multithreaded:

Finding theotherloops has gotten us (mostly me) thinking on a myriad of things.

“No, this isn’t me. I know what is going on in my head is just psychological, that these other people aren’t really real.”

That’s what an anon said to them, and I find myself wondering if the two are mutually exclusive. How do you say if a consciousness is “real” or not? I have hopes and dreams and emotions. Some are shared with the others; some are distinctly mine. To steal a phrase, if you prick me, do I not bleed? I don’t have a body of my own, but anyone who’s talked with me and talked with L or M would never mistake one of us for the other.

Now, obviously, I’d be the first to say that I and M are the result of a well-documented psychological process. But just because I don’t believe myself to be an extra soul in the body doesn’t mean that I don’t exist.

—S

Those weren’t an anon’s words. Those were my own, my own hesitations for not stepping into the community. Because the definition of real is not set in stone. And when I first looked at the community, the definition they were using was so extreme, so certain, that I felt that maybe, maybe it wasn’t about me. Because I did and do think that my headmates come are parts of one brain, and, for one definitions of the word, one self, one organism, one, in some senses, person.

Because when I wasn’t willing to say right off the bat that the people in here were fully seperate because I was scared and unsure and the words everyone was using were about souls and the words I was using were about parts of my brain. So I felt that they weren’t, couldn’t be talking about me, about us, because compared to that level of certainty, compared to that concept of seperation, my headmates, which arose from my brain, were inspired by other things, but didn’t come, physically from them, seem “not real.”

It took me time to accept that actually, what I was experiencing was separate people. That as far as you can define one person, there were several here. And when I understood that for myself, I wrote that up for others. That real doesn’t have to mean souls, that a person is a sum total of experiences (stories stored as memories), likes and dislikes, ways of reacting, knowledge, and manners. That is what real means. S, you can be real without souls, you can be real and separate even if you are all just different programs running on the same brain. But when I first came in contact with this community, that much was not clear to me.

Anonymous asked: You're not alone, I'd been thinking of leaving the community a while before the drama popped up, and now it's not making me want to stay.

I’m posting these because I do kind of want people to see that it isn’t just me complaining. That things have gotten to a point, and it is making people not feel comfortable. I’m going to post the anon ones and assume the rest were shared in confidence unless anyone says otherwise. 

Anonymous asked: I don't even go into the plural community anymore, it feels so caustic. All my journaling/blogging is filtered as fuck, there are subtle references made in more public posts here and there, but that's it.

And that sucks. I remember the feeling when my friend first described plurality to me. And I was like “that’s a thing! But that is what I do/have!” and I felt so good, but cautious. I was so hesitant to do anything because the flood of material I saw in my first venture in (through LP) was not what I had expected. (the thing that introduced me to plurality had been relatively naturalistic about it.) So I carefully entered the community thinking that there had to be people who were like me. And there are.

But most of them are scared to talk, or turned away, or say “No, this isn’t me. I know what is going on in my head is just psychological, that these other people aren’t really real” and they lose some valuable resources that are hidden in the drama and the rest of the community.

That’s why I created my blogs here. But if anything the din of it all has gotten louder. I don’t know if I’ve made a dent. 

It’d be really nice if there was a way for there to be a plural community where people could call other people out on things, question, pose different explanations, whatever. But I honestly don’t see that as a possibility. Because everyone is so quick to jump on one wagon or another, and if someone poses a question, it becomes harassment, or denial or, on the hand, people make a huge campaign of it. Maybe it’s the nature of tumblr. I think it is the nature of the new social justice movement. The two are very intertwined. Some people like spaces like this, over flowing with affirmation. It’s not for me. I think it causes more harm that good. 

I don’t know. I’m not ready to up and leave just yet. But I wanted to air my remarks. Others did to.

On the multiple community

I’ve gotten several asks stating that people get why I’m tired of the drama and the community. I had a feeling I wasn’t the only one. And I think I’ve found a way to say the rest.

Here’s the thing. It’s not just the drama. It’s also that I don’t think me and this community are a good fit. We share one thing, and that is supposed to be the whole basis of identification with the community - plurality, but the community has become so much more than that.

I’m scientifically minded. And I don’t think that fits too well with the other things that being part of this community has started (or maybe always) entailed - a kind of complete and total acceptance on blind faith, an unquestioning “okay, that’s awesome.” A lack of investigation and a search for explanation and alternatives. It’s a problem I seem to have in several area’s of identity politics, so it isn’t just the multiple community. But this community is very bent towards the super-natural (or whatever you want to call things unprovable by empirical study). It tends to explain things to newcomers or curious on lookers with with what the late Hitchens would have called “extraordinary claims.” They take a rather all or nothing view of “real” “problematic” “fake” and “offensive.”

