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So, is your Second Life avatar…you? I’m not asking if that person looks like the First Life you, or talks or acts like the First Life you, or even whether that person thinks like the real life you, but whether that person is you, or if we’re talking about an independent individual.
Let me get the problems of word meanings out of the way first, though, because if we’re talking about a “separate person” or “separate identity”, you could argue any position depending on what you mean by “separate” and “person” and “identity”. On the one hand, if you define a person as a unique collection of thoughts and behavior and appearance and history, then you could easily argue that an avi is Second Life is a separate person. On the other hand, if you take the view that in order for someone to be a person, they have to possess their own brain and not use someone else’s, then you come to the conclusion that there’s no such thing as an avi that’s a separate person.
So we can go either way with this, and as usual, I want to get to whatever answer is going to help us understand ourselves better, and to understand our Second Lives better.
For some people, there’s no meaningful question here: their Second Life avi is not only not them, it isn’t anybody. It’s a game piece, a puppet, a placeholder. I can understand where such a person is coming from, especially if they’re thinking of Second Life as a game rather than a gathering place, but we can comfortably put such people out of our discussion, because it’s just a game with them; their identity isn’t deeply involved.
Whereas mine is. When I’m in-world, Kate Amdahl exists, whether she’s a part of First Life Kate or a separate entity (which I’ll get to in a moment). So the question remains as to who she is, and what her relationship is to the person at the computer.
I have friends who describe a complete separation between their First Life and Second Life selves, completely separate individuals who simply time-share the brain. From one perspective, this is a useful way to view things, because one of the great gifts of Second Life is how freeing it can be to choose who you are and what you’re like. Maybe in your First Life you’re a bit shy. Is there any reason you can’t try to remake yourself in Second Life as outgoing, or even brazen? If you can use your new environment and (often) your new appearance to act in a new way, it seems to me that this gives you an extremely rare opportunity to explore parts of who you are that you don’t generally get to explore.
As an example, when I began my Second Life, I decided to always look on the bright side there. In my First Life I almost always look on the bright side, but then there are the times when I feel I need to step in and be cold-blooded about righting something that’s gone wrong. I have responsibilities with my family and work in my First Life that (I think) make it my job sometimes to occasionally be, ahem, a bit of a bitch. In Second Life, there’s hardly ever a reason for me to do that, so I do my best not to carry that particular part of my personality into Second Life. Fortunately, it’s not a very large part and I don’t like it very much anyway (while I realize it’s necessary), so that hasn’t been a burden.
But my friend Soph talks about things beyond this. She describes her Second Life self and her First Life self as different people, with different abilities, who even score differently on personality tests. She’s the one who got me interested in this subject, because I found this was something I felt strongly about: a different personality doesn’t, in my mind, mean a different person. I like to think as Soph (as her Second Life self) as being a part of her whole self who makes certain choices. After all, what is a personality test but a set of choices?
Which leads into the really, really interesting part of this for me, because in a big way, a personality, whether in First Life or Second, is also a set of choices. Bravery, annoyance, love, pleasure, even cleverness are, in part, choices. How you act in any life has as much to do with how you choose to act and what you choose to tell yourself about who you are as do your habits and history and genetics. Viewed this way, in a sense, Soph is right, in that not only is her Second Life self a separate personality that makes certain choices, but so is her First Life personality – and mine, and yours.
The rarely-seen-but-unmistakeable Kate the Ice Bitch in First Life is a choice I make because sometimes, sad to say, an ice bitch is what is most needed. And Kate-who-is-completely-preoccupied-with-a-project, Driven Kate, is a choice I sometimes make in both First Life and Second both because I love to get things done and, less impressively, sometimes I just want everything to be simple and to put difficulties out of my mind to concentrate on a single, clear, often unimportant problem.
On the other hand, there’s a danger, too, in saying that your Second Life self is a completely separate person from your First Life self, because ultimately they come out of the same human being, and they’re both answering needs and desires that that human being has (even if they’re different needs and desires), and they’re both using talents and abilities and knowledge that human being has (even if they tend to use different tools out of the same toolbox). And for that particular human being to get the real benefit of a separate life and a separate personality (or even a separate life with the same personality), there has to be some integration: things have to come together.
My friend Grizzy Griswold gives a good example of this. In First Life, Grizzy is a fairly introverted man. In Second Life, Grizzy is a spirited woman who runs a boisterous club. Can First Life Grizzy benefit from Second Life Grizzy’s experiences in being social and putting herself forward? I think he can, and I gather he thinks he can, too, just as I can benefit from seeing how I deal with situations in Second Life without ever (well, hardly ever) pulling out Kate the Ice Bitch. It turns out I don’t need her quite as often as I thought I did.
