Saturday, November 1, 2008

Second Life

What I most like about Second Life is that, at least superficially, it is a bit like a Brazilian carnival (on the other hand, it also reminds me of the lifeless Giant supermarket where I shop, so different from open-air markets throughout the world, with their real-world smells and agitation). To my parochial, earth-bound taste, there are sinister sides to SL that are not (at least to yours truly) so appealing: a kind of fake-light, all-enclosingness to SL (like the neon shadeless illumination at Giant), as if SL were more "After" Life (without Virgil!) than a door-opening "Second" Life. And, could there be nothing better, for the sake of humanity (at this stage of human "evolution"), than the human presence in all its breathing, sun-lit (I must also arctic-cooling, to be PC) humanity? ... but maybe we all are "emerging" beyond this all-too-human state, like the fish leaving the deep oceans to become a terrestial lizard (do I have the right specie?), as Darwin's revelations tell us (but then man makes evolution looks ridiculous, to paraphrase the famous phrase; is there really an "evolution" -- or should it be a "devolution"). Cynics would say: whom would you rather spend a evening with: a human being or a clam?

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