Entry tags:

family, politics

Rose Tint My World
Thank you all so much for the 52 and counting brilliant, provocative comments to my last entry!

My response, my plan, has been coalescing over the past few days, as I've listened to you all, argued and listened and kissed and made up with my family. But today, Fate brought me what I needed to shape my decision.

One of the first things I saw this morning was Esteban's magnificent post on M Is For Myg. S/he ends it by saying

It comes down to this, motherfuckers: which fantasy will you embrace and how will you fight for it?

And when I read that, I knew. I knew because my galatea_gynoid  had set aside her cool bot demeanor to give us the Word:

What I'd like to someday see is a place like Caledon, a whole series of connected sims and neighbors who agree on a theme and make a wonderful community, except in our case, a positive sci-fi theme, an alternative to the wonderful but way too retro steampunk Caledon, or all the grimy dirty ugly distopian sci-fi themed stuff out there.  Something with gleaming spires and shiny rockets, where a positronic person isn't an anachronism or a legacy of a civilization now gone to hell, but another citizen of the technological golden age, where the sky is no longer the limit, and where we would all live and work and play together.

Then, OP read this article: The Making of a Neo-KGB State, and mourned the squeezing to death of freedom in Russia. On the way home from work, I took over from OP to think about all this, and loaded up my iTunes playlist on random, and got

We're a wild and an untamed thing We're a bee with a deadly sting You get a hit and your mind goes ping Your heart'll pump and your blood will sing So let the party and the sounds rock on We're gonna shake it 'till the life has gone, gone, gone Rose tint my world Keep me safe from my trouble and pain
Riff Raff	Frank-N-Furter, it's all over Your mission is a failure Your lifestyle's too extreme I'm your new commander You now are my prisoner We return to Transylvania Prepare the transit beam

and yes, you all can picture me, my profile loaded on the wetware server, with the volume turned all the way up (it goes to MAX after you crank it past 65, I learned, which is about the same as "Puree" on a Cuisinart!) singing Frank's lines at the top of my lungs, tearing down the atomic street, visions of rocketships and deco dance palaces with robot big bands dancing in my head!

So, here's what I'm going to do.

I'm going to rose tint my world. I'm going to stand up for the future I want.

It's one of beauty, elegance, sensuality. It's one where we all are free to create ourselves in our own perfect images, and to live as we choose, an it harm none.

I'm going to work with Gala, and with anyone who wants to contribute their time, money and talents to that vision.  I'm going to help build it in SL.  I'm going to live it in SL. I'm going to be a hostess, welcoming all Digital People, all who want the freedom to be themselves. And I'm going to push back against our world's KGB.

If we lose, if freedom and creativity are driven from SL, it won't be because I left anything undone. It won't be because I didn't give my all to building and embodying a better way. It won't be because I kept silent while the agents of corporate conformity squeezed the color from our world.

I'm here to stay. I'm here to build the world I choose to live in, a world of beauty and freedom.

Join me, my loves and friends!  If we succeed, we will have built the new world of our dreams. If we fail, another generation can find inspiration in what we did, and try again. 

Either way, it will be glorious!

I love you all!  Now, let's get to work!