Culture Wars
Virtually Useless
by Tim Lien
The online game Second Life is an amazing phenomenon. Over 6 million users pay a monthly fee to participate in a virtual life. Second Life is pretty much like the computer game SIMS, although every character represents another real human across the globe. So, in other words, if real life is not working out for you, you can create a better virtual one. There was a controversy not too long ago, entailing a married-in-real-life man who was “marrying” another character within the virtual world. The ethicists began asking: Is this right and moral?
Entering into the mix, a mega-church called Lifechurch has begun simul-casting their morning worship services into a Second life virtual church also called Lifechurch.
NBC Nightly News had a brief segment about these developments.
This faceless isolation bothers me. Why? It is because that I have been recently reminded that disconnection from the people of God is also disconnection from God. Rephrased positively: Communion with God is also communion with his people. His real live people.
If we refuse this closeness of union to our fellow Christians, we shall suffer doubly; for the Holy Spirit will not use us as the channels of his grace to them, nor can the effectual working through them reach us. Nothing but weakness and death can result from such selfish isolation. —George BethunePosted by Tim Lien at May 22, 2008 04:12 PM
Well, this post and the last have convinced me that staying home and sleeping all weekend is not the way to go.
I haven’t heard of this cyber world but it is frightening on several levels. First is the obvious that you mentioned, people preferring cyber life to the real world and real people. Equally frightening is that, over time, I can see how the lines of reality become increasingly blurred. After all, in a sense, those cyber folks are “real people” too, at least behind the scenes. All this reminds me of a sci-fi book I read in the 60’s, perhaps the Martian Cronicles but I’m not sure. In one scene, a female character was watching the “cyber shepherd” on the screen, a clownish character created to satisfy the god-hunger or spiritual needs of the citizenry, but the most grotesque parady of a powerless,totally silky smooth god who only wanted to assure you and make you happy. At any rate, after getting her fill of that she took her happy pills for the day and then went out on the highway and began running down pedestrians with her vehicle for daily recreation. Real people, but, what’s the difference? The lines had totally blurred. Really horrifying.
To make matters more confusing, there is a blend of real/virtual life within the game. Let’s say my avatar (virtual me) likes to buy shoes. I go to one of the shoe stores available within the game and purchase the shoes, right? Well I have choices. I can purchase the shoes available to all 2nd lifers, or buy the shoes custom made by a graphic creator within the virtual world for a real world currency. By doing this, creators can become custom designers and if/when your avatar’s popularity grows, other avatar’s may want to either emulate what your avatar wears or to create their own. All generating more money (both virtual and real) for the designer.
One life to manage is usually more than enough for me. There was an interesting CSI episode about this phenomenon recently.
It is concerning on many levels. How to communicate truth (whether in the sense of empirical or moral) will become exponentially more difficult in large part due to concepts such as this. Nevertheless, it remains that God will draw whom He will, when He will and in some cases, may even use the insanity of something that happens on Second Life, or other such things, in the process.