eventually means that the resident of SL will experience a spectrum of feelings that are often stronger and deeper than their real life counter part. Because nothing you can do in SL will cause you to die, you must learn to effectively deal with these new feelings. Some people do so by leaving SecondLife (I suspect many of them come back and start over as a whole new person). The feelings have still been felt and must be dealt with. The same safety and anonymity that gives you freedom also gives some people the freedom to be crueler or meaner than they would ever consider being in real life. I hope so anyway.
There is a line in the movie Fried Green Tomatoes that goes "that which doesn't kill us only makes us stronger." In the virtual world of SecondlLife nothing kills you, so if it doesn't drive you away, it ultimately makes you stronger. You learn to deal with feelings that are foreign yet strong. You gain a lot of "experience" in a very short time. You can lead a somewhat sheltered life in SecondLife but I believe most do so after having at least tasted some of the wilder parts of the metaverse.
In SecondLife, I am constantly around people from all over the globe. I find that they are much more like me than they are different from me. I think I had been in SL about a year when I stopped referring to myself as an American and started calling myself an "Earthling." I have sincerely come to believe that war is the product of governments or those who would govern and not the effort of the average person.
SecondLife also gives you the ability to be and do things you could not ever consider. I can sit on a mountaintop in a Japanese Zen Garden and play the flute while I meditate. It's a matter of just wishing I was at the Zen Gardens of Achemon or Yorokeikoku Teien. I honestly believe that, after nearly 3 years of play, my mind accepts the SecondLife experience of meditating on a mountaintop as being very nearly real. Especially if I put on Logitech Headset
So what?
In SecondLife I have also experienced some of the kindest and wisest people I have ever known. I have even evolved I believe. I am reminded of Herman Hesse's Siddhartha. I think Wikipedia sums it up brilliantly...
" Experience is the aggregate of conscious events experienced by a human in life – it connotes participation, learning and perhaps knowledge. Understanding is comprehension and internalization. In Hesse’s novel Siddhartha, experience is shown as the best way to approach understanding of reality and attain enlightenment – Hesse’s crafting of Siddhartha’s journey shows that understanding is attained not through scholastic, mind-dependent methods, nor through immersing oneself in the carnal pleasures of the world and the accompanying pain of samsara; however, it is the totality of these experiences that allow Siddhartha to attain understanding.
Thus, the individual events are meaningless when considered by themselves—Siddhartha’s stay with the samanas and his immersion in the worlds of love and business do not lead to nirvana, yet they cannot be considered distractions, for every action and event that is undertaken and happens to Siddhartha helps him to achieve understanding. The sum of these events is thus experience." - Siddhartha entry on Wikipedia.
Ultimately Siddhartha finds peace. I think those who play SecondLife long enough and do not approach it as a passive entertainment media where you bash system generated monsters or bad guys, ultimately find at least the desire for something more than just the baser activities of life. If you stay long enough, you will eventually find the classes, the discussions, the people who are trying to grow.
I think even SecondLife is feeling that pull, as they try to deal with the more overtly sexual aspects of the game. I think the reason they feel that pull is that SecondLife and it's residents are evolving faster than their real life counterparts.
Eckhart Tolle talks of "A New Earth ," I would be more prone to call it the original earth, but I think the widespread acceptance of his book points to a desire to have a deeper understanding of ourselves and our relationship to this life. Like Siddhartha, we glean that knowledge from our experiences. With much experience, the ones who are manipulative or delusional fall away and we find that there can be joy in just being what we are. What we are in SecondLife is our design. We can use the tool to remake ourselves again and again, throwing away what is inconsistent with our essence and accentuating what we really are as the sum of our experiences in SL helps us learn what that is. When you take away the option to kill or destroy, you begin to evolve more toward a life of harmony and peace. I sincerely believe such a life has one result - contentment.
I won't go so far as to say SecondLife could save the world. There's no reason to. I do sincerely wonder if the accelerated pace and the opportunity to grow and remake yourself does not create a better person. A better person who will return to reality (hopefully) and make it better too. I think today there are only a few of those people inworld, but I see lots of signs that that population is growing, while the others are becoming stagnant as the long term population grows "wiser" about the game and maybe even evolving as people.
Is SecondLife evolving the human race? I guess we shall have to wait and see.
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