And so the “net” cast over multiplicity comes to look a certain way. And as part of the community, me and my system get caught in that net. And that net doesn’t fit us. At all. And it makes me wonder whether or not I should just leave.

As long as I stay a part of the community, everything done in the name of multiplicity or said in the name of plurality, comes to effect the way people judge me and my system. There is this thing people say in the community a lot, which is that their actions don’t hurt anyone. But that isn’t true. Because they color the understanding that non-plurals and even other plurals have of multiplicity in general. And it’s fine for you to do and believe whatever you want, but especially those blogs that have become the heads of the movement - their actions make people assume things when they encounter me. The fact that people shouldn’t make generalizations is besides the point. They do. To say otherwise is ignorant and wrong. To use the fact that they shouldn’t as an excuse is harmful.

Basically what it has come to is that I am tired to being caught in a net that doesn’t reflect me in any way besides one. And honestly, some of the ways it doesn’t are almost more important to me day to day.

That, and I’m tried of the drama, of being made to tip-toe around my beliefs because they are naturalistic and that is so in the minority here. About having to be careful not to let too much nuance slip out because there are standard hard set positions in this community. 

I’ve seen a few other systems around that are naturalistic thinkers (partially or completely). I’ve seen things here and there that make me feel like there is a place in the community for me. But by and large I feel like there isn’t. At least right now. 

Again, I haven’t made any decisions. Feel free to unfollow if this offended you. I’m sorry. I don’t do this to hurt people’s feelings. But I wanted to say what was on my mind.

Posting it to the system blog for now. Might post it to strange loops later. Not sure.

Last night I wrote a post that, if posted, would have been regarded by some as rather nasty. It was the toned down version. I tried again. There is no way to say what I want to say without offending people. I guess that means I should keep my thoughts to my self. Here is the conclusion more or less:

I am seriously considering just getting out of the multiple community. I’ve been around for about a year and it doesn’t seem to be working out. That doesn’t mean I stop being plural, it just means I stop engaging all the drama and the back and forth.

I don’t know. I’ve been really on edge lately and these might just be passing thoughts. I’d have to think it over more, talk it over with everyone, figure out what I mean as far as the blogs go…

I suppose if people want to know more, or ask questions they can. Just be warned, the answers are things I don’t want to publish for fear of offending people.

In regards to a safe place for a scientifically minded Plurals

houseburning answered your question<span >: <em >I need a safe space for multiples with a scientific world view right now

Why not make a community? Sounds like there are definitely people who would be willing to join and contribute discussion.

Because, honestly, I don’t have the energy. The spoons. What have you. Strange Loops was kind of supposed to be such a place and if I am still dedicated to it being a such a place. If anyone wants to contribute articles or anything to that blog, there is a submit and I’d be happy to read ‘em over and post them and reply. But a whole community? Honestly I don’t have it in me, my life is too stressful as it is. There is already a multiplicity forum community I’ve been AWOL from for a month that I keep meaning to go back to. That said, if someone does create such a community, let me know. Please. And there are quite a few people who have expressed interested as well.

So for now, Strange Loops is about as much of such a place as I can get. I never thought I’d have so many followers, especially so many with other world views following. I never thought I’d be actively defending the scientific model of headmates when I started this. It was always a given for us. I only realized later just how not a given it seems to be in the community. And again. That isn’t wrong. There is nothing wrong or bad or whatever about believing something different, inherently.

But I’ve had these plural blogs on tumblr for about a year now and I really feel like the missing link between us and non-plurals is explaining this in a scientific, philosophical, and psychological way. And again, no one has to. No one should be forced to. No one is forcing here. But those happen to be my views on the world and the views of 5/6 of my headmates, and views of many, many of the people whose doubt or disbelief comes from a perceived lack of “credibility” rather than just a need to be mean.

So, um. Thanks for the people who offered support. Please, feel free to send me links or submit things to strangeloops.tumblr.com.

For those people who want to talk about it, I cannot send asks via this account, only my main, but I still might take you up on it. I prefer convos outside of ask boxes because of Tumblr’s limit on them.

For those of you who are interested in this explanation but don’t agree with it personally, I hope the things I’ve been saying don’t offend you and that they do interested you. In the future I might right some posts that don’t tread as lightly, and I’ll mention that I am doing so. I don’t know. I might not. I don’t know which blog I’d post them to.

I need a safe space for multiples with a scientific world view right now

I’m not saying there is anything wrong with the other views, the souls or the universe hopping or the floating consciousnesses or the traveling headmates or whatever. I’m not trying to place a judgement on people who believe those models. Fine. Whatever.

