...or Why Intelligence Amplification is Sweet
You all know that I gotta be honest. I try hard to lay down the words for you every Sunday -- those sometimes teary, sometimes silly, always just-for-you-baby blogs that bring me to my keyboard, laptop on lap, butt on the fire escape iron, rain or shine, all day to night, to share something, mull something with you. To remind all of us readers (because I come to read these entries too) that we are together, not so dissimilar, despite how we vote, who we love, or why we open our eyes each morning to the light of Christ’s own salvation.
Now... be honest right back. How many of you were about to click away? Did those last three words kill your buzz? Are you thinking, suddenly, “Oh man... this chick is some kinda Bible thumper freakazoid trying to sound all hip and happening to reach the masses and convert en mass.” Cha! You’re smarter than that, right? You won’t fall for no tough love, leather jacket youth pastor with a sly grin and a flyer about new virginity. Heck no. ... Oh baby... trust me, go down and click on JessKieghan, LaunaSorensen, CrisKier, or JenDiMarco in the buddy panel of my IMVU hp... they’ll tell you I ain’t no youth pastor. Ask Jennifer why she once darted me in the butt.
Stats show me that roughly fifty new IPs visit my blog every week. I get about a dozen new subscribers. I always wonder what would happen if I turned on the comment feature. Would it be like it was in the very start? When nobody knew what to do with me and so every anti-phobic-nothing-better-to-do seemed to find fault and beat their hairy chest all over my bandwidth? Or would it be more like DasMark who found a way to comment and posted:
“I was just homepage cruising and got stuck butt-deep in your incredibly awesome blog. Not only is it hilarious, but you also talk about the God particles and use big words that are so rarely seen on IMVU. That said, my true point with this post should be obvious: I love you. Kidding. Seriously though, awesome blog, awesome page, stay awesome, etc.”
I popped over to Mark’s hp and read his long list of emo bands, followed by his adamant request: “Would you all just die?!” And I laughed so hard I still had the hiccups when I fell asleep that night.
Hm. What an aside, huh? Back to the importance of being earnest... or the earnestness of honesty... can’t remember now :)
The simple truth: This is my 100th blog.
The pressure I usually feel writing on Sunday is certainly here, and one might think it would be greater with the milestone being what it is. But the strange thing is, I feel free today. Under a low silver sky of clouds and a light misting of rain, a red umbrella dangling like a roof from the fire escape platform above me, I feel light-hearted, relaxed, almost laughing. I feel *certain.*
“She always knows exactly what she’s thinking, feeling. She’s always so *maddenly* certain of herself.”
;) Yeah, those gosh darn short, articulate sentences, right, Brianne? ;) Some chicks just drive everyone nuts with their crazy confidence. But I do sometimes wind up shaken. I can be surprised. And when that happens... uh... okay, I become even more articulate. LOL! But then, when the unsettle settles in, seeps through my bones, that’s when I snap and suddenly, on three days and no sleep, I’m slamming down the screen, stomping down the stairs, kicking awake my Kawi, and when she starts to shake at 112 the only thing I think is: Gotta get a new bike.
I’ve spent all week (maybe all of the last five years) thinking about what Christ would have done with the Internet. Don’t laugh. And stop imagining Him as this buttoned down holy man, with little sandals and a sad, sad face. First of all, buttons weren’t invented until 1201 AD and, second, He turned religion on its ear, darlings. He was a rebel with a cause and anybody who presents Him as a great big conformer is ill-informed and uneducated, IMnotsomuchHO. There’s a sticker on my IMVU hp that reads: Question Authority. I’ve rarely seen a more Christian sticker ;)
You see, there’s this thing called Google. You may even have used it once or twice. You might love it or hate it (it is polarizing, I have found) but for me, it’s a digital library card. It literally lets me check out pretty much anything and everything if I’m patient enough to click past page 10.
I wanted to solve a digital resolution problem that had nothing to do with Christ... but... oh okay, it had everything to do with ministering to you. And I clickity-clicked through Google over to the blog of one Micki Pacific (http://mickispinkdiamondfields.blogspot.com) who had not only solved my problem (a few months back) but posted the irrefutable proof along with this:
Virtual reality and the multitude of virtual worlds (the multiverse) is "...just a more recent evolutionary extension of ourselves into our technology..." and from Micki elsewhere, “so now we walk into VR life and the internet is a symbol for the unconscious (it used to be the sea). It's this vast undefined space of potential.”
Oh yes, baby. I was won over. Here was the sign post pointing to some possible answers and you all know I was gonna sideline on that path. The www does this for all of us. Provides answers (and more questions). After all, this is why the Chinese invented gun power and moveable type and paper money while everyone else was busy flinging rocks at castle walls. Great minds think alike... and a great number of minds come up with great ideas. This is also why I feel that “Mardi Gras 3000” has been so successful. I couldn’t have created a universe so complex and engaging without the input of the dozen or so passionate collaborators that have contributed to the mythology. Be it Mikey in Cali who threw down some weapon and armor ideas, or Emin who supplied pics of the RL biodomes in Europe, every forum member, casual or obsessed, has built that world.
And now that very world – that fictional place that we all talk about as seeming so real – is washing over into our reality. That idea of the Living Scripture that transcends man’s law, man’s books, and holds us all in one light, one place, while Christ whispers: Listen, you are much different and you are much the same.... That idea is spreading.
