Does SL Have an Intelligentsia?

[Arielle Popstar]

1 hour ago, Seicher Rae said:

I will stay in line and wait for their services, quietly (ha).

So true though that like Lucy, it is the armchair psychologists and sociologists that are often the ones that instigate the drama rather than reduce it. Well played meme.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Arielle Popstar
added adjective

[Coffee Pancake]

No, they just point out the cause of the drama

[Love Zhaoying]

5 hours ago, Arduenn Schwartzman said:

If intelligentsia means what I think it means then aren't the American founding fathers and their associates intelligentsia? And the founders and developers of Linden Lab/Second Life and whomever they were inspired/advised by?

And am I correct in understanding that you're asking if SL needs an intelligentsia in-world? Would that require the need or demand for some sort of organized, structured societal entity within SL? Like a roleplay community?

I imagine the usefulness of an intelligentsia to be to design such community in a sustainable way, guaranteeing survival and a basic quality of life for all within that society.

I also imagine survival of a community in SL to rely on the minimization of drama.

So, if SL ever would need an intelligentsia, it would have to be one that specializes in drama reduction. An intelligentsia of psychologists and sociologists would be most useful, in that case.

My understanding was, the usefulness of an intelligentsia in Second Life is somehow to guide (influence) Linden Lab and/or the Second Life Community (users) in the development, evolution, etc. of Second Life.

All that sounds great, but who says either Linden Lab or the Community (users) would be interested, listen to the advice of the intelligentsia, etc.?  

If we had a wonderful, awesome, good, well-intentioned group of well-organized and thoughtful intelligentsia, and nobody cared, would their contribution matter at all?

Edited August 19, 2022 by Love Zhaoying
Maybe it would matter to historians in some future where the writings of the intelligentsia are reviewed, along with all the "We told you so!" discussions?

[Prokofy Neva]

20 hours ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

I think we'd be safer (in lots of ways) if we kept the discussion immediately SL-related.

So, as a sort of SL analogue to Tom MacDonald, or Rage Against the Machine, or whoever, consider things like in-world exhibitions and events that have an "intellectual" component (whatever that means).

Now, I've done a number of these, but, as I'm a modest, shrinking violet myself, I will instead cite as an example the current installation by Debora Kaz "Invisible Cities -- Fighting Women" (the link takes you to Inara's review of the exhibition). It's a great installation -- really well done from an artistic perspective, and very engaging. But it's not obviously providing "new information" or analysis about its subject (which is violence against women).

What it does do is reframe and recontextualize things we already "know" or that have been said at more length elsewhere in a medium that is both more pleasant to experience than a straight-forward polemic (the ancients called this utile dulci -- sort of "a spoon full of medicine" to make the lesson go down more easily) and "new" precisely because what art endeavours to do is provide new insights through an aesthetic experience. So, you won't get new "data" or information from Kaz's exhibition, but you may walk away with new insights or perspectives on a familiar subject, because that's one of the things that art "does."

I think you can argue that things like Kaz's installation are contributions to public discourse. They are "public humanities" as well as art, because they raise consciousness about issues, they provoke discussion, and they enable new ways of thinking about them. And because they attract a subset of people who are there for the "art" rather than the "issue," they reach out into a broader public.

Now, it's still a small public. I'm not sure how many people actually saw my "Virtual Toxic" exhibit, but based on the size of the crowd at the opening, and the number of pictures I sold, I'd guess a few hundred? Which is great -- but still not the kind of reach that can really impact upon SL's overall culture.

But it's a start. And it's probably more than read my posts here.

Yes, I think in general, nowadays the art world in SL is really the only permanent home of the intelligentsia, and while that's skewed, when there aren't thinkers, philosophers, writers, poets, critics etc to go along with this, at least it's something and very present with lots of activities.

[Prokofy Neva]

18 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Honestly the difference between my link and yours is a bit of hair splitting. Reading the link to Inara's review of the exhibit struck me as hard hitting as Tom's rendition of the Names track in that both present a different way of perceiving the dynamics between people in such a way that we should be prompted to ask ourselves whether our old way of seeing reality is not off the mark and whether we need fresh eyes on how we interact with each other, whether it is taking offence at the names we call each other or the competition of women against women potentially resulting in a violence against each other, and how it too is instigated and motivated by greater forces then is readily apparent. I was struck by the artist Deborah Kaz's summation when she writes:

