I might have written about a moment of calm, sitting on a tourist boat on The Thames, moving slowly past the remarkable waterfront of the regenerated Docklands with a bright blue sky above - or the anxiety of discovering that the April family budget was over by 15%, with Gordon Brown's recent mild mismanagement of the economy (yes, I am a contrarian on this point) a contributing factor.  Inflation and interest rates, don'tcha know! 

But moments of calm and anxiety are incidental - mostly we just chug along.  Which brings me to my subject - Psi, the complex of phenomena that goes under the general headings of 'sixth sense' or extra-sensory perception.

I have never had a problem with Psi but 'coming out' (that one has a bit of Psi oneself) is always going to be almost as traumatic as it might be for someone coming out as gay or wiccan or whatever else is not regarded by the unenlightened as not quite normal.  In fact, research seems to be showing that Psi not merely exists but fits a general model that most of us who have actually got a bit of it can understand - something residual and not nearly as scary or dramatic as those who do not have it might think.  There are three aspects to the matter - why is it denied, what actually is it and does it mean anything?

The denial bit is easy.  What passes for Psi (and I'll define it unacademically in a moment) would not be a surprise in most pre-modern cultures.  It was bound up in folk magic but also in narratives of credulity and exploitation.  It is understandable that the scientific thinkers who found rationality and analysis much more useful as tools for changing the world than an indistinct facility of the human mind might throw the baby out with the bath water in the struggle for enlightenment.  It is only now that the scientists have had their time in the sun, and have sometimes proved wanting, that we can turn to other aspects of being human with an open and constructively critical mind.

Part of the problem with the scientific mentality is that it is a surprisingly closed system.  It is one thing to say that if something cannot be tested according to scientific method then it is not scientifically useful and probably not technologically useful either.  It is another to say that if something cannot be analysed into terms, mathematically calculated and rationally presented, then it does not exist. at all  Although it maybe 'something of which nothing can be said scientifically', it neither follows that nothing can be said, that the non-sense is in fact nonsense or that it does not exist.

Alongside this is the fear factor.  The rational mind cannot help extrapolating from the particular to the general - what if we were all telepathic or could all move objects at will?  Few are happy at the idea that some people may have powers that invade their privacy or reduce their security.  This why Magneto in the X-Men stories is such an awesome villain.  If you fear, you deny. A more appropriate response is to realise that Psi is highly limited in its abilities (as we will see) and generally far more dangerous to the owner than the person outside.

Not only the actual experience of persons of having Psi or witnessing Psi but the simple fact of a variety of observable instinctive animal abilities outside the main five senses, the revolution in thought caused by quantum physics and increasing if controversial experimental evidence all shift the balance of probability to something being there.  But what?

Psi is (we are told) a matter of acting upon the world or receiving.  The 'acting upon' is psychokinesis.  The phenomenon of the poltergeist and its link to hormonal teenagers is fairly well established.  I have performed one act of rather dramatic unintended psychokinesis myself later in life than teenage in front of a witness: it happened, it was seen to happen and that was a fact.

The other side of Psi covers information being received in the mind that defies the normal expectations of space and time.  The 'crisis apparation' - classically when someone with whom there is a close emotional bond appears to provide a message, often before a 'real time' message can get through - is so common as to be scarcely worth commenting upon.  Again, this has happened to me and happened to my mother, both in extreme circumstances and both witnessed by others.  But the category also includes precognition and all forms of telepathic communication.

I would add a third category not recognised by the academics - the 'zen moment' when the subconscious mind takes over and performs an act without emotion, in a state that feels as if one is beyond space and time, either in a crisis or simply as a matter of unwilled will.  This is most normally seen in cases of people in great danger but it need not be - on at least two (possibly three) remembered occasions, this has happened to me simply because it was convenient.  The state of mind is both remarkable - inexpressible - and unremarkable in its very ordinariness.

But what does it mean?  This is where we have to keep our feet on the ground.  The fear of those who do not appear to have it and of those who see it as a challenge to their enlightenment ideology both manage, paradoxically, to privilege it far beyond what it can bear.  There may be exceptions among us with Magneto-like powers (and perhaps charisma in politicians is a fourth aspect of Psi which I certainly do not possess) but this is what can generally be said about Psi from anecdote, from experience and from what little can be gleaned by the scientific method ....

1.  It may be present but it cannot be commanded,  It expresses some 'true will' driven by the body, in effect the subconscious, but it operates at a level where a decision to employ it just simply will not work.  Indeed, there is evidence that those with Psi can perform 'before the cameras' only when they are told that the cameras are off.

