Our in class Second Life experience.
Learning to be a leader who lives from a solid foundation of self-awareness is the greatest benefit I can receive from my liberal university education. The accelerating evolution of society and culture in the modern world demands that a liberal education teach many skills. New and innovative techniques are immerging all the time to teach leadership, which increasingly is entailing a wide variety of skills, such as emotional and interpersonal intelligences, and a means to find a balance between them. Second Life is one such virtual experiment in leadership and educational enrichment. My feelings about the program, however, are conflicted. Though our role model construction and conversations were interesting trial runs, Second Life did not activate enough of my intelligences to be effective leadership training, nor did it motivate me to continue with other SL-oriented pursuits.
Through writing about my role model in P1, the first of this series of essays, I learned about the type of leader I want to become. I revisited Ken Wilber’s work and life story, which have been a major inspirations for the direction I have taken during the past year or so of my life. I admire not only his academic work but also the way in which he conducts his own life and his interactions with others. “Leadership… builds up from a foundation of self-awareness,” a principle exemplified by Ken Wilber’s life. He has been a contemplative practitioner for several decades and has benefited from several forms of psychotherapy, both of which have increased his personal awareness. But being a true leader entails that one does not stop with internal reflection, and indeed Wilber does not. He emphasizes balance, a point that has greatly enriched my life. I have learned from Wilber that there are many aspects of life worth giving attention, for “to give undue prominence to one is to be unjust to another” . Though he is an intellectual giant, his teachings do not end with the last chapter of any book; they have pragmatic value and reach into the lives of real people in the real world. By learning from my role model and recognizing that which I admire in him, I can grow toward becoming the leader I want to be.
(This is the Integral SL club. It is the virtual site of my role model's, Ken Wilber's, teachings. I was so excited when I found that he too had experimented with SL.)Filling the leadership role I envision for myself involves learning from more than a sole exemplar. It is valuable to recognize what many leaders from various backgrounds and in various domains of life have contributed to improving societies. By reviewing my fellow classmates’ writings about their respective role models, I have gained insight into what makes an invaluable contributor to the world and an inspiring figure in the lives of others. Gandhi is such an important historical figure not only because he “tried extremely hard to bring the different people of India together,” but also because he “inspired [other] leaders by ‘…creating resonance and moving [them] with a compelling vision or shared mission’ ” (Avni Mody). By reminding people of a greater purpose in life – one that large numbers of people could connect with – Gandhi was able to mobilize a peaceful movement for human rights and unification that would immeasurably improve Indian society. A true leader, one whose acts will continue to benefit society even after he or she is gone, knows how to empower those around him. Mary Kay Ash, for example, improved the lives of fellow employees by choosing “to bring morality to the work place and thus empower women to succeed in a balanced manner” (Hannah Chesser). Both Gandhi and Mary Kay motivated other people by promoting principles they believed necessary to a fulfilling life. I can learn from them, among many things, strength, certitude, and the courage to proceed with a vision.
(This is the corporeal version of Ken Wilber, although I suppose it could be argued that this physical manifestation is no more real than the digital one.)But becoming the leader that I want to be involves emulating people close to me as well. Gandhi and Mary Kay Ash have inspired thousands, but they have not impacted my life in so personal a way as friends and family have. Danielle’s role model is her father. His “unending enthusiasm and love for each member of his family” (Danielle Oxford) are sources of utmost admiration. I aspire to become a leader who shows such compassion. Compassion and unconditional love are also qualities I practice by integrating Ken Wilber’s work into my life. Just as Danielle finds this warmth in her father, I too find them in my mother and father. The effort they have put into supporting me and guiding me toward my current place in life cannot be overstated. Their lives inspire me personally, as though I could touch their stories, in a way Ken Wilber, Mahatma Gandhi, and Mary Kay Ash cannot. Becoming the leader I want to become entails heart-to-heart relationships. Mass societal movements may be the ones recorded in the history books, but every single one of them begins with an individual relating to others the best way he knows how.
