Arlo said to Ron: We are wear a multitude of masks. Many are threaded with a line of continuity, and often it is this "continuity" we seek as evidence of a "real self". Whether we seek this as a name (all my selves go by the name "Harvey", for example), or the boundedness of our corporeal host (my real self is whatever my body looks like), or, as you suggest here, a thread of continuous values (all my selves are "honest", or "kind", or "intolerant of wing-nut morons who think videogames are responsible for violence") that runs through the various "selves" we inhabit.
dmb says: That's roughly how George Herbert Mead saw it. He was a big influence on James and Dewey. Basically, he said that the developmental process begins with particular social roles. This was long before second life, of course, but simple games like baseball served the same function psychologically. Even as children we learn to play different roles in different situations and a person's individual identity is formed in the effort to coordinate and negotiate these various roles. As Mitchell Aboulafia puts it in his essay "Mead: Social Experience and the Individual", "If the only 'selves' we possessed were those of roles, then we would be left high and dry in explaining the seeming continuity of the self between specific performances" (127). But I wouldn't call these "masks" because that implies the "real" face is hidden. Instead, I think the idea is that these roles are what give us our various faces. Once we gain an individual identity, a face that coordinates and negotiates all the social faces, and deliberately set out to play new roles with the knowledge that they are roles as such, we're playing at a whole new level. This is where we can sort of take charge of our development, challenge our own sense of self, decide to change our selves in particular ways. This, it seems to me is a crucial part of the way adults continue to grow and develop. And I can't help but wonder if fantasy role-playing games in cyberspace actually serve that ongoing developmental process or if they actually divert it into meaningless channels. I can't help but wonder how much time you and Krimel have spent playing wizard in cyberspace and how much different you'd be if you spent that same amount of time playing a less virtual role somewhere with actual people. I'm certainly looking at this from the outside. Its always been my opinion that life is too short for video games. I think I played one once, about 25 years ago, and it just didn't seem like fun to me. Funny, a friend of mine has a Ph.D. in video games and teaches it where I go to school. If anyone could convince me, it'll probably be him. But I recently bookmarked the Second Life starter page and might check it out but I'd guess it'll take many hours just to get going and, frankly, that fills me with dread. Oh, and it was nice to see a picture of you. You're a very handsome dude. Call me. _________________________________________________________________ Want to do more with Windows Live? Learn “10 hidden secrets” from Jamie. http://windowslive.com/connect/post/jamiethomson.spaces.live.com-Blog-cns!550F681DAD532637!5295.entry?ocid=TXT_TAGLM_WL_domore_092008 Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
