"Morals at the Speed of Light"

As laggy as Second Life is at times it "speed of light" doesn't seem to apply there. Even with pixels popping in and out with jerky motions it still applies in terms of mass communication with new information coming into are heads faster than we can apply values to them. There are many different forms of culture modeling happening on different sims. Each one an Islands of social experiments. Tagged into those culture each avatar is a personal experiment in ourselves.

I shouldn't be so amazed at the several dramas that come up in Second Life on a daily basis. Some are my own doing and some are part of social fabric of the various Sims and groups in Second Life. Since there are people behind the pixels there are also egos and emotions that are triggered by what ever real world emotional or moral foundation that were smuggled into Second Life. Lets face is it sometimes our feelings get hurt.

Some people seem to come to Second Life as a place to rebel from their real life baggage and recreate themselves. On the other hand, some are like me, somewhat of a caricature of of their real world self. Exploring what they either don't have the opportunity or courage to explore in the real world. I seem to make personal discoveries about my nature, sensitivity and tolerances over and over again.

I find when it comes to relationships in Second Life the rules of engagement are different. Maybe since things happen at a much more accelerated rate everything is compressed and concentrated. Avatars might need a fine print label the says made from concentrate. I don't see why the same things that that trigger emotional responses in real life wouldn't trigger them here. Fear of loss, fear of being hurt or embarrassed, fear of being excluded and loneliness are some of the negative triggers. On the other hand we still have the positive triggers like acceptance, recognition, love, attention, learning and affection to name a few. In Second life it can be distilled essence of emotions coming through keyboards.

Out of all of this comes a social network with much sharper hills and valleys than Real Life. Small storms with luck followed by heavenly rainbows. Meanwhile we build friendships, lose friends, partners change, projects grow, evolve or fail. When things fall apart and the person behind the pixels gets hurt they might cry or get angry or leave Second Life or create a new Avatar and start over. Hopeful we learn from these experiences. We might learn what we want and how find a balance. We might learn to see beauty in ways we had never thought off. We might learn things about ourselves that we can take back and apply to our real life.