The Binary Circumstance

I’ve never been that excited about computer games but the virtual life site Second Life sounds fascinating to me.

From what I read so far about it, it seems that those frustrated with their current life can create a virtual life complete with a made up image and personality, land, houses and other possessions as part of an open-ended computer generated virtual world.

The site was featured on the CBS Evening News this evening. They focused on a woman who designs and sells virtual clothing to the virtual residents of Second Life’s virtual world. But she makes real money doing it. Enough to live on.

Check out the cost of an island. Somebody’s making real money selling virtual real estate.

Now I could see myself getting real addicted to something like this.

It’s a way of writing a story and acting it out, like 3-D, real-time literature. A great place for visual artists to express themselves as well.

Of particular interest is that it mimics a free market where people are free to create and sell content and services in the Second Life economy. This is from the developer’s page:

Second Life is a 3D platform for developers who want to present, promote, and sell their content and applications to a broad online audience within an immersive, shared space.

Unlike other massive multiplayer online experiences, Second Life has few restrictions and provides broad and flexible content authoring experiences for developers interested in building, creating and evolving the world of Second Life.

Second Life provides our expanding developer community with ownership of anything it builds or creates in Second Life. It is yours to sell, trade or monetize within the rapidly increasing population of Second Life Residents.

Far out!

This morning on ABC’s Good Morning America they replayed segments on an hour-long interview that Diane Sawyer did with Mel Gibson about his movie The Passion of the Christ.

In the interview (full transcript here), Gibson spoke of his battles with alcohol and drugs, a time he contemplated suicide, and how his wife is his best friend.

DIANE SAWYER: Which brings us to another story you can, in a sense, also see in the shadows on the screen. Gibson says the seed of this film was planted 13 years ago in his personal struggle with self-destruction and despair.

MEL GIBSON: Let’s face it, I’ve been to the pinnacle of what secular utopia has to offer. It’s just this kind of everything. I’ve got money, fame, this, that and the other, you know, and it’s all been like, whoosh here, here you go, like that. And it’s like, okay. And when I was younger, I got my proboscis out and I dipped it into the font and sucked it up, all right. It didn’t matter, there wasn’t enough, it wasn’t good enough. It’s not good enough. It leaves you empty. The more you eat the emptier you get.

DIANE SAWYER: How bad did it get?

MEL GIBSON: Oh, you know, pretty bad. I think everybody in their life gets to a point where that happens, I think. Where they get to the moment of truth and they go, ‘Well, what is this all about? Am I going to jump? Am I going to go on? I don’t want to do either. I don’t want to live. I don’t want to die.’ You ask yourself all those Hamlet questions and eventually you have to say, ‘I’m not good enough to figure this out. I don’t know. I just don’t know. Help, if there’s anything out there, help’, you know. If you’re lucky you’ll recognise the signs of that help.

DIANE SAWYER: He says 13 years ago the man on all those magazine covers was, in fact, drowning.

MEL GIBSON: I would get addicted to anything, anything at all, okay.

DIANE SAWYER: Was it alcohol?

MEL GIBSON: Yeah, yeah, mostly, it was, yeah. Look, don’t I look like a rummy? No? (Laughs)

DIANE SAWYER: Drugs?

MEL GIBSON: Drugs, booze, anything, you name it. Coffee, cigarettes, anything. I’m just one of these guys who is like that, that’s my flaw.

DIANE SAWYER: But you talked about the fact that you went on benders, got into fights, was hell to live with. They said five pints before work.

MEL GIBSON: Five pints of oil, yeah.

DIANE SAWYER: Beer?

MEL GIBSON: No, it was just, you know, to keep the throat lubricated, you know. Sometimes I used to drive inebriated. This is the height of careless stupidity and when you think about that kind of insanity and that you … I look back at that now and I go, “What was I thinking?” I was a wild boy and we grew up in the ’60s and ’70s, you know, wild times.

DIANE SAWYER: Just all kinds of carrying on.

MEL GIBSON: What flaws shall I expose to the world here? Yeah, it’s, you know, done a lot of things I’m not proud of. Like to hear another one?

DIANE SAWYER: You got my attention.

MEL GIBSON: Yeah, tell me another one. True confessions on national television. Okay, gosh, let me see, oh, here’s a beauty. No, I don’t want to do this, this is horrible, this is awful. I’m really a good guy. I mean, the real medal goes to my wife, who’s a wonderful woman, you know.

DIANE SAWYER: What did she do?

MEL GIBSON: What did she do? She hoped. For years.

DIANE SAWYER: Robyn, his wife of 24 years and mother to his seven children.

MEL GIBSON: She’s the best friend I have ever had. She’s just great and would be there completely, 100 percent, 110 percent. And to put up with me, that’s already a tall order so, hey, I’ll spend the rest of my life giving her medals, more precious than jewels.

DIANE SAWYER: But Gibson says several times he had tried to turn his life around but kept failing and was brought to the brink of suicidal despair.

MEL GIBSON: I checked into a few places and, you know, sorted myself out. I didn’t make a big noise about it.

DIANE SAWYER: You thought of jumping out a window?

MEL GIBSON: I really did, yeah. I was looking down thinking, man, this is just easier this way. I don’t know … you have to be mad, you have to be insane to despair in that way. But that is the height of spiritual bankruptcy. There’s nothing left. But it’s … that wow, what a waste, and people do that is so sad. Whenever I hear of suicides, I just want to die, you know, I want to cry and it’s … because there’s something better if they can just hang on a little longer, you know. It’s awful. So, anyway. Oop, is this the crying segment? Wait a minute.

