Last night, a new friend noticed when I referred to my avatar in the third person and it struck him. He says he thinks of his avatar as himself. I told him that I started dissociating from Opal the first time my heart was broken. It was my way of dealing with the pain. This morning, I wondered, what if I dissociated with my real life self? And -- boom! -- it hit me. I found one answer to the age-old question "Who am I?"
Who I am is not this physical body in the real world, and certainly not my avatar. Who I am is not the personality, not the mind. Who I am may not even be what we call the individual soul. All those are just tools to bring forth who I REALLY am. Who I really am is the sum of my actions, my experiences, my thoughts, my emotions, my memories.
But let me demonstrate how infinite that sum is. You see, my actions, my experiences, my thoughts, my emotions, and my memories are tightly integrated with the actions, experiences, thoughts, emotions, and memories of everybody I've encountered and everybody who has ever been affected by my actions. Life is a shared experience after all.
Therefore, who I am is also the sum of the actions, experiences, thoughts, emotions, and memories of all those people. And each of them is the sum of their own actions, experiences, thoughts, emotions, and memories, and those of every person THEY've encountered. And so on, until it comes back to me and goes around again. Ad infinitum.
So, who am I? I am you.
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Nice blog; it is helpful to analyze our new SL experiences. I was stunned my first time in. "Limitless capabilities" was the pharse the Apple II salesman expressed long ago about his computer, and I heard that phrase echoing when I arrived. It was a wonderous thought.
ReplyDeleteAfter a while I was reminded of the time my first girlfriend, we were each about 10, had me crawl through her backyard two-story doll house. I felt out-of-character and never went back to her house. In SL, I began to feel back in another doll house, though one much more pleasurable. These dolls, however, are animated with individual character. All the girls look either fantastic in their doll outfits, or they make themselves into something clever. But, I don't like really doll houses, especially R-rated ones.
Then, I thanks to ISM, museums, and other history or science based themes, I began to see how educational SL could be. I could see new operators of all types of equipment being trained here, though the physics engine is still a bit limited.
Also, I learned people in SL are more real than my early reaction warranted. They are still that summation you speak about, Opal. I've made friends in forums, how much more this possibility in SL and still be true to oursleves. My favorite so far is I can not only tell a joke, I can do comical things. [Especially since I now know you're me and I can blame you for my bad behavior. :)]
Thanks for the great feedback, Helio. As a thank you gift, I'm sending you the "Opal made me do it" shirt in-world. LOL. Feel free to wear it anytime you need a scapegoat. Just warn me, so I can put on my "Nuh-uh, I didn't" shirt. LOL
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