2.  It works best when between emotionally bonded persons and probably (though evidence is less clear) family members - and it is possible (I think, probable, because of family experience) that there is some genetic component to its expression.

3.  It is neutral in terms of its effects on the person.  In other words, a strong and integral personality would appear to find it beneficial whereas a weak or shattered personality might find it destructive.  This would tie in with the theory that it is derived from the subconscious and the body.  If there is anger or hurt or anxiety inside, then the subconscious will might direct it on those terms.  Again anecdotally, I see this neutrality in my own experience with the caveat that the very expression of Psi has an enormously calming effect - there is a material and qualitative difference between being before and being after the event.

All this may be bad news for prayer in congregations and magick in covens of non-lovers but may be good news for family prayer, solitary witches and practitioners of Sex Magick.  But whether it is good news or bad news may depend on the degree to which the subconscious can be accessed in a way in which some sort of will is involved and how much a person can face looking inward in what may involve a degree of commitment to personal transformation analogous to psychotherapy.  Such a process may be more powerful and so more dangerous than 'rational' practices of psychotherapy because it is either solitary (and so not communicable) or it makes a virtue of transference between emotionally bonded persons, a dangerous procedure fraught with possibilities for abuse.

In this sense, the personal management of Psi (even if possible) might be closer to mystical religious practice than anything else - or to systems of magick.  Certainly, it implies transgression from the norm, although not necessarily acts that are immoral or evil by any means.

The alternative is just smiling acceptance.  It is there and it comes and it goes, with long stretches in between identifiable events - less with age and with awareness.  It gets covered with layers of bourgeois respectability and the job of ensuring that the temporary 15% over-spend is covered with 20% more revenue or 15% less expenditure.   But it is not a gift that I would have liked to have been born without.

And, in fact, in one sense, I have tamed Psi for my own use.  As a political analyst or general adviser tracking events over long stretches of time or coming to instant judgements in a crisis, I have adopted a technique of letting rational analysis be the servant of an instinctive inner process of evaluation - loading the data and letting an inward judgement make assessments.  Over time, I have learnt that the 'zen' judgement based on instinct, whether on my own behalf or that of clients, is always far more likely to be right than a tormented questioning search for truth along rational lines - neither politics nor culture can be usefully understood through the scientific approach.  My track record of prediction has been pretty good as a result, although I have still not dreamt the winner of the 3.30 at Newmarket.  But that is another story.

******

This posting is another fruit of the amazing lecture series put together by Dr. Christina Oakley Harrington at Treadwells - http://www.treadwells-london.com/ 

On this occasion, I owe a great deal to the presentation given by David Luke, the academic para-psychologist, of the University of Northampton on April 30th and the vigorous and intelligent discussion that took place afterwards.  Needless to say, he should not be regarded as agreeing with anything that I have written - these are my own thoughts on a subject which suffers from lack of funding for academic research and which accordingly allows us amateurs their say.

For an interesting account of the part of the brain that probably comes into play at the moment when spatial sense is lost, see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/1847442.stm  The mind-body issues associated with meditation are not the same as those associated with the mind working outside the body or working the body in some way to act as a receiver of other minds or act in the world subconsciously.  The mystical perception quoted at the end of the article is, however, very close to what happens at the moment when the body operates apparently of its own volition.  It has been suggested that military and sports training also relies on reproducing a version of this state: external circumstances, in these cases, dictate how a person behaves without permitting conscious thought to get in the way of performance.   But, again, training, is not Psi any more than Psi is meditation.

Sometimes there is no one big thing that happens in a week.  We move forward in incremental ways.  Here are five things that moved me forward in the last seven days.

A Political Change of Scene

At last, Tony Blair has told us that he is going on June 27th.  Hooray, hooray, hooray!  Many people overseas are puzzled that we British dispose of our 'heroes' - Churchill in 1945, Thatcher in 1990 and now Tony Blair - so readily, but we are the ones who have to live under their conviction politics. While history may be kinder to all of them than the electorate, there comes a time when we should have what we want and not what they want for us.

My views on the Blair legacy are being published elsewhere.  It is time to look forward and not back.  Within the next two months, we should have a clear picture of what a Gordon Brown administration would look like.  Despite the irritation expressed in the last posting, I think he is the man for the country and I hope he says and does things that enable me to vote for his team with enthusiasm ... we'll see.