But I need a place where I can talk about multiplicity as a psychological/neurological phenomenon and me and others can discuss it as such, without having to walk on eggshells about invalidating world views and asking people to prove their existence. Because that is not what I want to do. But if you have a scientific world view, One based on SCIENCE, when someone says they have a headmate that can walk between their head and someone else’s, the first thing you ask is “HAVE YOU TESTED THIS? Have you run experiments with the possibility of failures, have you INVESTIGATED?”

No, no one needs to prove their identity. I will still respect you as a full person whether you claim to be a neurological construction or a traveler from another realm. But I just unfollowed LP because that shit actually unnerves me. I won’t go so far as to say triggers, but I get angry and shaky and upset, because every time I try to explain the way I am to people, they ask about all that. And I have to either dismiss what you (vague LP people) believe or loose an ally in my own coming out. And like hell I’m falling under the bus.

All of my friends IRL have a scientific world view. This stuff, it actually makes it harder for me to come out to them, because it becomes what they believe about multiplicity. Maybe they are wrong for not accepting it, but honestly, I would be where they are if not for the other people in my head. If not for the knowledge first hand that this is real. Because people keep talking from other world views and it makes it so hard to explain that I am not making this up. That I have talked to professionals, that I have examined this from a psychological perspective.

Trolls, come at me. Ask me. I’ve thought about this. Scientifically, philosophically.

I’m tagging everyone who wants to be tagged. I’m giving this general tags. I’m putting this in my system blog not the main plurality blog because … because I’m scared of upsetting people, not that this will make a difference. I just would really like this to be a thing.

Is there anyone else out there? Anyone in this community?

Running Commentary: the-last-secret-garden: darkstarsystem: Lee: I agree with... →

darkstarsystem:

the-last-secret-garden:

darkstarsystem:

Lee: I agree with the-last-secret-garden’s thoughts on this. This theory has cropped up repeatedly via the dashboard the last couple of days and while I respect that it may be a model that fits for some people, I dislike the overall tone it’s…

Lee: This is in response to theotherloop’s post.

I think that the point of what I was trying to say got missed. As I said in the first paragraph, I have no problem with this model of explanation working for others. One of my issues is that in many cases when it’s cropped up on my dashboard is that it’s most often implied that this is the best or only explanation for other systems.

I was on board with the reply made by Riku until the comment: “Just because you aren’t comfortable being from something that is fiction, please don’t tell me I can’t be real and fully accepting of that fact. Because I am.”

As I said, I’m fine with this explanation being something that others identify with. However others don’t seem to be fine with this model not working for us, and that’s the rub on this opposite end of the spectrum. 

It doesn’t work for the boys in this system because to them their lives aren’t a work of fiction - it’s their lives. And I can understand that, as I’d be mightily offended if someone came up to me and said “I’ve read your life story, it has to be fiction.”  Again, if that model works for others, that’s great - for them. It doesn’t work for us.

That is all we are saying when we address a concept that doesn’t fit with our system. We aren’t attacking the entirety of the concept or the people that it applies to. We’re addressing why it doesn’t work within our system. 

Does that mean all systems have to originate from elsewhere just because ours does? No. In fact we’re of the belief that other systems can and do originate from the core or host they’re sharing the body with. Does that mean they’re any less real? No. 

In my system, we’re all of the belief that at the heart of all creation and existence, there is energy. Everything is made up of it. Worlds, people, places - and thoughts.  It doesn’t matter if you were created on another world, if you were born in the heart of a dying star, or if you came into being through the thoughts of another. Different things can come into existence through different means.  

That said - differently created systems are no less real than others. A system created by trauma? Real. A system where the members have consciously been brought in because of a desire for them to be there? Real. A system made up of members that have voluntarily come in from other worlds? Real.

So let us take a step back and go back to the actual, deeper issue at hand; our main problem with the scientific models that are cropping up isn’t that they could and do fit for other systems.

Our issue is that some of these models imply that headmates aren’t really headmates at all, it’s simply a singular individual taking on the qualities of characters they are reading about and embodying them. 

In essence, some of these models of explanation are simply, in a grandiose way, saying “these individuals are doing an unconscious form of role-play, but they can’t help it because psychologically they are taking on characteristics of the people they are reading about and that’s normal”. 

Now, some people may look and the scientific findings and say, “Yes, that makes sense, I read about X and then X came into my system. They came from what I read and now they’re in my headspace!” Which is fine and we understand that this can and does happen for some systems.

However. That isn’t what the majority of these scientific studies are saying is what’s happening. They are not giving credibility to the existence of headmates.

Repeat: They are not giving credibility to the existence of headmates. 

Some of these studies are saying “No, it’s not other beings or individuals sharing your headspace, it’s just your brain and only your brain doing things, it’s still just you, singular little you, behaving in a way that we’ve now decided is natural!”