DIANE SAWYER: Did someone say something…

MEL GIBSON: I’m sorry.

DIANE SAWYER: Did someone say something to you or you said it to yourself?

MEL GIBSON: I said to myself at this point. But that was after years of other people saying, “Hey, you know, bud, you’ve got a problem”. I just hit my knees, I just said “Help”, you know. And then I began to meditate on it, you know, and that’s in the gospel, you know. I read all those again and I remember reading bits of them when I was younger. Pain is the precursor to change, which is great, that’s the good news.

He said he’d get addicted to anything. Now he’s done what many do: substituted religion for drugs. George W. Bush is another example.

It’s very bizarre that Mel Gibson can consider his wife is best friend, claim that he owes her everything, but still believe that she’s going to Hell. She deserves a medal but not Heaven.

As many readers may know by now, Mel Gibson is “Catholic” in only a loose sense - he belongs to a movement of “Old Catholics” who reject everything that has happened in the Roman Catholic Church since the Second Vatican Council, including that Council and all the popes that have been elected. This means that Gibson holds to much older views of Catholicism and religion, which means that the thinks his own wife will go to Hell because she’s not a Catholic (not that he really is either).

MSNBC reports:
Gibson was interviewed by the Herald Sun in Australia, and the reporter asked the star if Protestants are denied eternal salvation. “There is no salvation for those outside the Church,” Gibson replied. “I believe it.” He elaborated: “Put it this way. My wife is a saint. She’s a much better person than I am. Honestly. She’s, like, Episcopalian, Church of England. She prays, she believes in God, she knows Jesus, she believes in that stuff. And it’s just not fair if she doesn’t make it, she’s better than I am. But that is a pronouncement from the chair. I go with it.”

There’s a poll there which asks “Is Mel Gibson one bead short of a full rosary” - I voted “yes” and encourage you to register your opinion as well. The responses are largely in the “yes” direction, and I wonder how much of that is due to the story in question here. It’s pretty morbid to devoutly follow a religion that teaches the person you love dearly will spend eternity suffering torment simply because they don’t belong to a particular church - and despite the fact that you think of them as being a better person than you.

In essence, Gibson believes that heaven is a place for members of a particular sect regardless of how good they are and that “better” people are denied heaven. It should tell us something about the quality of his character that he would worship such a god.

As I said before, if Mel Gibson ever wants to get back to good health, he’ll have to change the way he thinks.

This video from YouTube of South Park’s take on Mel Gibson is very funny and seems to be right on the money.

I wish him well. Gibson is a very talented, handsome man but a sick puppy. I want to adopt him and train him to think as a rational man.

The story of Mel Gibson’s arrest for DUI was apparently much uglier than first reported. So ugly that there are allegations that the sheriff’s department tried to cover it up.

But the important thing is that Gibson has admitted that he has struggled with alcoholism most of his adult life.

“After drinking alcohol on Thursday night, I did a number of things that were very wrong and for which I am ashamed. I drove a car when I should not have, and was stopped by the LA County Sheriffs. The arresting officer was just doing his job and I feel fortunate that I was apprehended before I caused injury to any other person. I acted like a person completely out of control when I was arrested, and said things that I do not believe to be true and which are despicable. I am deeply ashamed of everything I said. Also, I take this opportunity to apologize to the deputies involved for my belligerent behavior. They have always been there for me in my community and indeed probably saved me from myself. I disgraced myself and my family with my behavior and for that I am truly sorry. I have battled with the disease of alcoholism for all of my adult life and profoundly regret my horrific relapse. I apologize for any behavior unbecoming of me in my inebriated state and have already taken necessary steps to ensure my return to health.”

His religion and his alcoholism are both manifestations of the destruction of his self.

When I alluded to his arrest in a previous post, I had no idea he was such a perfect poster boy for my analogy that drinking is to driving as filling one’s mind with irrational ideas (religion) is to living.

drinking : driving :: religion : living

In order for him to really become healthy he’s going to have to change the way he thinks. I’m not sure he’s up to that.

From Yahoo News:

JERUSALEM - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice is abruptly breaking off her diplomatic mission in the Mideast and returning to Washington after Israel’s deadly attack on a Lebanese village, a U.S. official said Sunday. Rice, who planned to head back to the United States on Monday morning, had hoped to leave the region after concrete progress on ending the fighting between Israel and the Hezbollah militia in southern Lebanon. But her work was hampered severely by Israel’s missile strike early Sunday that killed more than 50 people, including many children.

More on Israel’s lastest attack:

QANA, Lebanon - Israeli missiles hit several buildings in a southern Lebanon village as people slept Sunday, killing at least 56, most of them children, in the deadliest attack in 19 days of fighting.

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert expressed “great sorrow” for the airstrikes but blamed Hezbollah guerrillas for using the area to launch rockets at Israel.

The Lebanese Red Cross said the airstrike in Qana, in which at least 34 children were killed, pushed the overall Lebanese death toll to more than 500. Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice postponed a visit to Lebanon in a setback for diplomatic efforts to end hostilities.

Interesting how the Israel-Lebanon conflict has pushed the Iraq war out of the headlines. Almost makes you forget that the Iraq war is still going on.