WOMEN COMPETE WITH EACH OTHER ATTACK EACH OTHER IN AN IRRATIONAL WAY; AND MOST OF THE TIME, THEY ARE NOT AWARE OF IT, BECAUSE OF THE SUPERSTRUCTURE. STRUCTURAL MISOGYNY OCCUPIES THE MINDS OF NOT ONLY MEN, BUT IT IS ALSO PRESENT IN THE FORMATION OF EVERY WOMAN WHO IS BORN OBJECTIFIED. THE DEMAND TO BE DESIRED GROWS AND SEEKS TO BE DESIRED ALL HER LIFE – BY MEN, BUT MOSTLY BY WOMEN; TO BE DESIRED BY ANOTHER WOMAN IS TO HAVE POWER, TO BE BETTER THAN OTHERS IS WANTING TO BE BETTER THAN ANY OTHER WOMAN. https://modemworld.me/2022/08/05/invisible-cities-fighting-women-at-nitroglobus-in-second-life/

Sometimes the stuff that the intelligentsia comes up with, knowingly or not, has a potential boomerang effect.

So if I understand you correctly, you prefer the subtlety of an artistic display where you could interpret it in such a way that it is more palatable to you and the much smaller audience vs that of the hard hitting and more upfront lyrics in a popular rap song (which is probably not your musical style anyway). Art and its medium however is in the eye of the beholder, which was the intent of my posting the link, not its perceived political or social justice aspect. Luckily the powers that be, were able to be weaponized to take down that which was perceived to be of a lesser or of an even contrarian viewpoint to certain intelligentsia.

Yes I'm sure it could be but is it allowed under the new guidelines even if it is about something in S/L and that yet carries a political/social  message relayed to the Forum itself? Is it dependent on who actually posts it rather than the content and its implication on the allowable public/forum discourse? 

Yeah, I don't think you want to overthink that or other exhibits or you end up with cults and little totalitarianisms everywhere. "Smelly little orthodoxies," as George Orwell's phrase had it. 

There is art. But there is not art *criticism*. From that same blog you get a highly didactic report on "The Kids Aren't Alright" which is actually a more subtle build. Some art in SL is quite didactic and the art suffers for it. Others, not. The artworld, like the forums, tends to the left but then at least the art is more subtle. But there needs to be art criticism, and there isn't any. Do I have to do everything around here?

[Harper Held]

As they say, if you want a job done right ...

Personally, I think there's not enough left, particularly in the mainstream but that whole overton thing's broken hasn't it? (spoilers: yes, it has).

[Harper Held]

Also ...no poetry? If you mean poetry criticism then yeah -you're probably correct. But there's a few poetry readings in SL I end up attending and I don't even look for them. That tells me that there's so many that you end up stumbling over it unintentionally.

[Harper Held]

Lastly; whatever happened to the Thinker's group from a decade or two ago?

[Prokofy Neva]

22 hours ago, Han Held said:

Geez louise, I am definitely not bringing my a game today, my apologies! I'm running on 4 hours sleep.

Again, I am literally uneducated -or to split hairs self educated which is basically the same thing. I don't say this to be all "aw shucks" and crap but to head off being called out for (probably obvious) gaps in my knowledge.

I agree with your description of "intelligentsia" as being the artists, writers and musicians who have an influence on the dominant culture. Warhol and the factory scene with the way they influenced *at least* two different pop culture movements (punk and whatever you want to call the proto-goth scene of the late 70's;early 80's) is a classic example. The punk, heavy metal and hip hop movements were (co-opted) attempts by the lumpen proles to distill and express life and society as they experienced it by the writers, performers and associated ar***** going through it...and I would argue makes them Intelligentsia.

I don't feel it's a "guidance" role though there is room for that -but rather an interpretive role.

Hard to claim that the figures you reference are all merely descriptive and reporting, when it didn't even take another decade for their style to become *pre*scriptive. 

Weren't you in Woodbury University?

[Harper Held]

8 minutes ago, Prokofy Neva said:

Weren't you in Woodbury University?

Nope. Not IRL, not in SL.

EDIT: descriptive vs prescriptive - you have the education, so I'll take your word for it. I'll just point out that the fact something becomes something different at a later date doesn't change what it started out as. eg the hippies that powdered their noses in studio 54 in the 70's were still hippies in woodstock, weren't they?

Edited August 19, 2022 by Han Held

[Scylla Rhiadra]

19 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

Honestly the difference between my link and yours is a bit of hair splitting.

Well, the practical difference is that one is in SL, and uses the tools provided here to produce it's effects and meanings, and the other isn't.

As much as I'd love to get into the issue of how and what Debora's installation works, a discussion of her view of the place of women in our culture is off-topic for this thread, and would get it locked. The one thing I will point out is that the installation is visual and quite immersive. You can't really have a discussion of it, or indeed of any form of "art" in SL, without reference to the thing itself, of which the text is only a relatively small and marginal part.