Philosophy Never Stops

I discovered the existentialist thinkers - Kierkegaard, Nietzche, Heidegger and even dear old Sartre - in my late teenage but, instead of growing up and out of them, I kept worrying at what they had to say about the human condition.  I have found nothing better to describe what it is that we are and how we relate to whatever it is that is out there.

So, it was a pleasure to find a book [Miguel de Beistegui, The New Heidegger, London & New York, 2005] that promised to provide the fruits of recent scholarship for the moderately intelligent layman.  It seems that only 50% of the man's complete works have actually been published so there will be future revisions to come, but de Beistegui can inform us of what new can be said as a result of the publication within the last decade of critical works from the 1930s.

Memory

Not really a great book, but not the fault of the author.  Douwe Draaisma's Why Life Speeds Up as You Get Older [in English: Cambridge, 2004] is a gallant first attempt at bringing together into one place the basics of what we know about 'autobiographical memory'.  He is an early explorer of uncharted territory.

Like Psi [see below] and the nature of existence, how we remember things is not really susceptible to true scientific investigation.  We have to make do with the scientist prepared to accept that anecdote and forensic investigation are going to be more useful than number-crunching.  Number crunching in life merely stops us from believing untruths but it does not necessarily tell us any truth that really matters.

The book may frustrate but only because it is the first step in a long journey of re-thinking who we are in the light of what is laid down in our brains as truth from memory.  The chapter on holocaust memory alone should change how you think about the possibility of justice and what role chance and necessity play in the performance of evil.  It is definitely worth reading.

Spells and Prayers

The world of neo-paganism fascinates.  As you will have gathered from earlier posts, I tend to see it positively as the re-assertion of ethical and spiritual values against the cold logic of technologism, reason and the market - indeed, of number-crunching.

Do I believe in it myself?  I am too good an existentialist to believe in the literal truth - much as rational man disposed of the literal truth of the Bible a long time ago.  But just as a man may believe in the 'saving grace of jesus christ' at another level beyond reason (the 'mysterium tremendum'), so the moral values of neo-paganism offer a very real solution to at least some of the manifestations of modern social breakdown.  They are worthy of belief and have their own 'mysterium tremendum'.  This thought arose from a simple act of possibly 'useless' (to sceptics) compassion but one that, even if 'useless', is noble - and is not proven not to be useful, as far as I am concerned 

A little girl was kidnapped a few days ago in Portugal.  Rationally nothing can be done but leave it to the Police.  But many people are deeply affected by it and feel they must do what they can.  A man of wealth has offered a substantial reward.  A group of Wiccans simply did what a group of Christians would do - the latter are offering up prayers to God for her safe recovery, the former offered up a long distance project of co-ordinating ritual and psychic energy.   

A sceptic would despise both - but compassion, a virtue well known to Buddhists on Zaadz, shown in this way to one little girl and her family, no matter how 'useless' it may seem, is also a compassion shown to the world at large.  I see little compassion in those trying to pull down edifices of belief with their cold scientific rationalism.

A good intimate Wiccan Forum of extremely nice people with members in the UK and the US can be found at http://www.wiccanmoon.co.uk/   To maintain the balance between faiths, this week saw the 10th Anniversary of the Three Faiths Forum, on whose Advisory Board I once sat.  This pulls Christians, Muslims and Jews together for dialogue - http://www.threefaithsforum.org.uk/   There are an awful lot of decent people out there!

And Good and Bad Writing

I feel quite bad sometimes about my boredom with Henry James and Marcel Proust.  So often, the writing down of every detail of the lives of privileged people seems to cry out for the response to both writer and reader - get a life?

No, give me a rollicking good story which creates pictures in my head.  Give me Guy de Maupassant and Robert Louis Stephenson.

Until next week, toodle-pip from London.

There could be so much to write about this week - the shenanigans over the New Labour leadership and deputy leadership struggle, Will Hutton and Mark Leonard debating China at the ICA or a fascinating account of Islamic Magic [ruqia] and the djinn from the Jordanian-British academic Liana Siaf at Treadwells.

But it is the experience of being a victim of theft at our local smart hotel and consequent new insights into British policing that have to take priority as a suitable follow-up to our experience of being 'intelligence-policed' earlier in May [see posting of April 27th].  The hotel is opposite the local police station so it should have been an easy matter to drop over, call in a copper and report the crime - especially as this station had been announced only a few months ago as the centre of a fully manned police presence in the town (wholly coincidentally before the local elections).  Less than three weeks after those elections, we found three or four empty police cars in a row outside a shut door with a piece of paper saying that the station was shut 'due to unforeseen circumstances' - no doubt all our local constabulary had been called out on emergency 'intelligence-based' policing.

