Bridging Alone: Religious Conservatism, Marital Homogamy, and Voluntary Association Membership

This study characterizes social insularity of religiously conservative American married couples by examining patterns of voluntary associationmembership. Constructing a dataset of 3938 marital dyads from the second wave of the National Survey of Families and Households, the author investigates whether conservative religious homogamy encourages membership in religious voluntary groups and discourages membership in secular voluntary groups. Results indicate that couples’ shared affiliation with conservative denominations, paired with beliefs in biblical authority and inerrancy, increases the likelihood of religious group membership for husbands and wives and reduces the likelihood of secular group membership for wives, but not for husbands. The social insularity of conservative religious groups appears to be reinforced by homogamy—particularly by wives who share faith with husbands

Creative Uses of Software Errors Glitches and Cheats

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Identity Expansion and Transcendence

Emerging developments in communications and computing technology may transform the nature of human identity, in the process rendering obsolete the traditional philosophical and scientific frameworks for understanding the nature of individuals and groups.  Progress toward an evaluation of this possibility and an appropriate conceptual basis for analyzing it may be derived from two very different but ultimately connected social movements that promote this radical change. One is the governmentally supported exploration of Converging Technologies, based in the unification of nanoscience, biology, information science and cognitive science (NBIC). The other is the Transhumanist movement, which has been criticized as excessively radical yet is primarily conducted as a dignified intellectual discussion within a new school of philosophy about human enhancement.  Together, NBIC and Transhumanism suggest the immense transformative power of today’s technologies, through which individuals may explore multiple identities by means of online avatars, semi-autonomous intelligent agents, and other identity expansions

Virtual Sustainability

In four ways, massively multiplayer online role-playing games may serve as tools for advancing sustainability goals, and as laboratories for developing alternatives to current social arrangements that have implications for the natural environment. First, by moving conspicuous consumption and other usually costly status competitions into virtual environments, these virtual worlds might reduce the need for physical resources. Second, they provide training that could prepare individuals to be teleworkers, and develop or demonstrate methods for using information technology to replace much transportation technology, notably in commuting. Third, virtual worlds and online games build international cooperation, even blending national cultures, thereby inching us toward not only the world consciousness needed for international agreements about the environment, but also toward non-spatial government that cuts across archaic nationalisms. Finally, realizing the potential social benefits of this new technology may urge us to reconsider a number of traditional societal institutions

The Virtual Rebirth of Paganism

This article begins by examining how two very popular massively multiplayer onlinegames, Dark Age of Camelot (Mythic Entertainment, US 2001) and Age of Conan(Funcom, NO 2008), manage complex social and cultural structures. Both combinereal history with legends, the first including the Norse pantheon of gods and thesecond emphasizing the Egyptian serpent deity, Set. They offer different degrees offantasy and conflict between three primary factions of players, each represented as aculture or coalition of cultures. Against that background, a series of diverse examplessuggest ways in which computer games and virtual worlds are exploring the modernmeanings of ancient religions that were replaced by monotheism. The concludingsection examines in closer detail the connections between religion and aspects ofeveryday life of virtual ancient Egyptians in A Tale in the Desert (eGenesis / DesertNomad, UK 2003). Postmodern gaming culture endorses tribalism, enjoys imaginingthe collapse of civilization, and seeks escape from traditional faith, possibly even fromany coherent philosophy of ethics. However, this creativity is a form of idealism ratherthan criminality, imagining the rebirth of creative legends and total religious freedom,often through the metaphor of repaganization