Reality in the mind
“Second Life is a virtual world conceived and created by human beings day by day, and they tend to do things in a certain way. It hardly matters whether the world they are in is virtual or ‘real.’ Real is what exists in the mind. And though we may be very different from each other in our outward appearance, inside we are all the same: blood, guts, and a heap of dreams. Even our dreams are the same: we all want love, success, and happiness.” This comes from the blurb that introduces the guide to Second Life, recently published in “The Library of Repubblica-L’Espresso.” “This world lets you concentrate on the search for personal happiness. There is no need to have anything to do with all those real-world issues that take up so much time on planet Earth. Here you are free to do just what you like. It’s only real life that hinders you in the search for true happiness.”
It doesn’t take much to start playing. Basic access is free. But if you want to be successful you need to invest: real money converted into Linden Dollars, the local currency. It’s virtual yet real, since it is quoted against the American dollar and fluctuates on financial markets both inside and outside the game.

The more you spend...
The more you invest, the higher your standard of living in this community and the greater the success of your second life. So off you go to buy an island, build a house, and buy yourself a persona. Spend money to be a somebody, to build relationships. Without status you won’t be taken seriously. The purpose of it all? To satisfy your ambition and desires, all the time lolling in a chair in front of a monitor. You can meet other people through their avatars and mix with them socially. You might even captivate them, and then enjoy virtual sex together–without seeing each other, without knowing who is concealed behind that avatar who looks like a handsome young man in the latest fashion tenderly clasping a busty, blond avatar. This is love in Second Life. And will you be fulfilled? Of course not.
If you scroll through Second Life forums, blogs, and diaries, you discover a sea of possibilities. You want a pregnancy? That’ll be 3,000 Linden Dollars. Sounds too expensive? “We’ll let you choose the baby you’ll bear in your womb. Even a male can get pregnant, and we’ll throw in a complete set of scans for a nine-month pregnancy,” explains the official avatar of a virtual clinic. You can get married or divorced–it costs the same in both cases. And whole books, in fact, encyclopedias, could be written about the things you find as you wander about the various “sims” (as the different Second Life regions are called)–or rather about the things created: missionaries, churches, discos, prostitution, pornography, political associations, revolutionary groups, newspapers, gymnasiums, alcoholics’ groups, charities...

A new creation?
Created, because on this platform nothing exists beforehand, except in the form of “prims,” the building blocks for everything you see on Second Life. You just join them up, develop them, and endow them with sequences of movements and features. If I choose the scope offered by a “second life,” with the promise of true happiness, even though it’s virtual, it is because ultimately I find real life unsatisfactory, however much I’ve gotten from it. The true novelty is that I am free to create the things I want, whatever satisfies my desires, and the new reality will be their projection. Reality and desire: this is certainly the core of the whole game. Clearly it is a highly relevant topic. Only a few days ago, Benedict XVI stressed this in Pavia. He quoted St. Augustine: “With his shrewd insight into human reality, St. Augustine pointed out that man is moved spontaneously, and not constrained, when he responds to what attracts him and arouses his desire.” Here at Second Life, the perspective is totally reversed. Our experience of given reality vanishes; our desires can shape their objects. Inevitably, this slides into the Promethean idea of becoming omnipotent, being able to create like a god. “Second Life works as if in you were a real-life god,” explain the authors of the guide. “But not actually an omnipotent god; rather, one of those minor mythological deities who tended to specialize in certain fields.” So everything is possible. Its incredible success is not really surprising, including the business this fake reality generates.
A world where transactions totaling over $1.5 million take place every day obviously appeals to the business community. Some real banks have opened branches in it, and businesses have created islands as publicity stunts. Many products have their first launch on Second Life and then in real life, all with lucrative cash flows. And real life is beginning to become enmeshed with Second Life. Politicians buy islands or hold press conferences while groups of dissenting avatars mount protest movements at their doors. People open virtual stores, where you can buy real-life objects, or you can apply to real businesses for Second Life products.

Disquiet
We are left with the question of whether a world of this kind can really keep its promises of happiness and success. How can we find satisfaction in a non-existent world? If reality is a disappointment, how can a virtual surrogate satisfy us? “Tonight, I’m here,” writes a player on a forum on Second Life’s site, “in front of this electronic sea, thinking about what I expected of this ‘second life,’ and probably my first life too. Just a few bits away from this island of mine, people are pursuing each other and kicking up a shindy; they create ties that last an evening and destroy others, all with the same recklessness. And I question myself about the sense of this endless river streaming through our cardboard figures, destined to be lost in its flow. Why do I experience this disquiet? What am I seeking in this world? Is there a poseball [the protocol that enables the avatars to perform actions] for feelings? For doubt and misgivings? Or do they only exist in real life?”
Disquiet is inevitable. The same dissatisfaction emerges in the new kinds of virtual reality created to escape from the real world. They’re like a hidden woodworm slowly chewing its way through the leg of the chair we’re sitting on. It is the discovery of an illusion–or, rather, the disappointment that stems from the dream of fulfilling our desires through something that is incapable of ever satisfying them. The dream, Fr. Giussani explained to some young people back in the early 90s, “is a fantasy. It projects into the future something tenuous that embodies a mood, a reaction. ...If you fail to reckon with the facts of nature you will never be fulfilled. You will be deluded, cheated. Delusion derives from a Latin word that means ‘being cheated.’ We can cheat ourselves. Illusion is another form of the same word. We can delude and deceive ourselves by ‘playing’ at whatever we like instead of submitting to obedience.”
Our ties with reality are vital, and the weaker this tie becomes, the more we will be liable to be manipulated and cheated by the promise of a new life in a non-existent place: a utopia. How long can we keep dreaming? When we awake, when this virtual world vanishes at the click of a mouse–the sad and dreary moment of logoff–stubborn reality encroaches on our lives again. There must be something in the real world, made up of real things and flesh-and-blood people, which is more attractive than Second Life. To avoid being cheated, in the world of avatars as in the real world, one thing is necessary. The twentieth century’s most stubborn critic of the deceptions of ideology, Hannah Arendt, knew all about the illusions of power. She wrote, “Being faithful to the reality of things, for better or worse, involves a complete love of truth and total gratitude for the very fact of being born.” Difficult? The alternative is awakening to bitter disappointment, being cheated by a game.