It got funnier - and you have to larf, don't you - when my wife (whose bag was snatched) rang to report the crime and was offered 'victim support' ("no, I want you to catch the criminal") and support for any media contact she might want ("no, I don't need to talk to a journalist, I want you to catch the criminal").  

What was particularly galling was that she was carrying full identity only because the police had stopped us a few weeks before and whined about her not carrying a driving licence.  The subsequent 'good citizen' attempt to comply with police demands now meant that both car and house keys were now linked to addresses and car number plates, so that, in addition to unravelling credit cards and cheque books, there was the expense of new car, house and office keys.  Oh, and improved opportunities for identity theft.  In other words, carrying identity for 'intelligence-based policing' purposes had made life infinitely easier for the criminal, placed us at more risk and cost us more money in the form of a stealth tax in favour of locksmiths.

It gets better. The probable perpetrator was identifiable and almost certainly part of a gang  of petty criminals who dress smartly (we are told that they are usually women rather than men) and go into smarter bars and lobbies to grab bags for both identity and cash purposes.  If I saw a certain person again, I would recognise a suspect but there was no quick police action to check local CCTV. One credit card was used quickly on an ATM presumably covered by a CCTV.  Has anyone asked me to view a CCTV picture or been in touch on identification?  No, of course not , there are no resources for this.  The probable thief (or person who should be eliminated from enquiries) sat in full view of me for a long time, observing us with care, because they knew they had nothing to fear once they got out of the room.

This is not a rant from a 'liberal who has been mugged'.  It was irritating and a night's sleep and a bit of money was lost as we sorted locksmiths, but it was not much more damaging than that.  Selfish low lifes who party until late with the windows wide open are a greater problem.  We've been meaning to change the locks for some time and now we are as safe as Fort Knox so, on balance, the thief may have done us a favour of sorts. 

No, not a rant, just a laugh - we have a Potemkin police presence in Middle England with a criminal fraternity who are now so confident that we should perhaps just regard them as a natural phenomenon and a budgeted cost, a sort of additional tax.  It might even be that we will be introduced to someone at a dinner party as the local burglar and snobbishly hope he or she (we must remain correct about this) is a classy jewel thief with the style of Cary Grant rather than a drug-fueled bagsnatcher.

I won't name the Hotel because they were responsive and helpful and should not be labelled as a risk but, if you are British or coming to the UK, be suspicious of lone persons hovering in smart bars who look uncomfortable in a suit or smart dress.  But I will name the police force as that of our decaying little town - Tunbridge Wells - and I will say that the ordinary copper is not the problem. 

These poor buggers are snowed under with Home Office theory and paper work, political correctness, victim support and media friendliness.  Private conversations with coppers have made it clear that they are as frustrated as the rest of us - but, be cheered, forms are being filled in more meticulously than ever.  No, the problem lies with a Department of State, the Home Office, already characterised as 'not fit for purpose' by its latest incumbent, John Reid (currently scuttling to the backbenches), and with Chief Constables who are under-resourced, who are under constant political pressure from the centre and from the media and who are driven by theory instead of basic practice.  What we need are Chief Constables who stand up for the community and for their own bobbies against the centre!

******

For an amusing picture of the traditional British bobby, the Will Hay comedy Ask a Policeman of 1939 is a must-see alongside Carry On Constable of 1960.  The affectionately regarded classic of old-style policing is, of course, The Blue Lamp of 1949 - http://www.screenonline.org.uk/film/id/447704/index.html  Unlike in most other countries, we Brits rather love our police and it is so sad to see what has been done to them by theoreticians and bureaucrats.

For a view from the frontline of British policing, the blog of PC David Copperfield (a pseudonym) is serious fun - http://coppersblog.blogspot.com/ - but the linked blogs are also worth reading.  The tension between the police and the underclass is on the edge of war and you 'smell' a sort of reactive angry proto-fascism in the air of some blogs.  A good Guardian view on the Copperfield blog is at:
http://society.guardian.co.uk/futureforpublicservices/story/0,,2053823,00.html

At the end of the day, I am still a liberal (in US terms).  The violent underclass is the direct result of market-driven changes over the last thirty years that can only be cured by investment, redistribution, a degree of labour market preference for the indigenous working class and community trust (not 'intelligence-based' policing which is just 'after the fact' sticking plaster stuff).  'Banging 'em up' is not sufficient, though probably necessary.  In this context, some of the best ideas on rebuilding community and relational (also referred to as restorative) justice come from the Christian-based think tank, the Relationships Foundation - http://www.relationshipsfoundation.org/index.php

