Relationships in First and Second Life

It seems that a good fraction of the books I see at Borders deal with either the management of one self or the management of one's relationships to other people.

By "management of" I mean "controlling or influencing or changing the behavior of."

I realize that I've been a perpetual student, probably having taken 200 or more college courses in one thing or another, and yet, I'm trying to think of one lecture at anytime in school, at any age, talking about how to think about and manage my own personal relationships. I'm not recalling any.

This seems curious. Like knowing how to swim, or how to fall without getting hurt, or basic first aid, or basic hygiene, these seem skills everyone needs, a lot, in important, life-changing ways. With the exception of hygiene, and "don't fight in school", all of these are similarly neglected.

In fact, when I think about the named relationships we all know about, there are personal relationships (friend, lover, spouse) blood relationships (mother of, son of, brother of), and power relationships (boss of, coworker, team-mate of , dominant, submissive, superior, inferior), and it sort of stops there. I'm sure I'm missing many and maybe only revealing my ignorance and illiteracy here.

This is not a very rich or robust vocabulary for such an important subject and doesn't facilitate difficult conversations about facets of relationships that could be improved and how to do that.

So, I'm wondering how the virtual reality world Second Life might help us deal with this sort of conversation.

One thing I did learn to do in a recent class, SI689, is at least ask the question: in what way is Second Life "better than being there?" The goal should not be to get up to even with real life, but to tremendously exceed it in some factor or facet.

Let me give just one example. In Second Life (SL) I manage an animated character on the screen, which I come to think of as "me", my avatar -- just as I manage one person and physical body here in real life. I move it, dress it, walk places with it, fly places with it, etc. The flying is "better than real life", as is teleporting almost instantaneously to other locations.

But those are only improvements on real life, not quantum leaps. (The term is absolutely wrong, since that would be the smallest step possible, but you know what I mean: a huge leap.)

So here's more of a quantum leap: One thing I could do in Second Life is to run two different avatars, simultaneously. There is no equivalent in first life. SL doesn't make this easy, although it could.

In fact, lets say that we effectively get two keyboards/joysticks/input-devices: one for my left hand to run one avatar, and one for my right hand to run the other avatar. Let's say I do this a lot, so that, after a while, the motion of my marionette/puppet avatars is automatic and I don't need to think about it, it just "happens" the same way moving my hand happens now.

What exactly would be the effect on "me" to do this, now having two different bodies simultaneously? And more interestingly, how would these two characters "relate" to each other? Say there were times of day when just one or the other of them was active on-line,
to develop a personality and seamless fluency in movement. Each one would develop a certain "personality" as has been discussed elsewhere in the literature.

With some very fancy eye-wear, perhaps the left brain would control one of these dominantly, and the right brain the other. Or at least the mix of dominance would be different. And, again unlike real life, (mostly), one could be, let's say, female and one male. That alters the chemistry and confuses the issue, so for the moment say they are both the same sex as "you" and same gender as "you". (Sex being physiological and gender being behavioral).

Now, here's the key question -- how would or could these two avatars "relate" to each other?
And what could we learn by experimenting with that?

Once, my college apartment mate was looking for a roommate, before selecting me, and he told me he had one main criterion -- if there were two of this person, would they get along with each other? Some people we could think of would fail that test, insisting on being dominant in everything. Some people would be unable to work for themselves as a boss. Interesting.

I'll ponder more about this, and try it out, and report back what I find.

Before I leave it, one last thought on a related subject. Consider learning to play the piano, correctly, with two hands. At one stage of development, each hand has to practice separately.

At a more advanced stage, each hand is playing "at the same time" but it is really coordinated parallel play, the head multiplexing between a fast check left hand, right hand, left hand, right hand.

At a more advanced stage, the hands effectively disappear, and the head is more involved playing, say, two voices -- where the voices may be at one point on separate hands, but could cross over or interweave between fingers on each hand. It is the voices that have life and expression, not the fingers or hands at that point, which are still present but sort of in the background in some way, distant from consciousness.

It makes me wonder if human relationships could be the same way -- initially two consciousnesses, each confined to one body, but ultimately two voices, in some way each
occupying both bodies or spirits. Identities close, then merge, then refactor differently into voices not notes.

This merging and acting with one heart, on spirit, one mind is a key concept to successful sports teams, military teams, work teams, etc.

What words would we use to describe the relationship of the hands at each stage of development? Dominant? Partner?

You see what I mean about the lack of an adequate vocabulary to capture a relationship and describe it to someone else who will know immediately and unambiguously what you mean.

If we can't describe relationships or in some way measure them, even subjectively, how can we possibly take seriously an effort to "improve" them? How would we know if something is "working" or not?

It is an interesting experiment, in Second Life or in real life with just sock puppets -- if this is "you" and this is "the other person", add dialog and show me what a typical discussion over some conflict goes like now, versus how you wish it would go.

Playing both roles simultaneously makes this a more interesting experience, it seems to me.