New World Notes

Botgirl Bodhisvatta: How To Gain Real World Enlightenment With Your Avatar

She's perceptive, she's innovative, she's mysterious; does Botgirl Questi also have a solution for acheiving real world enlightenment through your avatar?  She proposes five steps for doing just that; it goes something like this:

1 - Take on an avatar identity that's very different from your real world self.

2 - When your avatar experiences inter-personal conflict and stress, observe how these impact your real psyche, even though they're only happening to your avatar.

3 - Learn to identify and transcend this misguided reaction through practice.

Sojourner's End: Mourning A Beloved Community Leader

Direct SLURL teleport to The Sojourner's Memorial at this link

When it came time to describe Second Life's leading figures for the official guide, I wrote this about the Resident named The Sojourner:

A one-woman demonstration of the power of Second life as a social tool, Ms. Sojourner has been a tireless volunteer and organizer in SL for nearly two years as a founder of Shockproof, a support group for stroke survivors, and as an event planner and organizer on the Dreams sim, home to endless building contests and holiday fairs to benefit a good cause.

That was in 2006.  And yesterday, the woman behind Soj (as her many friends called her), died of cardiac arrest.  A multiple stroke survivor, she devoted the last four years of her life building Dreams into a thriving support community. And as members learned the news of her passing, they streamed into Dreams, lighting candles, creating memorial sculptures and signs.  ("Some of the Dreams group had become quite close to Soj," someone explained to me, when I arrived. "They received phone calls early in the day.") When I visited the impromptu memorial site a few hours ago, some were already there, silently gathered; some only learned the news as they arrived; some hadn't even known her, but knew Residents she'd touched, and came anyway.

"[T]his sim has been full of people all day," SamBivalent Spork tells me. "It's been wonderful to see all the people here.  Everyone had an inspiring story to tell."  That would include SamBivalent himself.

Take The New Survey On Your Second Life Spiritual Beliefs

His first study on religious beliefs related to the metaverse yielded fascinating initial results, and now RL/SL academic Soren Ferlinghetti is hoping to create a larger sample.  Soren tells me you can take it even if you took the first version (and after all, your beliefs may have changed since then.) "I'm really hoping for a nice representative group of SL Residents," he tells me.  As do I, because I'll share the results here.  Go here to take it.

The Soul Of Second Life: In SL Spirituality Survey, 48% Open To Mind Upload, 62% To New SL-Based Religions

Mr. Ferlinghetti at Koinonia, a Church of Christ establishment

There are churches, synagogues, and mosques in Second Life, but has the world itself shaped the community's beliefs on religion?  According to a new preliminary study by a New York academic known in-world as Soren Ferlinghetti  (university site here), very much so.  Soren began compiling poll data last year, and just sent me the early results, and they're striking.  He believes a larger sample will be needed, but "some interesting results, though, include the fact that nearly 50% of survey takers would consider uploading their minds into SL if it were technologically feasible," he tells me, "and the majority consider earthly religions relevant to SL."  Just as fascinating to me, 62% are open to the possibility that new religions will arise from Second Life itself (38% of those answer "Definite/Probably Yes"), and even more extraordinary, 68% would consider those new creeds as valid as established material religions. 

Overall, the survey suggests a profound and pervasive sense of Second Life as a platform for transcendence.  In that regard, it's amazing that 17% report attending an SL-based religious service once a month or more.  In an unrelated academic survey, only 13.6% reported they regularly had sex in Second Life.  Broadly applied, in other words, on average a Second Life Resident is more likely to be praying, than copulating.

Of course, the chief caveat is that this is a small sample, and likely a somewhat self-selected one. Fortunately, Soren says he'll soon compile a larger survey base, and I'll link to that when it's available.  In the meantime, you can e-mail him about his research at this address.  For now, I've published his current results in full after the break; it's a broad-ranging survey, covering usage hours, religious affiliation, even dreaming about SL.  Read on, and offer your insights in Comments.

GAINING MY RELIGION

The Roman Catholic Cathedral featured in "Where Two or More Are Gathered"

"Do you think that new religions could arise in Second Life and possess as much legitimacy as real life religions..?"  That's the first question in a short but provocative survey posed by Soren Ferlinghetti, IRL a East Coast professor writing a couple books that'll explore spirituality in SL (among other related topics.)  The answers to the survey will help him shape his studies.

