Life

"Listen with an open mind, but don't try to remember this stuff. There's no quiz at the end." Jack Kornfield







Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Abilities and Possiblities...

Watching the real life news today.... I suspect most of you in the United States saw the story about the woman that was asked to resign from her job in the U.S. government after a guy posted an edited video clip from 25 years ago that appeared to show her racialy biased. A day later it turns out that any racial bias involved wasn't on her part but possibly on the part of the idiot that edited the video. That brings me to just another wonderful thing about Secondlife. Racism, or in most cases the lack thereof. Recently there have been a couple of incidents in Secondlife that have shown me that while this virtual world doesn't remove all of our individual prejudices, {witness the Palestinian/Jewish confrontation of a couple weeks ago} for the most part Secondlife is free of many of those situations. My experience here has shown me that visible color or the lack there of seems to make it very easy for the vast majority to simply accept another person for who they are rather than what they are. In my case about the only avatars that I shy away from by sight are the children. Never mind all the arguements for or against...in most cases I find child avies creepy. As a friend of mine has said...unless I'm in a roleplaying sim, actively participating... role playing around me is likely to get you laughed at. Now there are a few avatars that seem to carry a lot of real life baggage with them here. I'm thinking of wanna be bikers for one ....maybe they are real bikers...but I doubt it. I've known a fair number of real bikers and they just never struck me as those that would come to Secondlife. We have others as well...inner city acting "gangstas", male and female. {some have posted rl pictures... nah, they ain't ganstas!} Heck,I've been invited to a wedding by in world "mafia" types {big Pauley etc}. {couple of them posted rl pictures as well...don't look like any I ever saw!}

It's obvious that in Secondlife one often never knows the true persona we see. One of the most erudite avatars I've met here was a furry when we first met. A very close friend is blonde haired and blue eyed in Secondlife...trust me, I've visited the part of the world she lives in... but, after two weeks in Northeast India I never saw anyone with blonde hair.

Secondlife has the great potencial to expand acceptance in all worlds. For instance, there are a lot of men who really don't like women... I don't mean those men have chosen an alternative lifestyle necessarily, they just don't see women as their equal. In secondlife everyone is equal according to their ability. These abilities are color, gender, and ethnicaly blind. The possiblities are both endless and boundless and it really would be a sad thing to screw this chance up. And so it goes My love to you all, brinda Namaste नमस्ते

3 comments:

  1. In general, sl is better about this sort of thing, but not perfect.

    I get asked if I'm sick every damn time I wear my green skin. Can't a girl be green AND healthy? I like the character Elphaba from Wicked. Doesn't mean I'm a green witch. And my goth skins get complained about as well. I took so much crap for being gray as a noob I stopped hanging out at certain places.

    Racism is alive and well in sl.

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  2. yep, and sexism too, surprisingly enough....

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  3. Thanks for your writing Brinda. Ines Ogura

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