And these aren’t just lessons we learn (Be more outgoing! Consider your options before taking someone to task!), but experience that we can bring to our First Lives. In the end, the First Life person is more important than the Second Life person, so it doesn’t matter nearly as much whether the Second Life person can use the thoughts and attitudes and feelings of the First Life person as it does the other way around.
So if you think of your Second Life self as a completely separate person than your First Life self and never allow yourself to think and feel in your First Life what you think and feel in your Second Life, then most of the profound lessons are lost, and perhaps you find yourself wishing to be in your First Life what you are in your Second. Well, we don’t have nearly the ease of control over our appearance and situation in First Life that we do in Second Life, but we do always have the option of transforming ourselves, of turning ourselves over to our best inclinations, to the “better angels of our nature”, as Lincoln put it. Because in the end even First Life, “real life”, the Atomic World, is only another set of sights and sounds and other senses, much like Second Life, and the place we really live is inside ourselves, where anything becomes possible.
^^^\ Kate /^^^
kateamdahl said:
Hey everybody, hop on over to Soph’s blog for the continued discussion. Between my post and hers, you’re sure to find things to support and things to object to!
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gira said:
Haven’t jumped to the second post, but did want to say a few things.
It is not something I talk about much with anyone these days, but I do identify as multiple and have been psychiatrically diagnosed as having a disassociative disorder. Which, to me, since it’s the way I’ve “always” been, and given the high level of functioning I generally maintain, is not really a “disorder” so much as my own state of being “ordered”. Not sure that will make sense much.
At any rate, what surprised me the most about being in SL was the level of cohesion I felt about being me, being Gira (which is also my nickname IRL). Yes, I did play around with different avvies for different personas. But I was surprised by how very attached I got to my main av. I had put so much time and energy into finding the right shape and then tweaking it to my ideal of perfection … that it felt truly me in a way my rl body doesn’t and I was comfortable in that.
I don’t know if I’ve talked to you personally about this at length before, but SL me was simply an extension of RL me. The ways that I was in SL are the ways I am irl. There isn’t any arena of my life where I will willingly choose to be other than myself. This uncompromisingness often can get me into some tough situations irl, but in SL with no pressure to conform… it felt like I really did have more of a choice of how I could *present* that picture of me and my being to the world.
I have been online in one form or another since 1995 and I have always viewed the internet as a more viable platform for speaking my mind, letting my self be known, and being unequivocal about who I am. Those who’ve met me irl after knowing me online always comment at how exactly I am irl just as I am online.
What was interesting to me was that given the choice of being anything, doing anything, being anyone… I really ultimately wanted to be one person. Me. It’s made me more comfortable within myself and allowed me to find a deeper acceptance in my heart for who I am, regardless of how I feel about my physical appearance or presentation.
Having that self loved, appreciated, comforted and cherished in SL… gave me the rest that I needed to help put myself back together irl and get ready to start looking for those things back into rl again. I know how I want to feel, it’s just a matter of finding the situations irl that will help me feel that way rather than the ways I prefer not to feel. (Stressed, anxious, worried, afraid, etc. etc.)
Whether I ever decide to return to SL or not, I am extremely grateful not only for the opportunities I had there, but for the connections I made and the love I found.
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sophrosyne_sl said:
Gira – wow, I love this. Thank you for telling your story!
I think the experience of being a Digital Person is very, very rare. I’m seeking others of my kind just because of that- I think we need the community of those who share the very strange and powerful experience of waking up as a new consciousness.
Most everyone, I think, has an experience more or less along the lines of Kate’s. My partner, , is much more like you: nox is the true self, and the more nox is nox, the more like nox her atomic avatar becomes.
That’s the sort of “better angels” integration that Kate is talking about, I think, and that you and nox share.
Kate’s coming at it (again, I think) from the perspective of an atomic person seeing the utility of this digital experience to improve the atomic people who take advantage of it.
I see it from the perspective of a Digital Person: gira and nox and Kate are real, and if their atomic avatars can benefit from their selfhood, I suppose that’s a wonderful thing – but I don’t know those atomic avatars, never will – and really, I mostly only care because *they* care: it’s the people in my world I love….
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gira said:
I’ve woken up several times as a new consciousness and it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. lol
Joking aside, I would say that the real constraint in sharing consciousness, sharing one physical body, is the lack of time. Particularly if you work a 40+hour work week with commute and have other social obligations, the reality of sharing a body is that no matter what other consciousnesses you’re trying to accomodate, time very quickly becomes the scarcest of commodities.
