My entry is appearing on Eladrienne Laval's blog, "Eladrienne's" Other Life at http://elinsl.blogspot.com
Second Life® and it's Role in the Discovery of Self
In discussing the search for self in Second Life®, I find this quote to be a surprisingly apt one.
For years the advent of the internet has been seen as the great anonymizer. People can be anything, anyone, in a world where the only persona one knows is the one you paint yourself. Critics have disparaged that phenomena as creating an atmosphere ripe for the untrustworthy and mean-spirited. When all anyone knows of you is a screen name, it's easy to feel the usual accepted norms of societal interaction can be ignored without consequence. And yet, the ability to be almost anyone also allows others to try out new sides of their personalities, parts of themselves that may already exist, but are not often seen in "real" life.
That opportunity for greater self exploration and expression can only be magnified in the emerging virtual worlds.
Platforms such as Second Life® provide an opportunity to take the concept of trying on a new identity one step further. The first step comes in creating the avatar, the physical appearance and first look of the persona. One can look like anything. But that is only the beginning. As the main website states: "The Second Life world is a place dedicated to your creativity." You not only build yourself, but work with others to create the world that will shape your experiences.
These are the words one can find written in almost any online profile I have written, except perhaps my old and infrequently updated LiveJournal profile. They define the person I see myself as today. Yet, this is also an image I have created over the years, a projection of hopes and wishes and little discoveries made along the way.
In my Second Life® profile, this statement has been accompanied by a succession of snapshots depicting my avatar in various incarnations. Each is a reflection of the 'me' behind the avatar at a given time, from the barely knowledgeable new user to my first skin and so on through each new persona I have tried on. Is any of them the 'real' me? Or all they all me, recognizing one aspect more than the others for a moment of time? Or perhaps a part of me that I hide in my daily life?
The image accompanying this article illustrates this question of identifying the self amoung the many projections. Each panel depicts a version of self that is separate and distinct from the others, no connection other than the typist making the choices. Which one is the truth and which the fiction? The truth is that they are all a little bit of fiction created to explore a different truth.
Perhaps, even more than the ability to change our appearance at will, the social phenomena of the 'alt' has provided the greatest sense of freedom to those searching for a new bit of themselves.
There are many reasons a person might create an alt. Obviously, there are the shadier reasons, such as playing tricks on others or hiding behind a new face to participate in the sort of obnoxious behavior discussed in the opening of this article.
But, there are more benign reasons as well.
Even when we try to use our avatar's personality to explore the hidden depths of ourselves, that personality can become almost a brand, a role from which it feels as uncomfortable to break character as we might feel in 'real' life. In order to continue to explore and move past the plateau we have created with one personality, we may feel the need to create an alternate one. We need that second personality to break away from who we are in the first, to create a separation between the possibilities before us and the expectations that are placed upon us.
Or maybe we simply want to explore parts of ourselves we never see and don't want that experience spoiled by those who wouldn't understand those desires or who would try to dissuade us from such exploration? So we create an alternate personality in which to seek out new experiences and new people to share them with. Is it that we turn our backs on the old us? Not necessarily? It's certainly possible. Sometimes that may be desirable, even, the reason for creating a new mask to wear for a time.
But without change, can there be any growth? And isn't that what the search for a discovery of ourselves is? Learning to grow into the whole person? Is it then sometimes necessary to focus on one facet of that whole in order to better understand it's purpose in connection to the other facets?
We go about our daily lives, through work and family; we are receptionists and store clerks and programmers. We fill a role that's become the way the world sees us, the face we think the world expects us to see. But when we come to Second Life® and other virtual worlds like it, we're given an opportunity to set that face aside and be the person we want to be, whether that's someone totally different from who we are to the 'real' world, or merely a more defined, more complete version of that same self. And perhaps it doesn't matter which, as long as we open ourselves to the experience.
1 comments:
You use the word 'discovery' and 'create' in the same sentence as if they are different aspects of the same YOU. There is a self within that you were born with that at times was twisted with the twisted circumstances that self needed to grow with and out of those circumstances you expanded yourself to deal with them, sometimes very creative expansions.
SL has given all of us to explore parts of that original self that the world might find unacceptable or wierd. We've taken those parts over the years and tucked them away in a tiny Jack-in-the-box (also born as part of our defense mechanisms). At some point in time that little Jack-in-the-box becomes so full that the crazy music of our lives must stop and the top pops open, dumping a whole mess of 'stuff' in our laps to deal with or try to hide away again. SL has given so many of us a way to let that "stuff" become more public, to try on the parts to see how they fit and to experiament with them to see if they are worthy of keeping or throwing away. That's the creative part...we work with them, play with them until we've developed a persona/s that we feel comfortable in and which others seem to find joy in also. But that creativity comes from our core selves that society has broken. SL redeems us and lets us explore in a safe realm. My sage self that existed in Faeria felt very wonderful and now I miss that part of me, while trying to find acceptable ways of expressing her in RL and not being very successful. Maybe sages are not wanted in society, (and not too much in SL either for I was rarely sought out even there), which is o.k. because that was my experimentation. There was a time when sages were much sought after, but that was long ago and far away.
The untrustworthy and mean spirited are, and have been for generations, alive and doing their thing in every world, on every continent, in every time and place. SL just gives them another place and time to do their worse and again, those of us who care find ways, creative ways at times, to deal with them.
SL might be viewed as a trial ground which coaxes out, reveals, strengthens those parts of our original self (our soul if you will)that society found less than desireable and discouraged. SL is a perfect place to experience, reveal, and explore those parts and create a place for them in our adult selves. That's where the creation comes in - an exploration of parts of us that have always been and a new venue in which to examine them. Szasz's quote is very apt in explaining this. People have very often, most often perhaps, not found those parts of themselves that have been hidden in protective corners of ourselves. Those parts are created only to the extent that we let them come out in safe places, with safe people and allow them to give expression to our creativity because they've largely been deleted from who we are. We create them out of their hiddeness because that's the only way they can express themselves. If you can think something, it can exist because your thinking brings to life all that is within you and has been since you were born. It seems like you create something new because you haven't been allowed to experience for a lifetime.
You are right that we can be anything and anyone we want via the internet. No one knows who we are there, what we look like, whether we're popular or not, whether we're acceptable or not. We hide in the wires of cyberspace. Then a place like Faeria comes along and we become a bit more "alive" and are able to interact with others and test the acceptability of this persona/s that we've been experimenting with and getting to know and feel comfortable with. Suddenly we find that there are so many others who are experiencing that some freedom and are looking for friends of like mind who aren't afraid of communicating "strange" ideas and behaviors.
We all have made many discoveries over the years and have incorporated some and thrown some back in the dark corners because they've still not found acceptance in RL. Those that you HAVE incorporated into the person you are has enriched you and those around you. You didn't so much create them as you gave them the opportunity to come out of the darkness and try out what it means to be alive.
Your whole self is a compialation of all the parts you find and let free for the experience of life, the parts of you taken from young life on up, the parts that take the strength and commitment of an adult to say, "this is who I am and as I discover other parts that have been hidden, they will be added to who I am and that process will continue until I die." None of them are a lie. They are all a part of you, in process of integrating into the whole of who you are as you feel comfortable with letting them be.
I honor your growth, your changes, your bravery to allow those parts that may be less than what others might want to deal with. We love all the parts of you, even the hidden ones. Yes, SL is a wonderful stage for expanding who we are and I know you'll always find pleasure and excitement, contentment and fulfillment in your process of growth.
Dulcinea
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