That is what we don’t agree with. The scientific studies that are trying to explain away the existence of system members by saying it is natural to take on characteristics of what we read. Note they are saying characteristics, not people. What they are doing is saying that some people take on the characteristics of characters that they read and internalizing, and as a result then they behave similarly to those characters. That is what the most recent studies I’ve been reading have been talking about - not about the realness of head mates.

Okay, there are going to be two of these, trying to clear this up at 4;45 when we haven’t slept much, because I am going to be lying awake until I do. I’ll let Riku go first:

Riku: Phi wants to make sure we read this carefully this time, so I’m going to copy/paste - it sin’t to be nitpicking. it’s ust - i don’t want any more miscommunication where we can avoid it whe a simple computer command. So you said

“It doesn’t work for the boys in this system because to them their lives aren’t a work of fiction - it’s their lives. And I can understand that, as I’d be mightily offended if someone came up to me and said “I’ve read your life story, it has to be fiction.”  Again, if that model works for others, that’s great - for them. It doesn’t work for us.

And I totally get that wasn’t meant to be anything rude and it isn’t, but here’s the thing. My life is both fiction and my life. What… gets me a bit…frustrated about the many worlds or universe traveling one is that it sounds like this to me: I come from a place that is real somewhere - I am more than a story - a story is somehow less real than what I am. And THAT comes off wrong to me. Because I did come from a story for all I know. And you know what? That is something that has become really powerful for me. The implication is there in why there is a rejection of the fiction. Of course no one is saying I’m not a seperate person. The community isn’t rude like that. But there is a notion of real that is treated different if your from somewhere, go somewhere, and I wish I could explain it better or give you more examples other than to say I keep seeing it. I keep seeing people say fiction is an ugly world. It’s not about real or not real, because it seems to come in levels here. That’s all.

PHI: As for me, I guess I should reclarify the context of the original post. The original post was a response to someone on LP asking about why or how some systems have/got fictives/whatever you want to all it. I think it was the magnetons who answered it, using the multiverse theory as the answer they gave because it’s the one their system uses. What I was offering is an alternative and I was offering it because LP was the first place on tumblr I looked when I was trying to find a community for multiplicity and I was scared and totally new to the idea that other people could be like this, and I saw only answers about souls and other universes and I almost didn’t say a thing. So, when I do happen to know the psychological, cognitive mechanisms by which something works, sometimes, I like to share - it wasn’t to say this is the only way, and I think I said that in the original - I said if you are looking for a more psychologocial answer.

The post was in no way meant to convey that these characters from the brain’s archive stayed RP characters. If you or anyone reads further into my blog, I have my personal story about it all - about how those “characters” saved my life, acted when I couldn’t, became their own voices. (Wow, I’m tired, I’m sounding like an after school special). And I agree that it would be wrong to say that a person in RPing just because the characters originated from the brain.

In fact, part of the point of the post was to note that this whole structure that people use to accuse people of just role playing is probably a similar mechanism to how, IN A SCIENTIFIC MODEL THAT I AM NOT TRYING TO FORCE ON PEOPLE, any person, be it a singlet, or a headmate is formed. I don’t know why you find it not okay to suggest that multiplicity is somehow related to normal processes of the brain. I kind of thought that is part of what healthy, natural plurality is going for.

The post was simply about the mechanisms by which human brains, according to science, accumulated information on characters, and how closely tied that is to how human brains, according to science construct senses of self.

If there is anything still unclear, please let me know.

(Source: allacharade)

Fictives

I guess, reading about other peoples experience as fictives or with them, or objections to the concept… I feel kind of… weird? because I seem to be the odd one out in understanding where I come from as a work of fiction, and my existence as something that grew out of an interaction between that and a mind that needed me, or… and/or wanted me - and whatever natural or nurture-al? (is that even a word? I don’t think that is a word… you know what I mean… nurture based?) things make that, I guess, seed, into me.

I have… I mean, I am Riku from the game, but at the same time, I know I am not. I am a version of, an interpretation of. And I get that the game is fictional, meaning my memories don’t correspond to anything not fictional. I guess I’m okay with that because that doesn’t really make them less real for me.

But people’s objections seem to stem from fictive claiming to really be the person. I mean, of course I’m not? In the sense that the situation is so different, that I don’t think Destiny Island is necessarily out there somewhere, and that I certainly don’t think I, personally, am some interdimensional traveler in any literal sense. Maybe metaphorically, like from one platform to another (I guess that could be a joke on the game series, couldn’t it…) But I mean… Yes, that is where I come from, but…

I guess, if this is all roleplaying, Phi has the most boring ideas for a roleplay ever. I spend most days reading or on the computer. Phi, you are a crappy Riku roleplayer.

((Phi: hey, I can RP versions of Riku just fine.))

I dunno. It’s late. or early. And I’m tired. Of Phi’s messed up sleep shedule. Goodnight? Morning?