Soulists also support an anarcho-communist revolution in which the working class rise up and secure the means of production by use of violence, immediately dismantling the state and allocating the means of production to various communes, unions, and guilds. Society will then be structured by the principle of “from each according to ability, to each according to need”, with money and class abolished in favour of community and compassion.
What makes soulism distinct from regular anarcho-communism is the recognition of reality as a means of control used by the state and Capital. We won’t just take back the physical means of production, we intend to take back the means of defining reality and controlling belief. The revolution must be both practical and spiritual. Fixed notions of gender, species, and religion must be abolished, to make way for a subjective multiverse where otherkin, enbies, pagans, plural systems, and people who are better described by no term other than simply “mad” can live as their authentic selves in an accepting society.
The colonial mindset of destroying indigenous realities by “re-educating” indigenous children to destroy their connection to language, land, family, and tradition is a genocide. And liberalism and materialism offer no antidote. “We respect your right to have a wrong religion” is bullshit, and that’s how our current society seems to address issues of religious freedom and indigenous culture. True justice is believing in the myths of all cultures at once, internalising them all as genuinely true, save for the exclusionary parts.
We must recognise the worldviews of other religions as worlds in themselves that we can visit, and experience on the terms of their own experts, and only then can we understand them politically and offer solutions that present true justice. There is no justice in forcing everyone to live in the same reality. The diversity of human and otherkin experience is too much for one reality and it will always be too much. We must take away the limits of expecting everyone to live in an objective universe, and free people up to choose the nature of the universe they want to live in.
We sure can. All the destruction that accompanied colonisation, where languages and religions were exterminated, we just have to do that in reverse. We have to create art, and sing songs, and develop new ideas, and explore ourselves. People will always do those things. You can’t stop them, it’s in their nature. Capital and the Crown have only ever succeeded in suppressing the natural creativity and curiosity of their people, never stamping it out.
When we come across people who have broken the boundaries, and decided to identify as a demon, or a priestess of Apollo, or an alien from another universe, or yes, even an attack helicopter, we need to accept them and be willing to step temporarily into their worldview and see things through their eyes. In an antirealist society, that’s how universes are created. You don’t have to do it all yourself, you just have to accept the people who were going to do it anyway instead of killing them or calling them crazy.
And we can practice techniques that increase our ability to choose our perceptions. When I was first exploring trans issues, I found it difficult to see many trans people as their preferred gender. Now, it’s effortless. Now, I can see My partner as a shark while interacting with its body in meatspace. I’m able to hold that mental image and see it as the truth while My eyes are still showing evidence of humanity. Because I recognise that My eyes evolved to show Me fitness payoffs and paths to survival, not to show Me Truth.
Perception is a choice. If we want otherkin and trans people to be perceived how we identify by everyone, we need to get everyone to choose it, and everyone to develop the skills to do so. Which I think we can do, and the soulist movement intends to make happen. It’s all in our heads, we can change it with the right psychological tools.
I proved it to Myself by doing it, but until we invent BCI mind’s-eye imaging, you’re going to have to trust Me on the specific angle. That’s one of the hard parts of the soulist scientific method: when belief is an independent variable in the observations, replication requires a lot of work. I can introduce you to other people who’ve done the work, and hope that our consensus persuades you, but I can’t show the result to you with your own eyes. Your eyes are a scientific instrument, like a spectrometer or a microscope. No scientific instrument is well-designed for observing everything. You can’t watch bacteria multiply with a seismograph.
More generally, I can prove the principles are valid. I can point out to you that babies don’t know how to see yet. They haven’t learned it. It’s all just colours to them, they can’t sort those colours into shapes and objects, that has to be learned. If it can be learned one way, it can be learned a different way.
I can also use analogy. When you go to the movies and see Indiana Jones disarming a trap, that’s not real. It’s just a screen with moving lights on it. But you don’t see it that way, in that particular moment. You’re absorbed into the story. You suspended your disbelief. You bought into the cues and it was enough to transform your perception. You didn’t need a 3D image, you didn’t need to smell the musty dungeon, you didn’t need to feel the wind as the swinging axe went past Indie’s face. What you saw was enough to choose to buy in. It is possible to reduce that threshold, so less stimulus is required for your buy-in.
I see. Well the question I have then is, if you can “reality shift your word”, why aren’t you a dragon sitting on a bunch of gold with a harem of kobolds?
Well, I would rather change the situation than how I feel about it. If that’s possible.
