I made a new group in Second Life called "Council on Virtual Relations". Working draft charter is about discussing international relations and ways in which Second Life could be useful, and also the intersection of real-life and virtual world policies. In trying to envisage a logo for the group, a turtle popped into my mind for some reason and I went Googling around to dredge up half-remembered information about turtles holding up the world and such.
It turns out there is an apocryphal story sometimes attributed to Bertrand Russell, that supposedly after he gave his lecture about "Why I am Not A Christian," and referenced the Hindu belief that the world rested on elephants, and the elephants on a tortoise, but there was nothing underneath the turtle, an Indian woman objected, and said, "But there are turtles all the way down."
I happen to think that there is something rather like "turtles all the way down" but it's also useful to stop at the world-bearing image and imagine that all of us have to behave like world-holders in various ways, and that's what holds up the world (hence the group title "World-Holders"). The turtle is also a good symbol for the concave shell symbolizing the heaven, and the squat feet on earth. And his amphibian nature, whereby he can survive on both land and water, is a reference to the transitions between virtuality and real life.
I think it would be useful to have a closed group for the time being but to give the right of invitation to each person who joins, so that it functions like various beta invitations sometimes start out. We could make a requirement that you must give your real-life name and affiliation to join *or* have the recommendation of two other members to join. In that way, more permeability is created than the real-life Council on Foreign Relations, which requires a rigorous membership procedure involving having existing members recommend you, but also somewhat preserves that idea of recommendation as a solution to the problem of those who don't want to give up their anonymity behind the SL avatar.
Why closed if you are advocating open society, democracy, dialogue and such? Because I'm tired of griefing, and tired of rabid sectarians showing up and ruining every meeting -- which in fact then means that you are so open that the enemies of openness destroy your liberal space. If you disagree, I suggest you hold meetings for a while *and* maintain a vigorous and controversial blog or forums, and see how you do : )
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