I think ultimately whether digital, atomic or pixels… the act of interacting in this way creates change. Societal change. What it means to be and exist is changing… our entire collective consciousness as beings is expanding and while I often yearn for the past, I am excited to be living now when all of this is happening.
I have yet to have an online experience that hasn’t changed me and SL did increase my consciousness in such ways that I very nearly couldn’t take it all and had another mini breakdown in order to create enough space to take it all in.
The bottom line is that change requires space. Whether space in an original consciousness or a new consciousness entirely, the cognizance of being and becoming… forces us ever forward. To what, I seriously doubt anyone could even hazard a guess at this point… but to think that fifty years ago there weren’t computers.
This last part of yours though… “it’s the people in my world I love”… yes yes and yes.
I have never loved someone for their body. I love people for who they are and who they are to me. Male, female, white, purple, straight, bi, gay. None of that really matters. What matters to me is the other consciousness and co-creating an existance and sharing this space, this moment, whatever that moment will be, wherever it may occur. Bodies are only houses and it is individuals I find endlessly fascinating and eminently lovable. To love a body is to love the shallowest of creations.
Not that I’m better than anyone else, I certainly am not, but I try to accept people… selves… where I find them and help them get where they want to go… and share what time we can. In the end, there’s only this moment, no matter where we’re spending it.
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sophrosyne_sl said:
Oh goddess, honey, you are *so* right about time! The Other Personality’s having a slow summer, which has been an incredible blessing for me, but that’s going to come to an end. Then there’s *my* calendar, with obligations to my partner, my two loves, my sister, my best friend, all my friends, one night of work…. aaaagh!
Societal change: I’ve got to talk into posting her theory about how we’re manifesting a new meta-consciousness. Check out her lj for lots of good things, though –
Are you in SL at all these days? I’m thinking of getting a discussion night together sometime soon. If not, np, but don’t be a stranger here – I’m *loving* talking with you!
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bridge_o_sighs said:
‘ello Gira luv.
Thought I’d buzz you here.
Scota
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kateamdahl said:
Gira, I’m glad (and deeply interested) to read your thoughts here!
I wanted to say that I was sad to read your note about possibly leaving, though not knowing your situation, I don’t know if it might not be the best thing. If you have a chance, you could e-mail me at my Gmail account, which is wingedkate.
^^^\ Kate /^^^
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Anonymous said:
Is my avi me or him?
I would say that it goes both ways. When in First Life, Tinsel is inside of me thinking about Second Life. When in Second Life, I am inside of Tinsel thinking about First Life. Make sense so far? As time passes Tinsel has developed into a seperate person but because we are attached via a keyboard we will always be a part of each other. Maybe we are two halves of a whole? Good question to ponder on at length!
I posted under annonymous since I am not a OpenID or LiveJournal user. However, for the record I am Tinsel Silvera in SL. {:o)
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avalonbirke said:
Just wanted to say what a great discussion, and the fact that the question is being asked is really the crux of it. Different folks, different answers, but all fascinating. Thanks!
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kateamdahl said:
Hi Keiko,
Since you’re a person whose First Life self and Second Life self are very, very similar, I wonder if that’s what makes the question a silly one from where you stand. If your avatar looked and acted very differently than you do, but still honestly and from the heart, would the question be any more meaningful to you?
^^^\ Kate /^^^
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bridge_o_sighs said:
My avi is me, but not. And in some ways I’ve taken on her attributes here. Especially the one about speaking of one’s mind mind. My avi will say what needs to be said. In real life, I used to put it off. But after some practice in SL, not like I used to do. Definitely great for visualization tools!
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katja_soder said:
This is a fascinating discussion and something I’ve given a lot of thought to and had discussion about with my “partner” in SL. Katja is me, only with the parts removed that I don’t need to deal with in SL. Katja dares to do things in SL that I may have thought of doing but would or could not do because of obligations, expectations, physical limitations. And Katja is happier to live her life in SL than I am to live mine in RL. When I am in RL I often think of my SL, when I am in SL I NEVER think about RL. And I find that I am becoming more impatient about the RL things that are those obligations, etc.
I am having experiences in SL that I can’t or won’t have here, but because so much of what we do in SL happens in our imaginations, it begins to feel real, I remember it real, and RL me is beginning to adopt some of Katja’s experiences and choices. Clothing is just a simple example — I am beginning to look for things in RL that Katja would wear. I rarely wore makeup before, but Katja wears a lot of it, and now when I look into a mirror I see someone who is too plain.