Soulists also support an anarcho-communist revolution in which the working class rise up and secure the means of production by use of violence, immediately dismantling the state and allocating the means of production to various communes, unions, and guilds. Society will then be structured by the principle of “from each according to ability, to each according to need”, with money and class abolished in favour of community and compassion.
What makes soulism distinct from regular anarcho-communism is the recognition of reality as a means of control used by the state and Capital. We won’t just take back the physical means of production, we intend to take back the means of defining reality and controlling belief. The revolution must be both practical and spiritual. Fixed notions of gender, species, and religion must be abolished, to make way for a subjective multiverse where otherkin, enbies, pagans, plural systems, and people who are better described by no term other than simply “mad” can live as their authentic selves in an accepting society.
The colonial mindset of destroying indigenous realities by “re-educating” indigenous children to destroy their connection to language, land, family, and tradition is a genocide. And liberalism and materialism offer no antidote. “We respect your right to have a wrong religion” is bullshit, and that’s how our current society seems to address issues of religious freedom and indigenous culture. True justice is believing in the myths of all cultures at once, internalising them all as genuinely true, save for the exclusionary parts.
We must recognise the worldviews of other religions as worlds in themselves that we can visit, and experience on the terms of their own experts, and only then can we understand them politically and offer solutions that present true justice. There is no justice in forcing everyone to live in the same reality. The diversity of human and otherkin experience is too much for one reality and it will always be too much. We must take away the limits of expecting everyone to live in an objective universe, and free people up to choose the nature of the universe they want to live in.
I mean I’m down, but… will it work? Could we really change the universe so dramatically?
We sure can. All the destruction that accompanied colonisation, where languages and religions were exterminated, we just have to do that in reverse. We have to create art, and sing songs, and develop new ideas, and explore ourselves. People will always do those things. You can’t stop them, it’s in their nature. Capital and the Crown have only ever succeeded in suppressing the natural creativity and curiosity of their people, never stamping it out.
When we come across people who have broken the boundaries, and decided to identify as a demon, or a priestess of Apollo, or an alien from another universe, or yes, even an attack helicopter, we need to accept them and be willing to step temporarily into their worldview and see things through their eyes. In an antirealist society, that’s how universes are created. You don’t have to do it all yourself, you just have to accept the people who were going to do it anyway instead of killing them or calling them crazy.
And we can practice techniques that increase our ability to choose our perceptions. When I was first exploring trans issues, I found it difficult to see many trans people as their preferred gender. Now, it’s effortless. Now, I can see My partner as a shark while interacting with its body in meatspace. I’m able to hold that mental image and see it as the truth while My eyes are still showing evidence of humanity. Because I recognise that My eyes evolved to show Me fitness payoffs and paths to survival, not to show Me Truth.
And somehow this will change reality itself to make us more like how we identify?
Perception is a choice. If we want otherkin and trans people to be perceived how we identify by everyone, we need to get everyone to choose it, and everyone to develop the skills to do so. Which I think we can do, and the soulist movement intends to make happen. It’s all in our heads, we can change it with the right psychological tools.
Alright, but is there proof this will actually work?
I proved it to Myself by doing it, but until we invent BCI mind’s-eye imaging, you’re going to have to trust Me on the specific angle. That’s one of the hard parts of the soulist scientific method: when belief is an independent variable in the observations, replication requires a lot of work. I can introduce you to other people who’ve done the work, and hope that our consensus persuades you, but I can’t show the result to you with your own eyes. Your eyes are a scientific instrument, like a spectrometer or a microscope. No scientific instrument is well-designed for observing everything. You can’t watch bacteria multiply with a seismograph.
More generally, I can prove the principles are valid. I can point out to you that babies don’t know how to see yet. They haven’t learned it. It’s all just colours to them, they can’t sort those colours into shapes and objects, that has to be learned. If it can be learned one way, it can be learned a different way.
I can also use analogy. When you go to the movies and see Indiana Jones disarming a trap, that’s not real. It’s just a screen with moving lights on it. But you don’t see it that way, in that particular moment. You’re absorbed into the story. You suspended your disbelief. You bought into the cues and it was enough to transform your perception. You didn’t need a 3D image, you didn’t need to smell the musty dungeon, you didn’t need to feel the wind as the swinging axe went past Indie’s face. What you saw was enough to choose to buy in. It is possible to reduce that threshold, so less stimulus is required for your buy-in.
I see. Well the question I have then is, if you can “reality shift your word”, why aren’t you a dragon sitting on a bunch of gold with a harem of kobolds?