Some Of My Favourite Things - Romance & Relationships
Posted on Feb 13th, 2008
by 
asecondlifediary
asecondlifediary
IT'S VALENTINE'S DAY and so Cal and I have bought one another a horse in Second Life to celebrate. His is a handsome chestnut/brown beast and mine is a lovely Palomino, named Jinj (as in ginger).
We are both interested in wild and lonely landscapes to explore and one of our favourites is called Lyonesse, although Commonwealth looks appealing too, and Sancto Sanctorum is a long-standing favourite.
One of the things I like doing best is suspending disbelief in SL - and somehow, sitting atop a noble beast and clip-clopping through the landscape really suits my romantic idea of exploration. (If anyone knows of 'wild' places in SL, please let us know!)
Cal and I are constantly talking whenever we are online together - bserving the landscape, speculating on the who, what, where, why of things. Examining the minutiae of the things around us - colours, concepts, layout, design, rationale etc.
I'm intrigued by the differences in how we see the world. I call his way of being as 'academic' (which he hates), but he is more inclined toward seeing things in terms of graphs, facts and figures; while I am tend to see most everything from an emotional point of view. (Not that he doesn't, but he expresses it in what I see as a more 'academic' way).
He is just so 'connected'. I feel far more of a 'floater' through life - just trah-lah-lah'ing along.
Another favourite thing I enjoy is how we communicate with others in SL. We are always in voice chat via headphones with one another, so even when we are talking in text with others, we are chatting back and forth with one another. Making observations about the social situation we are. It's a great way of communicating, and I know that when we eventually meet in First Life (which will be in April), I will miss this unique way of communicating - having one conversation with others, and a more private one just between the two of us.
Communication is a huge thing with us. Today, for instance, Cal was enroute between cities on a business trip, and bad weather threatened to ground him at the airport. I just happened to send him a Skype text message which he received on his blackberry or laptop - so we were able to chat back and forth in between him picking up announcements about wait lists etc. Modern technology gives us so many ways to stay in touch and maintain a link.
We are now REALLY starting to focus on relationships with others - people we think might be compatible couples to absorb into our polyamorous / intentional community. But at the same time Cal is still weighing up the relative merits of intentional vs accidental community.
He is looking at the various pluses and minuses of how a community is made up. Probably the best way of explaining it is if say 100 people were FORCED into creating a community through a plane crashing on to a desert island. Everyone involved has a vested interest in making sure there was no conflict and they found a way of all getting along together and creating a good social structure.
Whereas, as we are now - well fed, comfortably housed, financially stable, independent beings - we are far more likely to be distracted by egos, priorities, personal viewpoints, financial considerations etc. We don't have a vested interest in the community working, because if we don't like it, we can always leave. An accidental community doesn't have that luxury - they HAVE TO make it work! There is nowhere else to go.
It's a metaphor for the planet I guess - you have to love it, cos you can't leave it!
One of the things I hope to bring you soon, are a couple of examples of other communities that people are working on at the moment. There are just so many things happening on a global scale in so many different areas - we truly ARE at the banquet of life at this period of time.
Happy Valentine's Day - I hope you get a horse!
Love,
Mia
Access: Public
horses
July 2008
Just to add a comment about accidental vs intentional community…we in the west live with a high financiial capital compared a very low social capital. If you get into a situation you don't like you can mostly buy yourself out of it - by moving house,or town, or country.
I talk for myself here, I do not feelI have gained the tools really to develop social capital and this is where Second Life comes in as a place to experiment.
In our work with our intentional community we have met two different attitudes. The first is where you buy a share in the estate and can sell it at market prices when you leave. In the other, rules prevent you “capitalizing” on the investment.
From our point of view, a share in a cooperative which owns land and a building where energy prices are low, food is abundant, there is good social cohesion and it's in a beautiful place, is bound to be more expensive. By investing in the social capital, e.g the cooperatives members' working well together to develop the estate's functioning, will raise financial value as well.
I went into a business bookshop the other day to buy a book on cooperation, joint ventures etc. They only had one. the rest were like “compete and WIN”, “rise above the competition”, STICK out, be different, get THINGS DONE faster…..
These are old paradigms and will not be appropriate for the age where the financial machine grinds to a halt and money no longer gives you a ” - get out of this one - card”.
Porena has also forwarded a link to a more 'scientific explanation of the above concept for anyone wishing to do some further reading:
A more “scentific” rederng of the subject was done for an academic paper on ecounits and ecovillages. the link is: http://www.avbp.net/comercial_social.pdf
Mia