Go here to take it, and discuss the questions asked there in Comments here.

Update, 5:45pm: Before taking the survey, you may want to read more about virtual cathedrals, mosques, Jewish temples, and other attempts to bring the divine into an online world, at this archive of stories.

SACRED SPACES IN THE METAVERSE

This red rock formation is Uluru in The Pond, an Australian-themed continent in Second Life created by Oz telecom giant Telstra.  It's a recreation of a famed outcropping of the same name (also known as Ayers Rock), and when you try to climb it, you're blocked by a force field, and forbidden from walking any further.  "Cannot enter parcel, not member of the group."  This is a fairly common message, invoked by SL landowners who want to bar their property to outsiders; in this case, however, the underlying meaning of "group" is more profound.

Because in this case, it refers to the Anangu aborigine tribe, and the Telstra corporation is blocking entrance to virtual Uluru in an attempt to respect their indigenous intellectual property rights-- as applied to an online world.  Read here:

A CRISIS OF FAITH, CONTINUED

I wondered how the Avatars of Change had voted on the question of whether Islam was tolerant enough to allow Muslim Residents to join their inter-faith metaverse group.  The Confucian founder of AoC had departed before the final tally, however, so I visited one of the group's new leaders, a BDSM aficionado who built the synagogue in a Jewish neighborhood that is festooned with Israeli flags.  I had to wait a few minutes, because she'd turned off the town's anti-gravity setting to deal with the griefer she just caught trying to build a swastika in the sky above the temple.

"Someone was being a dork earlier," Beth Odets shrugs, by way of explanation.  "You know, the silly things people do at synagogues in virtual worlds. It was no big deal."

A CRISIS OF FAITH

The Avatars of Change are among the first groups attempting to create a new spirituality unique to the metaverse.

“We are an ecumenical religious and cultural order, united by the Avatarian Way,” the group charter announces. “May Great Avatar Smile Upon You!” Last week, it was near two hundred Residents strong. “It's more about people of good will collecting for charity and establishing quiet places for meditation and discussion,” Change’s founder Taras Balderdash tells me.

By designation, at least, it is interdenominational, welcoming members of every faith based on traditions rooted to the material world. So Avatars of Change count among their followers Christians, Jews, Hindus, and even more exotic sects, all greeted as brethren by every member with open arms.

Residents who are Muslim, however, have an extra hurdle to leap. That’s because Balderdash recently put a group proposition up for a vote:  "... Islam is not a faith that is tolerant of other faiths and therefore cannot be Avatarian. Please vote yes if you consider Islam tolerant of other faiths and a valid Avatarian Way." 

The vote, as Taras Balderdash put it to me mildly, caused “a lot of misunderstanding, a little stubbornness (that's my part), and a democratic process.” Nonetheless, he continues, “if people feel very strongly that they have to accept belligerent intolerance as an Avatarian Way, then I want nothing to do with the Order.”

This is the challenge of creating a new kind of religious affiliation in Second Life, separate from the world that was left behind. To explore this uniquely modern burden of faith, I visited a Confucian Scholar in a sky temple that loomed high above a shopping mall— and later, with a dreadlocked Sufi mystic in a steampunk dirigible hovering near the sea. 

THE WORLD FROM MY WINDOW: THE MOSQUE OF CHEBI-- AND MUSLIMS IN SECOND LIFE

Drown Pharoah at the mosque's entrance

For his World from my Window entry, Drown Pharaoh told me about the Mosque in Chebi, next to a Christian cathedral, and of course, that led to a broader conversation on the place of Islam in Second Life.  His utterly fascinating insights on Muslims in the metaverse, after the break.

THE WORLD FROM MY WINDOW: THE MONASTERY OF FELIX MERITUS IN LILL BURN VALLEY

"January 2007," Man Monnett writes me, "I discovered the valley called Lill Burn Valley.  It was empty and peaceful. I wanted to keep this, and started building the Monastery of Felix Meritis. Buying big plots of land to ensure the peace and quietness of the Valley made it into this spectacular area.