There is a remarkable article from Regina Lynn at Wired News that raises interesting issues about what the new world of Web 2.0 is doing to the human psyche - http://www.wired.com/culture/lifestyle/commentary/sexdrive/2007/05/sexdrive_0525 .  Lynn gives a lucid account of how, in a safe fantasy setting, she 'transgressed' into a new sexual identity that had no necessary day-to-day link to her persona in 'real life'.  She neither denies the transgression nor tries to make it anything more than an insight into herself that might shift her perceptions but not her essential nature.  How she 'plays' is not to be assumed to be 'who she is'.

What is remarkable to anyone over a certain age is the honesty of the piece.  The taboo that is broken here is not so much that of being or feeling to be something different  from 'normal' (that seems to have been installed as a possibility somewhere in the 1970s) but in saying or doing something transgressive and then not feeling obliged to make what has been said or done integral to identity. 

The Internet & Identity

Internet culture now allows someone to express an 'abnormal' part of themselves (often a very minor part) without being obliged to include it in the self-identity that is designed to accomodate social or community expectations.  Although early days, this new sense of the possibilities arising from 'irresponsible play' could herald the beginning of the end of identity politics and the arrival of complexity and of multiple identity as factors in public life. 

The liberal revolution of the 1970s is now accepted even by most modernising conservatives.  It has allowed transgressive identities such as 'being gay' to be expressed as integral to persons on their own terms.   It ended an atmosphere of repression, prejudice and stereotyping.  The price, however, was that anyone with (say) gay inclinations came under increasing pressure to make a choice between being gay, being not gay or choosing some third identity (such as bisexual). A whole range of new sexual identities emerged in a constant attempt to 'fix' complexity.  

Similar processes of defining identity took place in other areas of formerly forbidden discourse - in alternative religion, in gender politics and in 'race'.  But, in the real world of ordinary folk, few people actually belong to any fixed single category for very long.  So, this was only relative liberation, of the dominant part of a person at the expense of the whole person, freeing individuals only on condition that they chose a category of their own instead of a category chosen by society.

What Lynn implies in her own experience of some rather innocent cyber-sex is that people, taken out of their normal social context and left free to be themselves with minimal risk, are immensely fluid and have complex sexual drives and multiple identities.  If allowed to do so, people will shift their behaviour quite radically in different contexts.  Research on 'evil' increasingly indicates that context is vitally important in determining when a person will do an 'evil' act in the real world.

Web 2.0 permits the construction of personal identity at different levels of 'personal privacy'.  The feed-back of experience from one level transforms, I would say revolutionises, morality and behaviour at another.  Necessary conformities in the office or even in the family are at one extreme (exemplified ultimately in the fixed public persona of the politician or celebrity).  But there are other levels of self exposure within the internet open to people who are (say) not in public life, are self-employed or are single to varying degrees. The deepest level is reached where aspects of self that are frustrated in real life can develop in secrecy, not so much as as private fantasy but as shared psychotherapeutic play in chat rooms, on forums and in interactive games. And any of us can now visit this deepest level that was once limited to dream states, private fantasy or the risky business of entering into a 'deviant 'sub-culture.

Bourgeois Panic

This is very disturbing to many in the expert class.  We see a snobbish horror of ordinary people expressing emotion when they do not have the writing skills or sensibilities of regular readers of The New Yorker.  How many times do we hear that weary complaint about cliche on the sexual web as if everyone should be expected to write like John Cleland or Pauline Reage?  There is moral panic about the sexual or emotional fantasies of the masses - probably because 'intellectuals' refuse to deal with theirs except through high literature and art.  This current wave of comment about dumbing down, of fears about what happens to youngsters when their youthful indiscretions are seen by potential employers or husbands, and the growing paranoia about the retention of data, all miss the point. 

Tens of thousands of people, with a very wide range of intellectual and educational accomplishment, are now engaged in a growing revolution in the collective mind.  These (mostly under 40) are the many. The 'scared educated' (mostly over 30) are becoming the few.  Society will inevitably bend in the direction of the many over time despite periodic authoritarian attempts to break the back of the revolution through scare tactics and regulation.  Kids who display their sex life in public now will probably be thought no less of in twenty years.  Their honesty will be seen for what it is, an important developmental phase creating wiser, more rounded people in their middle years than their ancestors were at the same age. 