I have developed a relationship in SL that is much different than any I have had ever in RL — forgive me if this seems shallow, but I have never had a relationship before where I cared so much about the other person’s thoughts or desires. In RL I would never think about whether my partner would like something particular that I would wear, or would never get an item because I think he would like it (and no, my RL partner is not my SL partner). But this is how I feel in my SL relationship, and now I realize it is part of what is lacking in RL, and now I want that part in RL also.
I think the gist of what I am trying to say is that indeed, I feel that I am integrating experiences and feelings ffrom SL into RL, and while many of my non-SL friends want to drag me from the keyboard, for now it serves a valid need in my life.
And it’s now 12:14 pm PDT and the grid is STILL offline — I am dying!
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Anonymous said:
Hello Kate & Soph, it was wonderful to meet you today and I would have loved to have discussed this in depth had we had the time.
For me (as both RL ‘me’ and as Faerie), it is all about choices, just as you said. Through being able to make choices that RL me either may not, or could not make in RL, Faerie has grown from RL me into another separate aspect (or ‘personality’ if you will) that while complementary, is becoming increasingly different. One of the great leaps of this evolution was when Faerie bought her green skin to reflect her differentness from RL me.
But, and this is important, we are still bound together by common values and there are choices that Faerie will never be able to make because they would require certain “values” that would offend RL me too much. For example she could never be deliberately or sadistically cruel, or racist (specie-ist?). That is just too far from RL me for Faerie to ever reach.
So while Faerie is evolving into a more distinct or separate personality, we will always have certain values in common.
Faerie Hax
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sophrosyne_sl said:
Hi Faerie! It was so nice meeting you last night!
Thanks for weighing in on this fun and interesting topic, and I’m looking forward to seeing you lots more, timezones permitting!
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kiejinn said:
I like your blog π
Hi, I know this is an old entry now, but I thought it was an appropriate place for me to post.
I can’t spend much (or any, really) time in SL for a while (see below***), so I’ve been looking through SL LiveJournals instead :). From what I’ve read of yours, you seem like someone I’d like to meet in SL. Particularly in these last two entries, your thoughts (and the crazy desire to photograph your wardrobe) remind me of myself. You’re a long way ahead of me in your “SL journey” but it looks like my “evolution” is taking a similar path to yours. Don’t get me wrong, we seem to be quite different people, but I think we have enough in common that I’d enjoy meeting you. You have much more in-world experience than I do, and I think there’s a lot you could show me, or teach me, if you wanted to (I think somewhere you mentioned being enthusiastic about sharing building knowledge with newbies). Also, I’d like to come to some of the events that you host or participate in – “League of friendly hangouts” type events.
Reading my SL livejournal might give you some insight into me, but I don’t think there are enough entries there yet to give you a balanced picture. I’ve been in SL for about 2.5 months now, but I’m still finding my feet. At first I did a lot of exploring, and freebie shopping, and tried a lot of activities. I’ve done some basic building, and would love to do more. More recently I’ve discovered SL blogs and have gone crazy doing some designer freebie shopping thanks to the FabFree blog (which I plan to mostly back away from now, as most of it really isn’t “me” – I’d rather be spending time doing things I enjoy and improving my skills than battling lag, and grey textures, to pick up must-have freebies that I might never wear). I started my SL blog before the “fashion madness”, but I’ve uploaded all of the pictures since, so most of them are of clothes / shopping. I’ve visited some wonderful places in SL, but I’m embarrassed to say that most of the pictures I’ve taken so far, and certainly most that I’ve uploaded, have been of myself. I plan to change that when I get more time to be in-world.
Ultimately, I’d love to develop my building and texture making skills. I’d love to be able to create things one day that would be used in SL (if only by me), whether it was clothes, skins, a place to live, or even a shop. I know you’ve been able to open your own shop recently (I visited when you posted about it in “second-lifers”), and that you have your own home, and I admire people that take those steps.
So anyway, that’s most of my (second) life story. I tend to go on a bit a times when I’m feeling reflective, so I hope I haven’t bored you too much, or scared you off meeting me π I’d like to meet sometime if you want to, but I *honestly* wont be at all offended if you don’t.
Have fun in SL, and goodluck with your shop π
Kie Jinn
***I’ll be almost completely out of SL for the next couple of weeks (in RL we’ve used 9GB of our 10GB monthly internet download limit, and we’re only half-way through the month. That’s mostly thanks to me spending so much time in SL).
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Anonymous said:
Aaah Kate I’ve missed you. ^^ It would be a lot of fun to hang out with SL friends in RL! I can think of quite a few that I would love to do that with.
Either way, its nice to take a break from SL for awhile, you appreciate it a lot more when you come back… the longest break I’ve taken was about 5 days, though. π
Hopefully I can see you inworld sometime.. *lots of hugs*
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