What is Your Highest Value?

The double stack with cheese for 99 cents was hard to beat but now that it cost $1.29 or so it is lost a bit of it's luster.

I don't think SL has too much freedom, on paper. Or that it is in any reasonable way repressive, either.

Seems like on paper the rules are pretty good, allowing for a lot of freedom for everyone, while safeguarding people against another's freedom making their own lives miserable.

It's the enforcement that goes wrong in the SL paradigm, I think. Enforcement seems to happen inconsistently, and largely in terms of who is willing to squawk most about something or someone.

Then, too, they have a right to decide what sort of environment they wish to project. If some people want to take advantage of freedom in order to have builds that are monstrously objectionable to most people, that wouldn't be allowed. Nor will they allow us the freedom to call each other racist terms, etc.

coco

Equality.

If someone is a furry, I suspect they're probably more inclined to wear a furry AV than a fur suit in the real world. I think exposure to a higher level of diversity causes us to think and talk about it more, definitely. I think SL definitely accelerates our ability to express. I think those things eventually usher in compassion and tolerance... But not always, sometimes that sort of change takes generations... But some do seem to actualize who they are and "keep it real", feel more empowered by a virtual world to do things they probably wouldn't do in the real life for whatever reason.

I could tell you but you wouldn't beleive me

Thus it shall remain part of my great mystery.


A good fart joke does come a close second though....

This is not as simple as a "check the box" quiz.

I have very high standards I set for myself, in dealings with myself: Integrity is critical for me, in myself, within myself. Knowing that I know what I know, knowing that I see what I see, and the wish I have to communicate my truths in such a way that others can perceive them too.

However, in my dealings with others, I set a far higher value on knowing who the person is, and seeing the "creator" within them... It may sound corny, but I believe everyone is the creator of the universe, in themselves, and that is to me something holy and pure. Its just that some seem to be more knowing and caring of this role, than others.

What is my highest value? To me those two add up to freedom. Freedom in the sense that I have a 100% responsibilty to Pure Being, both in myself and in others, and in my relationship with others and the world, cos only a pure being is free.

And what do I do for fun, now that I am a metaphysics junkie? I be things, that I have never been before, and make that pure.. Is that lying, or pretending? For me, it is being... and ENORMOUS fun! (as in lotsa laffs... hehehe)

And as for truth? This can also be self-created, as an artist makes a picture, or a novelist a story... So I make myself... that is a self created truth.

A lie? See above - it is presenting something as a truth, when you are well aware that this will preceived in a way that is not the way you know it to be... And to me the effect is much critical than the truth. There I take a lead from the Buddha, or in common slang, " a workable lie is more useful than an unworkable truth".

PLEASE see this in the context of my personal integrity, above... Tho I guess this post is asking for a flame...

hehehe...

Highest: Freedom

Lowest: License

understanding

understanding one's self and others; whether that be limitations, desires, dislikes, not having to agree with any but just knowing how or why those feelings are existant

Liberty, and giving battle to anyone who'd steal liberty from anyone.

Hard work and self-discipline, the only way you can ever succeed.

Blunt honesty. Lies are for the weak, criminals, and treacherous politicians and priests.

Competence/Self-reliance. Depend on yourself first and foremost. It's okay to go to your friends and family for help if necessary, but if you don't contribute back, you're just a parasite and have no reason to live. Demanding that anyone take care of you is criminal.

This is an interesting concept. Sounds like fun, if I knew how to do it!

coco

Hi Coco, its not actually as complicated as it looks.

I am Angel Sunset in SL. That is my new being. I have things in SL, the world is my real world, the friends and responsibilites I take on in SL are 100% ONLY Angel's responsibilty.

The world outside SL (the keyboard, computer, work etc etc) have nothing to do with me, Angel Sunset. The new house, the wonderful new neighbour, the hideous laggy build - that is my life, my world.