As for the 'experts', for most purposes beyond the requirements of high technology such as the running of a railway system or a nuclear power plant, they are now surplus to requirements and will have to live with the new egalitarianism.  But this revolution does raise many ethical and social questions - too many for this posting.  One is the negotiation of lies and honesty. 

Challenging Western Culture

The arrival of free secret play as a social norm is a direct challenge to the moral rigidities of Anglo-Saxon liberal culture.  Assessing hypocrisy and lying are central to its self-identity: they are bad things in an absolute sense and not, more wisely, in a relative or contextual sense.  Yet lying and hypocrisy are central to creative play.  Some Anglo-Saxon liberals are now moving sharply towards authoritarianism and to the moralistic neo-conservative Right in horror at a new fluid world where nothing is fixed and where they have no role as natural arbiters of taste and morality.  They do not like irrational exuberance.  They do not like playfulness.

Europeans (in general) would not divorce their partner because of an online sexual game, and very often not over a mistress, but Anglo-Saxons are very likely to do so - and, if not, make their partner's life hell if they find out.  The standard Anglo-Saxon attitude to sexuality implies that the partner is there as an add-on to personality 'for life' instead of a person in their own right. with changing needs and opinions.  Anglos expect exclusivity and fidelity not merely in RL ['real life'] but deep inside the mind of the 'other'.  This is clearly, an absurd, totalitarian attempt to police another's brain. 

The internet now complicates matters further, especially as its effects are first felt within this same traditional Anglo-Saxon culture.  Personality becomes diffused without being fragmented.  The 'explorer' may unravel some of what he or she is through 'play' and then may ask just how much of this expanded self should be repressed in a world where time passes and life is short.  Sometimes self-repression is accepted, sometimes changes are instituted without radical disruption, sometimes a person discovers that RL has been the 'dream' and the web-world reality and chooses to wake up. 

Where a couple will choose to split or get divorced within this unfolding of playfulness can be a very different line drawn in different cultures but we can safely predict that Anglo-Saxon liberal culture is not really very well fitted to cope with the fluidities of individual self-development.  So, we are probably going to see a period of reactive moral panic and authoritarianism, ironically more from so-called progressives unable to cope with the reality of mass liberation than faith-based conservatives.  After all, faith can be rediscovered on the internet too.

The more and the earlier that someone discovers who they are before they make choices that dictate their RL persona and station in life the better.  The best thing that we can do for the generations coming up is to enable them to play safely.  This may not suit employers, priests and government  (or insecure wives and husbands wanting to lock in their partner to their needs) but it is my betting that the kids who go through this process may be more anarchic but a lot more intrinsically tolerant, free and moral than their parents.  Their personal relationships, in turn, will be more rounded and more loving - and their kids will benefit too.  Society should understand, embrace, facilitate and guide this revolution rather than try to resist it - we should leave strategies of resistance to the Islamists and the Chinese Communist Party!

How Honest Should We Be?

So how honest should one be on the internet in the classic areas of sex, politics and religion?  Web 2.0 enables ever greater levels of self-expression and honesty at a mass level but discretion and RL functionality still dictate (and will always dictate) that boundaries are drawn.  The three rules of tact and discretion are mere glosses on the neo-pagan, "Do what thou wilt and harm no-one" (including yourself, of course): i) be aware of the effect of what you are writing on the feelings of others; ii) take responsibility for the effects on yourself; and iii) expect what you write to be read by anyone.

If you think on these basic rules of conduct, they come down to having a morality of regard for those around you, developing a sensible life plan and only doing in RL what actually works for you as you are and not as others would have you be.  But it also suggests that where you do have a secret side that cannot fit into this model, then there is nothing wrong with accepting it and developing a persona that can 'play' out its private magic with others in a way that harms no-one.  If all know the rules, no one can be accused of deception and those who are 'hurt' in the game can learn from the 'hurt' without physical or community harm. 

Though the morality of all this should not be accepted without question, I would guess that most 'games players' will enter into a private world only for a while, transform and move on - and that the addictive or truly deviant personality has other issues in RL that they or society just won't face.  What should not be acceptable is excessive intervention by panicking authorities into what is really no more than the linking up of private minds.  Government's role must remain the policing of wrongful conduct rather than 'wrongful' thoughts.  If there is a line to be drawn it is when a private fantasy becomes a conspiracy to do actual harm in the real world - then, and only then, this becomes a police matter.