All of this talk about emulating great leaders has import for our experiment with Second Life because Second Life is a virtual world in which participants can practice being leaders. Each of us in our class created representations of our role models so that we might better understand them. By having to then behave and interact as our role models, we were asked to embody their characteristics. “By actually entering into the object, so to speak, [one can] secure a momentary but complete identification with it” (the sympathetic imagination), which was precisely our practice with our exemplars. This is important because temporary states can, if they are entered frequently enough, become traits. That is, by temporarily adopting our role models’ characteristics we can learn to live as they do. We subject ourselves to a lifestyle we currently only dream of and, with practice and dedication, we can make that dream a reality. This is one method by which Second Life potentially accelerates the formation of leaders.
My first group chat in Second Life
This process is in accord with the core purpose of a university education, which should train individuals to benefit society. As Peter T. Flawn announced in his annual address to the UT faculty, “public universities exist to serve society,” which means producing people who know how to live and lead in the contemporary, ever-developing world. Graduates must be fluent in the language of technology and computers and be able to communicate with facility and tolerance. When they can, “the doorway to rapid, intentional evolution of liberal education opens.” Second Life is a multimedia program for a multimedia world, integrating many necessary skills, such as computer skills, communication skills, leadership abilities, creativity, and discovery learning. Reaching others through multidimensional means – intellectually, emotionally, visually, aurally – is a skill that must be taught by universities if they are to fulfill their goal of benefiting a society now constituted of “creators and empathizers, pattern recognizers, and meaning makers,” people who lead well-rounded lives.
I feel conflicted, however, when I promote Second Life as a means of embodying the traits exemplified by our role models and necessary for the success of contemporary leaders. Our experiment was most certainly valid and, in theory, seemed to have great potential. But I don’t think it was actually that effective. I was very excited to be Ken Wilber, if only for an hour. Each of us had to know our role model well enough to converse as he or she would, and I believe we all did. Unfortunately this didn’t mean that we actually did behave as them. At the conversations’ start, I strongly intended to speak as Ken Wilber would. But as the interactions heated up, the mask would melt away, and the puppeteer’s own prejudices would be revealed. I periodically forgot that I was Ken Wilber. This, however, did reveal an interesting tidbit about the degree to which I have absorbed my role model’s teachings. If I were to relive one of the conversations and remember to remain Ken Wilber throughout, I don’t think much of what I said would have changed at all. Though I had unconsciously fallen out of character, I still managed to quip, “interpersonal relationships are vital to a strong leader… the mind cannot blossom ‘by itself’” (Sprinkles Timeless, Chat), a particularly Wilberesque phrase. So while Second Life may not have actually forced me to play virtual Ken Wilber, it did show me that Wilber has become a regular part of the way I think and act.
I became excited as Second Life afforded me the opportunity to become closer to Ken Wilber (odd as that may seem), but I simultaneously felt many frustrations. I have decided that I am going to meet Ken Wilber, and bizarre experiences such as this provide me with a way to get his attention. He would be fascinated by this multidimensional experiment. Designing virtual Ken Wilber in Second Life became fun once I got the hang of it, though it did require a painful amount of time. I sat for quite a good chunk of time with Ken Wilber’s portrait perched beside my laptop, trying to decipher his facial structure so that I could replicate it.
Beyond this minor pleasure, however, I did not enjoy much about Second Life. Flying in SL made me no more giddy than sitting does in my first life, and, though the computer coded flowers were of passing attractiveness, I much prefer ones that I can actually smell. The captions that should have been clear on screen would first appear blurry for several seconds and took an irritating amount of time to load. I do not like video or computer games in general, hence the aspects of our experiment I enjoyed were ones dealing more with Ken Wilber’s ideas and less with Second Life’s games.Our conversations in Second Life were, for the most part, equally as frustrating. A lack of humanness pervades computer games and interactions, and therefore trying to have a conversation, a necessarily human interaction, was difficult. Dialogues were less like mutual communication and more like verbal onslaughts. Interface became unnecessarily competitive as participants hurled words back and forth, trying to shove as much verbiage into their speech bubble as they could manage.
If you look closely, you can see the sweat pouring down the computer screen as fingers fly over the keys and the competition bristles.
