Second Life <---> Berry, Appiah

I would now like to discuss some connections to Wendell Berry and Appiah (Cosmopolitanism). Second Life is basically hundreds (maybe thousands, I’m not sure) communities all in one game. So there are many individual communities, each with different views, values, any everything else. I believe most of the communities were cosmopolitan communities. Most did not have that harsh of rules, such as the ECSL’s chosen community (Atlantic Waves). It was basically we accept your views and values are yours and we will have ours, they were not against what you believed. That seems just like Appiah would have wanted. Maybe communities like my own chosen one (Bogart’s) was a little counter-cosmopolitan because you had to follow their rules, and if you didn’t you were asked to leave (not murdered or anything, just asked to leave) unless you started to follow the rules and wear the appropriate attire and then you were allowed to enter. Other places like the space station, you were allowed to roam freely and explore the many different interactive stations uninterrupted. They even wanted new people of different cultures to come as you could tell from the different flags (flags of like 12 countries) that waved at the teleport spot.
Another thing I noticed was the relevance to the writings of Wendell Berry. From “A Native Hill” it talks about Berry leaving where he grew up to go to New York and other places, and later on in his life he comes back since he missed it a lot and felt that that was where he belonged. When he gets back he realized that it wasn’t the same places as it used to be, it changed just like the world around him and he would always reminisce about when he was a boy. I noticed in ECSL’s presentation they mentioned the island was started by a woman. And the island was created as a place for people to hang out. It seems to me that the island might have changed a lot since it was created because as they said the big house was there before other stuff was built. That big house could be relevant to the place Berry lived as a boy. As time went on new things were build at the Atlantic Waves and now I think they mentioned new apartments or something. So in a world full of change, it seems that even online communities can start changing with everything. Even Appiah mentions this in Cosmopolitanism.

So overall I enjoyed the Second Life presentations and I think it helped everyone see things from another perspective.
Thanks for reading
Reecie ^_^