Psychology comes from Greek psykhe (breath, spirit, soul) + logia (study, words). This struck me Sunday morning, as I lay in that strange transition from sleep to waking. Soul words, words about the spirit.
Second Life is, any many ways, about soul words. I am fascinated by several things in SL:
- how I, as Thoria, am both different from and the same as my RL self; sometimes, it's as if I'm with two selves at once: me and myself.
- how often my RL self dreams of SL acquantances and events, with SL and RL intertwining.
- how the emotional baggage people bring from RL comes into SL, sometimes metamorphosizing in surprising ways.
- how accelerated romantic relationships can be, running from start to finish in a matter of a few days.
- finally, how often conversations turn into discussions of psychology.
When I first came to SL in the Autumn of 2006, I was investigating a technology. But SL has turned out to be much more emotionally disruptive than, say email or the Web.
Some have talked about the feeling or illusion of presence, and I suppose that's a large part of it. It would be very hard to maintain a friendship with someone on the opposite side of the world—given that I've never met her in RL—only in a messaging tool or a social website. Somehow, it's the actual 3-d presence that makes the difference emotionally; it feels like she and I are with each other in the same place, instead of talking remotely.