To live here, I have a personality, attitudes, talents, memories, losses, successes, relationships, responsibilities, all belonging only to me, Angel Sunset.

And being ME, Angel Sunset, is what I am primarily engaged in in SL. This is something I have to get right, like I would in the real world outside of SL.

But since I am created in my own image, by my own desires and tastes, this Being is something I have never experienced before - before my "birth", this Being Angel Sunset did not exist...

So inevitably, I am being someone new...

Edit:
Of course, there is also Being a Tiny, Being an Elf. being a Mermaid... but these are just secondary Beings, that are new... The BIG one, is being Angel Sunset. And Being Me Angel Sunset is a REAL act of creation, that I am striving to get pure.
End Edit


Others do this too - have a look at the posts of people who are in SL as a world, where they live. They are clearly different from those of people for whom SL is a platform, or a game. If SL is a world for you, Coco, you are a new being, one that has never existed before...

And I believe you are, and doing the same thing I am, but as Coco

* Hugs *

this thread brings to mind the autobiography of nobel prize winner bertrand russell. he's a mathematician but (surprisingly) writes very eloquently and beautifully.

to paraphrase the great man:
What I Have Lived For - Bertrand Russell

Three passions, simple but overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life: the longing for love, the search for knowledge, and unbearable pity for the suffering of mankind. These passions, like great winds, have blown me hither and thither, in a wayward course, over a great ocean of anguish, reaching to the very verge of despair.

I have sought love, first, because it brings ecstasy - ecstasy so great that I would often have sacrificed all the rest of life for a few hours of this joy. I have sought it, next, because it relieves loneliness--that terrible loneliness in which one shivering consciousness looks over the rim of the world into the cold unfathomable lifeless abyss. I have sought it finally, because in the union of love I have seen, in a mystic miniature, the prefiguring vision of the heaven that saints and poets have imagined. This is what I sought, and though it might seem too good for human life, this is what--at last--I have found.

With equal passion I have sought knowledge. I have wished to understand the hearts of men. I have wished to know why the stars shine. And I have tried to apprehend the Pythagorean power by which number holds sway above the flux. A little of this, but not much, I have achieved.

Love and knowledge, so far as they were possible, led upward toward the heavens. But always pity brought me back to earth. Echoes of cries of pain reverberate in my heart. Children in famine, victims tortured by oppressors, helpless old people a burden to their sons, and the whole world of loneliness, poverty, and pain make a mockery of what human life should be. I long to alleviate this evil, but I cannot, and I too suffer.

This has been my life. I have found it worth living, and would gladly live it again if the chance were offered me.

Hmmm. Well, I am not really being someone else when I am being Coco, except in outward appearances (the avatar).

I was thinking more of being other things in the regular world. Like - sometimes for a bit I get into a bird's mind, or my cat's mind, or something. Then I was thinking one might really BE these things, or try to. Or be a machine, or a table, or a sunset, or something.

Seems to me that would be hard, and there might actually be ways to do it and make it easier.

coco

That is very beautiful.

coco

yes, once you know yourself it is easier to listen to others....

my highest value?

hmmm id have to say, not being like SOE

LIFE

Leviticus 17:11 "For the life of a creature is in the blood, and I have given it to you to make atonement for yourselves on the altar; it is the blood that makes atonement for one's life."

Haveing been in the US military, Life is was I truely value most. Lives of other people, my wife's, my own. Haveing been put in the position of having to decide, "Give my life for my fellow country men or not?" I feel I know how much ones life is worth.

Haveing had to compromise on my highest value, in order to preserve my highest value, I suppose you could call me a hypocrite. But either way, Life is still my highest value. And for that I am proud.

Love. It encompasses all of the above said.

Its not hard either... but SL is a good place to practise.

To BE something, you have to love ALL of it...


And others have said that a LOT better than I can

Well, that makes sense. I love my avatar. And I love me. And she is me. And I love my cat. And the little bird.