It is difficult to listen to what others are saying in this format and understanding is impeded. Although some intriguing topics were initiated, such as “connect everything to these [basic primitive] drives and you can transcent [sic] cultural boundaries” (LincolnLog Rokocoko, Chat), it was difficult to develop them because of the mayhem of other ideas and the impossibility of speaking directly with one other person. Leadership was exercised by multiple participants in efforts to direct the conversation, but technological impediments easily overwhelmed any attempts at human intervention. Because our topic of discussion was prescribed, wooden conversations were difficult to avoid. Natural conversations wander, but in Second Life wandering is “not the topic of discussion at hand, so let’s move on” (Heidi Reinard, Chat). This type of predetermined track created forced discussion that became unpleasant and was only occasionally rewarding.
I was more motivated to write P1 than I am to write the present one incorporating Second Life. P1 was motivated by more than just my normal academic drive. Revisiting Ken Wilber’s work was exciting, and as I did so I could feel the personal benefit I was receiving. I really embraced the role model paper as a topic that had true value in my own life. There is intrinsic value in the exploration of that which I admire. Second Life is not an invigorating subject to write about, and that alone diminishes my desire to do so. Other factors, such as the increase in my stress levels during discussions, deter me from wanting more to do with Second Life. I cannot see a direct correlation between Second Life and student motivation to write. The only reason I am drawing one is because I am in fact writing about Second Life; otherwise SL and motivation seem unrelated.
Second Life was not a positive discovery learning experience. I had no desire to explore, but that could simply be because computer games in general do not agree with me. Some people argue that computers can provide interactive experiences. I am reluctant to agree. Discovery learning entails hands on experience and sensory intake that I think is impossible in a computer program. Things in Second Life are prescribed to a degree that I didn’t have to explore. I found myself asking others instead, avoiding what might be called discovery learning through a computer game.
This experiment in Second Life did exercise certain leadership skills. It took guidance and assertiveness to keep discussion germane. But by no means did SL exercise the comprehensive range of skills needed to be an emotionally intelligent leader as proposed by Goleman et al. I exercised no self-awareness, nor did I apply any emotional intelligence. In fact, emotion is nearly impossible to convey in this format. It was rather like being a leader of a cardboard world: predictable safe, completely intellectual. I was successful at spitting out ideas rapid fire, and I did learn some things about myself. I learned that I strongly dislike this type of competitive, one-sided interaction, and my desire to find a balance of intelligences in my own life and in my interactions with others was further confirmed. “We should take care not to make the intellect our God. It has… no personality. It cannot lead, it can only serve,” and unfortunately it was the only intelligence at work in Second Life. Ken Wilber’s work has helped me to discern imbalance in situations such as this, and it is to his work that I return, rather than to the glitches and artificiality of a simulated world.
A person who has learned leadership through a liberal education will be able to extend his or her knowledge into all domains, even virtual ones such as Second Life. But this is not true vice-versa. I don’t think leadership learned in SL (if that is indeed possible) can be effectively extended into larger real world contexts. As an experiment in a liberal education attempting to produce leaders for the benefit of society, Second Life is an interesting side-note. For leaders in our forward-racing world, virtual interactions may enhance their leadership capabilities, but they will never match the importance of an emotionally aware and balanced human being.
Word count: 2186
Footnotes (see webspace version for proper documentation and appendix: https://webspace.utexas.edu/wcj262/Bump/swordp2/P2footnoted.htm?uniq=-33clra)
Daniel Goleman et al, “Primal Leadership: Realizing the Power of Emotional Intelligence,” in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s, 2007), 64.
John Henry Newman, “The Idea of a University,” in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s, 2007), 309.
Goleman et al, 68.
Peter T. Flawn, “Annual Address to the Faculty, October 16, 1984,” in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s, 2007), 306.
“Daily Report from The Chronicle of Higher Education,” in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s, 2007), 328.
Daniel Pink, “Revenge of the Right Brain,” in Composition and Reading in World Literature, ed. Jerome Bump (Austin: Jenn’s, 2007), 331.
Goleman et al, 62.
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