19 hours ago, Arielle Popstar said:

So if I understand you correctly, you prefer the subtlety of an artistic display where you could interpret it in such a way that it is more palatable to you and the much smaller audience vs that of the hard hitting and more upfront lyrics in a popular rap song (which is probably not your musical style anyway). Art and its medium however is in the eye of the beholder, which was the intent of my posting the link, not its perceived political or social justice aspect.

First, no . . . I love art and literature, and in that sense "prefer" them over straight polemic, but I am not arguing that they are better or more important elements of public discourse. They are a part of the overall puzzle, not a "preferred" replacement for all of the other forms in which it can take. I was mostly making the point that one of the more popular ways in which we do talk about issues in SL is through its art.

And, "art is in the eye of the beholder"? And it's more "palatable" to me because I can twist it to mean what I want?

No, that's actually not how art works. Any of it.

There is an indefinitely enormous range of ways one can read and understand, say, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, but it does not follow that all are equally valid, or that there is no "wrong way" to read it.

Criticism, close reading, are in that sense no different than any other form of critical understanding: they are evidence based. If you can demonstrate that evidence exists within a work to support your reading, and is not contradicted by other evidence, then you might have a winner. But you don't get to arbitrarily reshape a work's meanings according to your own preferences. Art is, by definition, not a tabula rasa upon which you can scribble whatever it is that you want. And learning how to read it intelligently, and with an eye to nuance and subtlety is hard work. We have entire university programmes devoted to learning how to do it well for a reason.

ETA: I don't know why you differentiate between "art" and Tom MacDonald's music. The latter is also art. It's not, in my opinion, very good or interesting art, but that doesn't change its status.

And being "good" is not, btw, a function of ideology. I think that the ideological views of, say, the Roman satirist Juvenal or the modernist novelist D. H. Laurence are abhorrent and stupid -- but they're both absolutely brilliant artists for all that.

Edited August 19, 2022 by Scylla Rhiadra

[Rolig Loon]

As interesting as this thread is, it leaves me feeling unsatisfied.  My mind turns to C.P. Snow's old lecture on The Two Cultures, in which he comments on the growing gap between the culture of the humanities and the culture of the sciences. From a distance of three quarters of a century, some of his commentary now seems quaint but the basic message is intact. Public discussions among the "intelligensia" or of societal issues in general tend to get hijacked by humanists, who tend to forget that there have always been just as vigorous discussions on the scientific side of the house. 

My complaint to my scientific/technical colleagues is that we characteristically fail to use accessible language, so it's no wonder that humanists tune us out. I am just as annoyed at humanists, though, who all too often fail to recognize that scientists have a role in public discourse too.  I once spent a week at an NEH-sponsored symposium on race and ethnicity, struggling through a morass of code words and obscure allusions, and frustrated by the absence of conversation about the ways that science can affect (and has affected) public attitudes and understanding (for good or evil). I have also sat through many frustrating scientific meetings in which participants whine dismissively about the way that people in the arts and the "soft sciences" waste time on "head in the clouds" discussions.  

This is starting to sound like a rant, which is not what I intended. There are good people across all parts of the science - humanities spectrum, and it is by no means as sharply divided into camps as C.P. Snow painted it 75 years ago. Still, the fact that we still have to stand up every once in a while and wave, "Hey! Remember us over here?" tells me that the gap persists. We have two intelligentsias, and they aren't always on the same page.

To be sure that this post still has a SL context ..... the scientific intelligentsia in SL, if it exists at all, has been very quiet for as long as I have been here.  This thread illustrates -- to me at least -- that members of the "intelligentsia" in SL (to the extent that it also exists) represent the humanities.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

18 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

As interesting as this thread is, it leaves me feeling unsatisfied.  My mind turns to C.P. Snow's old lecture on The Two Cultures, in which he comments on the growing gap between the culture of the humanities and the culture of the sciences. From a distance of three quarters of a century, some of his commentary now seems quaint but the basic message is intact. Public discussions among the "intelligensia" or of societal issues in general tend to get hijacked by humanists, who tend to forget that there have always been just as vigorous discussions on the scientific side of the house. 

My complaint to my scientific/technical colleagues is that we characteristically fail to use accessible language, so it's no wonder that humanists tune us out. I am just as annoyed at humanists, though, who all too often fail to recognize that scientists have a role in public discourse too.  I once spent a week at an NEH-sponsored symposium on race and ethnicity, struggling through a morass of code words and obscure allusions, and frustrated by the absence of conversation about the ways that science can affect (and has affected) public attitudes and understanding (for good or evil). I have also sat through many frustrating scientific meetings in which participants whine dismissively about the way that people in the arts and the "soft sciences" waste time on "head in the clouds" discussions.  

