Comment on Mental health
Grail@aussie.zone 1 week agoWe 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.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 week ago
And somehow this will change reality itself to make us more like how we identify?
Grail@aussie.zone 1 week ago
Perception is a choice. If we want otherkin and trans people to be perceived how we identify, 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.
HawlSera@lemm.ee 1 week ago
Alright, but is there proof this will actually work?
Grail@aussie.zone 1 week ago
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.