I am a strong believer in where we have influence we have a presence. I can’t count how many times a friend has said to me: “You talk online just like you talk in real life. You always sounds like you. When we go clubbing in VR 3D public rooms, awash with strangers, and you bust out your specialized, animated moves... LOL! I forget that we were at imvu://room/GamerAngel/neon instead of the Elevate in LA.”
I talk one way because I am one person. I paid my pro buddy CrisKier to create me a 3D avatar that looked like the real world me. I don’t want to be someone else. I like exactly how Christ made me: One blind eye, narrow hips, dark skin, penchant for leather and motorcycles, drawn to articulate speakers and deep thinkers... I like me. (And you know what? That’s because I’m darn certain that Christ likes me... which is a heck of a good confidence builder.)
I lay it down in VR the way I lay it down in RL because I don’t go fishing, I don’t do mind games, and I love to mistranslate my French from “love” to “like” because it makes for the most high-brow comedy of errors that the written word has ever seen. I like to send digital flowers... because they last longer than the real ones... but I most certainly send real ones too.
I believe that a prayer circle can be a MySpace bulletin. (Because, Harry, against the odds, your grandpa got into the right hospital. And I love you, hon.) I believe that psychology can be shared in comment boxes. That poetry doesn’t have to rhyme. And that intelligence amplification exists to prove that all of us are connected. I can think and say 6/10th of what I mean... and you’ll fill in the last 4/10th to create something better than I could ever have imagined. Because the IQ of the audience, when they watch a movie, together in the dark, is 40% amplified... and 60% if we’re all the ’net.
And did you know, baby, that if you include statistics and percentages, that 94% more people will believe what you’re saying? Hm. That’s the power of math ;)
Christ showed up and said: No more eye for an eye. Now... turn the other check.
Christ showed up and said: I will take your sins. No need for blood sacrifice. I am your sacrifice eternal.
Polar opposites. Inside out.
What would He say today? How would He preach? Would He have His own reality show? (I hope not.) Would He cut a rock CD? (Hm.) Would His apostles spread the word through every medium, to every corner, in every way?
Micki Pacific writes:
“Think about the alienation that occurred at the Garden. It happened on three levels and those three levels are about relationships -- alienation between God and us, alienation between each other, and alienation with ourselves. We walk out of the Garden in a fragmented, polarized state (i.e. the knowledge of good and evil). Wisdom? Umm... that is the sales pitch from the serpent, sure, but we are left with all this fragmentation to resolve on all sorts of levels. From this perspective we then are in a state that we have to live out our lives under this "Shadow of the Fall."”
Take it backward with me. Are you alienated with yourself? Do you even know what that means? Let’s all sing the song: Love thyself before you can love another. Know thyself before you can know another. Embrace thyself... and the whole world opens up. Because everybody thinks confidence is smexy.
Strip away the arrogance (you’re hiding!), the superiority complex (still hidden!), and all the other cultural trappings and basic garbage that stop you from seeing yourself, and me, and everyone else as human. Accept that we are all flesh-and-bone, heart-and-soul... and you won’t have to reach that far to see how pixels and binary are just as real. Just another extension of who and what we are. A reflection of ourselves, like a photograph... a living photograph.
And I roll the d6 to find an even number. My sense of humor puts a smile on my virtual face when 10 out of 10 rolls gives me an odd. And every time I hit a 3 (which times two is six) I fall in love all over again and thank Christ for random changes of subject like this one.
“With technology advancing so quickly humanity hasn't had a chance to develop the mythology, or treasure map of the psychological terrain that needs to be covered, and outline the pitfalls for us to use to navigate this brave new frontier with style and gracefulness. So we find what symbolism we can from the collective and hold it up as a mirror as best we can in hopes of being a part of the solution to a complex equation.”
That’s Micki again. In her blog she mentions an IQ of 171. But it might be 70 or 190. It doesn’t matter to me. And it probably matters little to Micki; she was making a point and with humor, too. The point is, that society likes to label and classify. To limit and compartmentalize. The Internet is for geeks, nerds, skinny, scrawny, fat, shy... whatever. But I’m what then? College educated. Athletic. Height and weight where Hollywood wants them. T and A as required. So what’s my problem? Maybe I don’t got one ;)
I have friends all over the spectrum of clinical intelligence but the little autistic boy being raised in the forest by his two moms and his little sister is the one who says:
“I like being me. I want to be me wherever I go. I will not be someone else because someone else is never me.”
The Internet as a library, gives us almost limitless resources. Virtual reality, as an extension of ourselves, give us almost limitless expression and possible exploration. The potential is there. But if we allow ourselves to present candy coated... instead of real, depotentialized with our typos and flat jokes, with our long silences and boring moods, with our emotional outbreaks and breakdowns... then we have to accept that, that is only play time. A play date with pixels. Only when we get real do we get real.
What would Christ do with the Internet? Something as polar opposite as what He did with sacrifice and human behavior. Something as unexpected as whispering to His apostles: Create a *game* that will bring gay bois and Baptist mothers to the same space, to laugh together, to know each other, and to understand that a PM and a haiku aren’t all that different.
...
Comment Box Poetry #1
I thought of you today
all day and into my evening
of dance club music
and boys and grrls... and always
the bass beat strum.
There was something missing:
your wry sense of humor
your love of Christ
your blush for me.
Baby... my Kawi may purr
but only you hmm
E.J.
