Cog's Blog FrontPage

Hi! I'm Paracog Steadham, famed loafer in Second Life. I don't script, I don't build, I'm not much for joining groups, being an introvert. OK, I do things in Second Life, mostly to do with observing what's going on, thinking and writing about it, and discussing with friends. I have an MA in Psychology, with an emphasis on Person-Centered Transformative Learning. I am fascinated by Second Life as a potent environment for personal change and healing, in addition to all the other things it has to offer.

I define Transformative Learning as what happens when a person absorbs information or experiences that are beyond what their current sum of knowledge, self-image and /or world view include. If a person who experiences this new knowledge doesn't back away from it, he or she could enter a place of learning that is maybe not very comfortable, maybe confusing, and if the person stays with it, they can come out in a whole different place, with a larger worldview that includes the new information. This goes on everyday, of course, it is how people mature, become more tolerant, more inclusive, more mature, wiser. Being able to learn in this way is a crucial skill or capacity for living a full and interesting life.

When I'm not goofing off with my friends and my lovely partner in SL--well actually even when I am since they are a big part of my experience--I am observing the behaviors of residents, their creations, the social patterns as I notice them, and forming a rough assessment (so far) of the potency of Second Life to provide an ideal environment to safely practice transformative learning (dumping the pretentious caps now).

Here's a small example: As long as I can remember, I have had physical discomfort in relationship to proximity to the edge of a high place--mine, others, viewed or imagined, I would feel actual physical pain viewing or comtemplating the possibility of falling from a high place. Well in Second Life, I have an extremely cool thing called a Paradise Blanket. It is a blanket that when hopped on, will rez any of 25 or so wonderful sky boxes, all them fun--and not all of them with sides. It is possible to get shot off the side of several of them by dismounting a pose, and until recently I didn't have an attachment to fly at heights (get X-Flight, a wonderful tool.) So I wasn't enjoying several of these scenes because I was experiencing the actual physical pain I associated with falling. Then I fell a few times, and harmlessly fell to earth. By the fourth of fifth time, I was chuckling and my anxiety had turned to excited humor. Well this has generalized, and I seldom experience that sensation with regard to imagining or viewing proximity to edges in high places. I do hope I retain some discomfort in real life about the risk. Though I never left my chair, I learned a new response at an emotional level; there was a period where I had to push through my discomfort because I wanted to use all of the skyboxes, so I persevered through discomfort and came to a different place. I had no idea going in that my response would change; but the risk was low enough and my motivation high enough that I persisted and got the unlooked-for result.

Why I was able to learn at that deep level is because the mind and emotions don't know very well the difference between actual experience and experience in Second Life. Falling in love in Second Life feels just like falling in love, and breaking up really hurts. It may take place over a few weeks rather than months or years, but those are real feelings. Learning a new skill, designing a beautiful build or making a cool script, running a successful business, all have emotional and mental payoffs.

The difference is that the risk is lower, organizing the experience is easier and cheaper--overall the kind of investment that makes risking in real life so risky is lessened so much that people try all sorts of things they wouldn't. Just like so many people, I bought a sailboat and then became bored with it. The difference is that it didn't cost me thousands of dollars and I am cured from boat fever now. People try on all sorts of avatars of both or no genders, become animals, robots--almost anything--and learn and have experience that is real and useful. I fell in love with and purchased what I thought was an ideal house for my partner and myself, then learned that I like a simple place and that we like having our own space. This could have been a huge--and expensive--learning that might have taken a year and threatened the relationship. In Second Life it took several days and was funny as could be after a tense 48 hours or so.

There are thousands of examples out there, some trivial, some life-changing. A big part of what we are doing with the Secret Mountain Laboratory is creating a space where this process can be made more conscious, can be recognised for what it is, for the experiences and results to be shared and learned from by others, and for bummed out people to maybe just come and hang out in our coffee house and get on the wiki and realize that maybe their big plan to get the heck out of Second Life because it all looks crazy to day might just be a period of adjusting to a huge piece of new input, and if they keep logging in and spend some time feeling a bit crazy, they will come out with a different perspective and maybe some cool new ideas, creativity, goals.

There are a lot of resources in SL for newbies and that is good. Not so many for people who have been in world for several months or more and feel like they've seen everything, tried all the stuff, and feel just confused and overwhelmed about what they want to do, if anything, and maybe just end up clubbing or slumped in a slingo chair, or just hanging out with the same friends, growing more and more bored. Boredom, uncertainty, confusion, those can be real signs that it is time to expand and open to new things, though in the middle of this there will be little clues to what might show up. Having a place to come loaf, to share with others, to read stories of people learning cool new things in SL might provide the encouragement to go put oneself in a new environment, to admit burnout with the same old stuff, and to just be open.