Recently I made my memoires blog public – quite a feat given it is a definite act of wearing my heart on my sleeve. SL has helped me come to terms with much of the innefable I've experienced in life, particularly my coming to terms with what it means to me in particular.

Please feel free to have a read at http://soulgate.blogspot.com/search?updated-max..., starting at the bottom (from the oldest post).

Feedback is more than welcome

Spiritualism .. what is it? It is a sense of the supernatural, essentialism. Thats what we call “ietsism” in the netherlands – somethingism. Most religious people here are ietsists – they vaguely believe in some benevolent, *soothing* reality, a sort of cosmic pharmacist offering, antidepressants, tranquillizers and pain relief. The whole spiritual metaphor consequently follows the zeitgeist in which it inhabits – in plutocratic or authoritorian eras you had to “plead' the higher realities, just as you had to plead a king or wealthy benefactor. In scientic/industrial time spiritualism became something of an alchemical process where you could cleverly “harvest” the benefits of the higher through sound science. In modern times the relationship of people with “the spiritual” is chillingly like a consumer walking in a convenience store, handing out his “karmic credit card” and taking home a number of spiritual benefits. See I miraculously found the watch I lost 3 years ago, it must work.

It will be extremely painful for a lot of people to exorcise this reliance. It is like a grieving process, where a child has to accept the fact that her parents are dead and now she is fundamentally alone and uncared for. The new spirituality must be a recognition where we say, we did this, that and that, and that got us where we are, and we should be neither smug or proud about it, it's just a recognition of what is, and what can be. In essence we won't feel so inadequately anymore that we somehow need to transposition metaphysical authority (judgement, shame, veneration, aspiration, hope, reward, punishment, shock, awe) into a transcendant tribal authority but it comes into focus and transpositions as a sharp image on ourselves.

Mind you, this can still be a metaphysical worldview – in becoming transhuman we don't need to be disenchanted with hopes and dreams – but we become the actors instead of the reactors. Where in the old days we were mostly sick, weak and pathetic day workers standing half exhausted, traumatized and terrified by the potato fields as the gods duked it out in thundering storm clouds, and the knights barreled across the fields jousting on armored horses – and we were spectators largely groveling before our materialistic and paternalistic betters. In the new future we “log in”, take up our purple set mjolnirs and excaliburs, the ones we deserved to get after grinding endlessly in Stratholme, and incarnate as gods, albeit very minor ones. What, you thought Thor became the Ubermensch he is without some serious grindage?

I have often said – I simply adore religion. It is very persistent LARP. But the time is near to recognize that jesus, mohammed, allah are all just NPCs.

Interesting, however, to consider that although the process may be universally available one day, it might be a painful and traumatic process. Esoterism, on the other hand, is all about ending suffering

Spirituality is supposed to be existentially soothing. I do not thing a consistent pathway towards posthumanism will actually be very soothing. It may actually even be 'postextistential' . In that case – the bhudists were right all along.

Let me explain that. Why do people live near the pole circle? Which human in their right mind doesn't get up and leave when living in a hard place? Yet for some reason people do not leave a hard place, stick to it and venerate it, with vague arguments such as “my parents and grandparents died here, I cant betray their legacy”.
I say, thats all rationalization – in reality a large percentage of humans have a pioneer gene. As soon as they hear abut gold in them hills, they get up and leave. I even dare suggest there is an overlap between predisposition towards ADHD, anomie disorders (http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/26587...) and nomadism (As this study http://www.slate.com/id/2193472/ suggests) and adoption of alternative realities.

This has contributed to the success of humanity spreading everywhere – but there is also a flip side. Sedentary humans – the kind that take great pleasure in watching Big Brother and Stars Skating in Circles) HATE the restless. Yes, I said “the restless” and I said “HATE”. Why do citizens loathe gypsies, jews, bedoeins? I say it is because the sedentary desire to enforce a memetic status quo. They want fundamentals to stay the same. They cannot have the underlying rules of existence to shift or evolve. As such they actively persecute the nomadic, or will go as far as kill them. Don't tell me you haven't felt this at one time.

Second Life is not a new religion – it is the first stirrings of a fundamental change, and I would *love* to see an analysis that makes more plausible than I can make plausible, what precise qualities Second Life has that triggers the racism gene of sedentary humans?