Human? God? Private? Public?

Seriously speaking, this week's reading is totally abstract and not understandable no matter how many times I tried to read it. It just leave this empty feeling after completing the readings. And I keep asking myself as I read each sentence "What has all these gotta do with the gaming world?" Sheesh, I shall try to write whatever I can understand which I can relate to Second Life then.

Firstly, I'll bring in the three classification which Hannah Arendt uses: Labour, Work and Action. I find it very interesting that he does it this way and I'll use them to relate to my SL character.

Labour
According to the author, it is actually life itself. The spontaneous growth, metabolism and eventual decay of the human body. No then, "Labour" doesn't apply to SL. My character in SL will never grow old, he will never decay and he doesn't even have an age. I can stop playing it for one year and log in after that only to find that my character is still the same as before, and he's on the same spot the last time I logged out one year ago.



Work
If I'm not wrong, "Work" refers to something which is artificially created that doesn't belong to life. In SL, work will probably be the different ways the players play the game. Selling digital houses?? Finding nice outfits to dress up their avatars? In short, without work, players in SL will just be wondering around and doing nothing. This being a Sandbox game is normal, in a sense that players can choose not to "Work" since there is no leveling and no disadvantages.



Action
Referring to activities that goes on directly between men without any extra matters or so. This perhaps can relate to SL's interaction between players?? The chat function is there and players can just log into the game and find friends which they can purely hang out in the virtual world. I've seen NUS students just log into the NUS island in SL, basically do nothing and just "park" there and wait for fellow students to log in and chat with them. Whatever the reason they do that I have no idea. Perhaps they are treating it as a 3-dimensional MSN?



Immortality is also another thing mentioned. Like I've discussed in my previous blogpost about Mimicry, I find that players in SL are sort of seeking a form of immortality which they can't achieve in real life. They can feel powerful and high desired in SL, but then it may not be the same in reality. It is much easier to attain immortality within the game than reality.


With this, I'll like to come up with a discussion question. And that is what has all these philosophical stuffs got to do with the gaming world? Why must we go in so deeply on something that is so simple and supposedly enjoyable?



No idea, toughest reading ever.