Now - to love a desk, or some venetian blinds. That is harder.

coco

Hi Coco. I am delighted you are following me As a metaphysics junkie, I sometimes wander in incomprehensible convolutions...

Inanimate objects need to be "cheated" on, to get that right. A desk is not an a dead lump of matter, it is a concept, creating its existencce constantly...

To get rid of the blah blah: someone had an idea of the desk; they placed this idea in the world, and clothed it with matter; the matter is visible - but it is the Idea of the Desk that makes it a desk. The created desk therafter sits there, proudly and smugly, desking itself into the universe for all to admire... The "Proudly and Smugly" originated with the person who had the idea of the desk, but it is now in the bones of the desk; but also from the Tree that created the wood... and the wind, that played with the tree, that generated the wood, and so on.

This is the desk you can love, not the wood or metal or whatever.

If you want to have fun with this idea, IM Garnet Psaltery about joining her Terry Pratchett group, concerning the Disk World Novels. He uses (and exaggerates wildly) this concept of material things being self-created obervables that dynamically interact with their environment, though he does not deal with the machinics of it at all.

Is this all true? Probably not... but it works for me, and allows me to love even things like a Pixel Rendering in SL. It is the Ghost in the Machine that I love, even as this love comes from the Ghost that inhabits the Machine that is my physical existence. And in a Very Real Way, this Ghost inhabits the visible Me, Angel Sunset, in SL itself.

As I said, I live here. I also love here

OK, all that made sense, too, enough so I am copying it for future reference.

It also probably goes a long way toward explaining "The Velveteen Rabbit," or, in my case, my TOTAL CERTAINTY that Fifi is real. Fifi being a stuffed poodle I got when I was a kid. (Fifi also has the ability to make sick children well, and my kids can attest to that.)

Although in Fifi's and similar cases, it would not be just the creator who is embodied in the creation - but the fact that - I'm just thinking out loud here - we give that creation parts of ourselves. In other words, the VERY MINUTE I saw Fifi for the first time, I gave him (yes, I named a boy Fifi; I was only in first or second grade) a YUGE hunk of myself.

And there is nothing fake about that, either. I mean, maybe I really GAVE it to him. Embued him with it for all time. He literally owns that part of me, and I no longer own that part of me, and haven't since I gave it to him.

As such, he still sits on my top shelf, filled with as much real life as the day I got him.

It would also explain how some pieces of furniture are more chock full of personality and meaning and realness than others. I mean, this could be actually, real, literal. That would be why others respond to them in that fashion.

For example, the desk I'm working at would be kind of hard to love. That is probably because it was mass-produced with not a lot of real love, and probably no personal, individual, love injected into it. But my brother's desk - that was a piece. And so is the Monster - a secretary built in the 1880's that spoke to me the minute I saw it as a child in my grandfather's garage, getting ready for somebody's next auction. (He was an auctioneer, and a farmer.) It's in my living room.

And PIANOS. Pianos are very, very full of personality. My own piano is probably my most treasured piece, along with the afore-mentioned Monster and Fifi. (Though it has no name, unless its name is "Baldwin," haha.) I still mourn the passing of my grandmother's old upright; I was too young when she died to be able to convince my mother it was worth keeping and transporting, and couldn't afford it myself, so it was auctioned off.

In fact, I once had a piano talk to me in a museum. I think it was a Chicago museum. Anyway, it was very old, small, and under glass - probably from the 1700's or something. But in perfect condition.

I happened upon it, took a look at it, and it said to me (in a quiet voice, in my mind), "I need to be played! I really, really want to be played!" I told it (out loud) I would if I could. I also imagined playing it for a while, in case that would make it feel better.

So maybe - all in all - loving the inanimate is not as difficult as I thought, after all, and maybe it is also as real as our relationships with other living things. In fact, it strikes me now that I do it all the time, and hugely.

coco

P.S. Fifi doesn't consist of just me, though - he had life in his eyes the MOMENT I saw him.