This is starting to sound like a rant, which is not what I intended. There are good people across all parts of the science - humanities spectrum, and it is by no means as sharply divided into camps as C.P. Snow painted it 75 years ago. Still, the fact that we still have to stand up every once in a while and wave, "Hey! Remember us over here?" tells me that the gap persists. We have two intelligentsias, and they aren't always on the same page.

To be sure that this post still has a SL context ..... the scientific intelligentsia in SL, if it exists at all, has been very quiet for as long as I have been here.  This thread illustrates -- to me at least -- that members of the "intelligentsia" in SL (to the extent that it also exists) represent the humanities.

I remember a number of years ago attending a lecture by a physicist on the subject of the plays of Samuel Beckett. He related to them to quantum mechanics and the many worlds theory. There were, to be sure, some problems with the paper, and some naive assumptions, but it was generally a fascinating and really fruitful discussion. I wish I knew of more of this kind of thing.

What is really required is a cooperative approach between the sciences and the humanities (and we can add the social sciences to that as well), where each is informing the other. We are all highly specialized, and collaborative, hybridized work is the best, and maybe the only way, to make this work.

I think that, to some degree, we have that now in SL. A great many "social issues" in SL, of the sort that are often the focus of humanities scholars, have technical origins and/or solutions on this platform, and discussions of them in an SL context often involve both elements. A good simple example that I find fascinating is the fact that gender in SL is represented, in computational code terms, as a float rather than an integer.

I'd totally welcome discussions here that examined things like consent or identity in terms of the code. They sometimes happen: we could do more of them, and better. And a vital first step, of course, is to recognize the validity of both perspectives, and the value that can be produced by using one to interrogate and complicate the other.

[Love Zhaoying]

3 hours ago, Prokofy Neva said:

when it didn't even take another decade for their style to become *pre*scriptive

I am trying to understand this use of "style" with "prescriptive".  Like how "Polo Shirts" became a "norm", when originally used by the 'upper classes'?  I am trying to not be..reductive.

[Randall Ahren]

6 hours ago, Rolig Loon said:

We have two intelligentsias, and they aren't always on the same page.

People educated in the hard sciences are included in intelligentsia, such as physicist Andre Sakharov of the former Soviet Union.

[Rolig Loon]

40 minutes ago, Randall Ahren said:

People educated in the hard sciences are included in intelligentsia, such as physicist Andre Sakharov of the former Soviet Union.

Yes, there are always exceptions.  Albert Einstein, Carl Sagan, Barbara McClintock, and many others come to mind. That's why I said that the intelligentsia are not as divided into two camps as they were in Snow's time (and even then the lines were permeable). It's also why I said that the two intelligentsias are "not always" on the same page instead of saying "never".  Still, there is a lingering bias among scientists against those who spend too much of their time on policy and metathinking instead of research.  And there's a similar blind spot on the humanists' side of the fence.  In fact, as Snow pointed out, it is not uncommon for a scientist to be engaged in the arts, music, or literature, but it is the rare artist or bassoon player who does genetics experiments on the side.  

[Randall Ahren]

19 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

  In fact, as Snow pointed out, it is not uncommon for a scientist to be engaged in the arts, music, or literature, but it is the rare artist or bassoon player who does genetics experiments on the side.  

Snow comes across as conceited. Here are some examples of musicians that practiced science and math on the side while juggling a successful music career:

Bryan Holland of the band Offspring has a PhD in molecular biology. Brian May, guitarist of Queen, has a PhD in astrophysics. Mira Aroyo of Ladytron was enrolled as a PhD student at Oxfored in genetics. There are many other examples if you care to look.

 

Edited August 20, 2022 by Randall Ahren
Add examples of musicians that practice science on the side.

[Rolig Loon]

Just now, Randall Ahren said:

Snow comes across as conceited.

Yes, he does at times, especially to 21st century readers. I was putting it gently when I said that "from a distance of three quarters of a century, some of his commentary now seems quaint ."  When I first read his lecture in the 60s, I was already reading from the perspective of someone more than a generation removed from Snow's.  He was in a transition time.  Vannevar Bush and others were making the case for creating the National Science Foundation, trying to speak to non-scientists about why science should be part of public policy.  NASA was 15 years in the future. When I was reading Snow's work, it already sounded like a voice from another time.  Today's it's even more so. Despite that, though, the basic message still holds.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Yes, he does at times, especially to 21st century readers. I was putting it gently when I said that "from a distance of three quarters of a century, some of his commentary now seems quaint ."  When I first read his lecture in the 60s, I was already reading from the perspective of someone more than a generation removed from Snow's.  He was in a transition time.  Vannevar Bush and others were making the case for creating the National Science Foundation, trying to speak to non-scientists about why science should be part of public policy.  NASA was 15 years in the future. When I was reading Snow's work, it already sounded like a voice from another time.  Today's it's even more so. Despite that, though, the basic message still holds.

