Traumwind - the one skill

the one skill

2008-7-3

One of the main goals of the IC Experiment I'm part of (as Archer Mokeev) is to "prepare for the future." That future possibly being drastically different from our current

A lot of the discussions center around how we can prepare for collapsing economies... things like growing our own food, making our own homes, living simply...

As this experiment is taking place in the Second Life(tm) world.. not a lot of those concepts really make sense there. You don't need food or shelter in SL, now do you?

This has bugged me for quite some time, a common question being "what can we learn from this experiment for our real lives?" Or even "how can we translate the real world ideas to SL?"

And I think that's exactly where the thinking is off. To me the main goal of all this is to aquire, hone and develop one skill: The skill to "learn the rules of an environment." To be able to look at a new - or radically changed - world, and to learn to love and prosper inside of it. This is not about aquiring any specific new skills at all. This is about observing a new environment and being able to learn/acquire the knowledge and skill required to

survive in it!

Sure, Second Life is a virtual world, a game if you will. Learning it's environmental rules will not directly help us survive a change of our real world. But studying and learning it's intrinsic rules will teach us how to do just that: observe and learn the NEW rules of ANY environment.

The skill to adapt. To adapt to changes we can't possibly begin to predict. It's not about learning how to cope without bees or without cars. It is about being able to find new ways.

To me there is but one way to 'prepare'

for a future we can't predict: being open, observant. Being able to un-learn, re-learn and develop new skills.

And that is something we can learn in SL. It's sufficiently different from the real world to have it's very own set of rules and mechanisms. Yet it is also a suitably large gathering place of people to actually make those mechanisms be important. It has an economy of it's very own.

Granted, 'living' in SL can be very easily be payed for by "pocket money subvention." Compared to setting up an existence in real life, all the economy of SL is peanuts and spare change. But this is only so if you allow for pocket money subvention. If you try to take a social/learning experiment seriously, you may need to try and minimise 'outside' funds. Archer Mokeev has done this in two ways:

by being radically minimalist in the lifestyle choices
and by - at least making the effort in - bootstrapping

Obviously it helps if you have creative talents and can "make your own" that others might even be interested in buying or trading for... but that kind of talent/skill would be exactly what any new or old environment requires for you to thrive! To be of value.

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