Baby Rhino: Initial, virtual Harbins may take on multiple kinds of virtual, interactive representations, Furthur, Seeing Own Mental 'Stuff'

Harbin ethnography:


... Such experiences of virtual Harbin place will be notably different from the actual Harbin pool area experience, yet will develop, merge and meld as well.

But the initial, virtual Harbins may take on multiple kinds of virtual, interactive representations, besides in Second Life and Open Sim, that this ethnography will also at least touch on. Some 'furthur' examples of virtual Harbin's emergence that are mind-turning / trippy / fascinating: “Culturally, in my observations of Harbin, people see their own ‘mental stuff’ here, and come to face it, in interesting and sometimes affirmative, and at other times unsettling, ways. In my interest in writing an ethnography about Harbin, I continue to be curious about what of my own 'stuff' I would see, as well of others’ stuff (reflexively-wise and subjectively in anthropological senses 20xx). One prevailing mode of understanding here at Harbin is the New Age or spiritual understanding “I am that” (from something like 'om tat sat' in Sanskrit?) or “I see things from your perspective” – a kind of monism or oneness expressed in the fabric of a kind of hippie or alternative culture. This can lead to a playing down of critical thinking, and to a kind of being in the present, which disaffirms active engagement with ideas about what happens here, for example. Harbin also seems quite sophisticated; Ish has a subtle mind and many interesting people from all over visit here but especially from the S.F. Bay Area as well as Sacramento, and have done so for years. Ish and Harbin have also responded to many unique situations vis-à-vis the outside world. So Harbin's 'all is one' (empathic to a degree) culture, rooted in a New Age understanding of “I am that,” including the divine connotations here, and to a degree in intimacy and receptivity, and personal understanding (I lived here for 4 ½ months in the first half of 2005) can (and often may seem to) lead to people seeing their own stuff (MacLeod, Harbin Field Notes 2007-2008, March 31, 2008). 'Stuff' here refers to actual 'stuff' and virtual 'stuff.'

The actual 'stuff' one sees at Harbin, besides that which you bring with you, is informed by, and emerges from, the counterculture of the 1960s and is significantly visually-oriented around nakedness, which is normalized, as well as the colorful and creative approaches to clothing, nature, abodes and life (politics, revolution, art, drugs, music, indigenous peoples, etc., too) that hippies explored and experimented with, – actual, radical, trippy, far-out, Be-In history - which occurred - and at Harbin, too. ...
















(http://scott-macleod.blogspot.com/2010/09/cabra-kid-initial-virtual-harbins-may.html - September 13, 2010)