Are you familiar with Jacob Brownowski, Rolig.

He addressed exactly this issue. Brilliant man.

 

[Arielle Popstar]

This is getting boring. What does it have to do with S/L and the intelligentsia within it? 

[Scylla Rhiadra]

2 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

This is getting boring. What does it have to do with S/L and the intelligentsia within it? 

SL is the embodiment of a science- and math-enabled platform that offer endless opportunities for the humanist. If ever there was a platform that brought the arts, philosophy, and music together with applied science, this is it.

I teach literature. I have far more engagement with those working in the.sciences here than I do at my own university. 

[Rolig Loon]

Yes, Dr, Bronowski was another one of those who lived well in both worlds. I loaned my copy of the Ascent of Man to a friend ages ago and never got it back, sadly. I've found it interesting that scientists who have the easiest time of conversing with the public are at the peak of their careers.  There's a certain license that is granted to people like Bronowski, Sagan, and Pauling who have established themselves so well in the field that they can escape the odd glances and open shaming that younger, less established scientists experience when they write and speak to non-scientists.  It's less true today than it was a generation ago, for sure, but I remember personally having been told that articles I wrote for public consumption would slow my career path.

I agree with Arielle that this conversation is now drifting away from anything directly relevant to SL, so it's probably best to leave it before a moderator decides to lock the thread. I do find it sad, though, that she (and I suspect others) consider it "boring". Especially now, as we grapple with climate change, public health, and natural resource issues daily, conversations across the sciences and the humanities are more important than ever.

[Arielle Popstar]

17 minutes ago, Scylla Rhiadra said:

SL is the embodiment of a science- and math-enabled platform that offer endless opportunities for the humanist. If ever there was a platform that brought the arts, philosophy, and music together with applied science, this is it.

I teach literature. I have far more engagement with those working in the.sciences here than I do at my own university. 

A few posts above you were worried that a conversation going into the display of an S/L artist would result in the locking of this thread. The thread has now veered significantly farther off course but now you justify it is all good?

[Arielle Popstar]

9 minutes ago, Rolig Loon said:

Yes, Dr, Bronowski was another one of those who lived well in both worlds. I loaned my copy of the Ascent of Man to a friend ages ago and never got it back, sadly. I've found it interesting that scientists who have the easiest time of conversing with the public are at the peak of their careers.  There's a certain license that is granted to people like Bronowski, Sagan, and Pauling who have established themselves so well in the field that they can escape the odd glances and open shaming that younger, less established scientists experience when they write and speak to non-scientists.  It's less true today than it was a generation ago, for sure, but I remember personally having been told that articles I wrote for public consumption would slow my career path.

I agree with Arielle that this conversation is now drifting away from anything directly relevant to SL, so it's probably best to leave it before a moderator decides to lock the thread. I do find it sad, though, that she (and I suspect others) consider it "boring". Especially now, as we grapple with climate change, public health, and natural resource issues daily, conversations across the sciences and the humanities are more important than ever.

Not boring Rolig, I'd love to discuss some of these things you consider to be sciences but I know full well that some of my viewpoints would be quickly deleted and the thread locked so using some wisdom, I won't go there. It was only within the last couple years when there was still a modicum of free speech on this forum, that some of these exact topics were discussed.

[Scylla Rhiadra]

8 minutes ago, Arielle Popstar said:

A few posts above you were worried that a conversation going into the display of an S/L artist would result in the locking of this thread. The thread has now veered significantly farther off course but now you justify it is all good?

Well, not exactly, no. I think given the topic of this thread -- the SL "intelligentsia" -- it's entirely appropriate to talk about the role of artists within SL insofar as they can be seen as part of such a semi-mythical body.

What I suggested is that a discussion of the particular theme of that one particular installation -- feminism and women's rights -- was off topic. Your comments weren't addressing Debora's role as an artist; they were about what she had to say about women.

I actually think that Rolig has hit on an interesting point that is applicable to SL, which features a kind of marriage of at least subsets of science -- computer science and mathematics, anyway -- and the humanities.

AM Radio, possibly SL's most famous artist, was trained in art . . . but he worked for IBM. And he's currently experimenting with AI-generated art, in part with the metaverse in mind. I find those connections interesting and suggestive.