identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
For the record, I do NOT identify as an otherkin. I feel the label implies a certain amount of material-realism and an approach to identity that assumes some element of the "kin" identity is objective and somehow "real."
But... I don't think ANY part of identity is real. I'm a pretty radical skeptic there, influenced by drinking too much Mahayana Buddhism and post-structuralist philosophy in college, not to mention the scraps of cogsci I've picked up. From where I'm sitting, this stuff is ALL "added in post," so to speak. Identity, like will, is an illusion brains slap on us to keep us tied together.
That was actually a big reason I started the postfurry thing. Once upon a time, there was a huge war on USENET between the furry "fans" and the furry "lifestylers." (What was that I was sayin' a few toots ago, about the Red Queen's Race?)
And honesty... I didn't like either side's approach. Most people on *both* sides were nice people, but the people who were normative about "Furry Is Just A Goddamn Hobby" were narrow-minded pseudo-rationalist jerks. They were the sort of people who (literally, this was a real conversation) thought that skydivers and people who got visible tattoos were almost as "crazy" as lifestylers, because anything that risked your career, health, or finances was literally insane.
And I tried to flee to the "lifestyler" side, but it seemed like they were far more interested in creating emotional support cliques than actually *discussing* the wild philosophical implications of what they believe. They took an approach of "Yes! Yes, of COURSE you're a fox!" and supported each other totally uncritically, and their quiet hostility and indifference when I tried to raise serious, respectful questions about that— and about what "real" actually MEANS— drove me off.
Honestly? Really honestly? I feel the same way about my friends' statements like "I'm really, really truly a $SPECIES" or "I know deep down my soul is really from $WORLD" that I do about Anthracite doing sigil magic and stuff. My own personal belief is that it has ~0% *direct* impact on the actual physical, noumenal world... and 100% potential impact on the ACTUAL thing humans call the "real" world, because that's mostly a fake symbolic overly over an imperceptible cloud of atoms and superstrings and neurons and shit that WE WILL NEVER SEE ANYHOW, and constantly forget even our tiny glimpses of.
So, yeah. Um... you're probably not "really" a fox. You're probably not "really" from the Magical Realm of Zikkizots. But that's okay, because that person you thought you were before you were those things was ALSO totally fake. You have no idea what you "actually" are, because your brain just... doesn't work that way. You would go mad.
Isn't that reassuring? *big old friendly and totally not reassuring tiger grin*
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@Thaminga I think we're vehemently agreeing here! :D I have a LOT of sympathy with the "as real as money" concept, especially.
Also:
>avoid going full Pepe Silvia on y'all
<3 <3 <3
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@zebratron2084 @Thaminga ...apropos of nothing, both of y'all are now responsible for a lamia in a mitre in my head who assures me she's Pope Silvia Divinorum and has a whiteboard she really needs me to see.
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@zebratron2084 If Sun Wukong can become the Buddha, I can become a fox, whatever that means :P
identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
*confused wyvern noise*
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@zebratron2084 I originally wrote a big long subtoot but the upshot of it was that the metaphor is both resonant and deeply personal. That we don't get to have some sort of conveniently pat, clear answer.
For such things are of the spirit, and it is in the darkness of their eyes that men get lost. (Or women, or whatever, heck, knock yourself out, it's a big universe.)
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@Balinares MY NAME IS REZEYA OF MARS, CAT OF CATS. LOOK ON MY WORKS, YE HUMANS, AND DESPAIR!
Nothing beside remains. *approving nod*
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@Balinares haha and then of course i notice i accidentally retweeted this morning's clarification, and delete the original by mistake... case in point i guess, hope people enjoyed it while it lasted :)
identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
I was thinking recently about whether many of our current problems are caused because humans think in terms of objects -- as far as I know that's universal, not cultural -- and objects are not a well-defined concept at the physical level.
If you're trying to not get eaten by tigers, you don't need to understand that a "tiger" is a complex of hundeds of millions of lifeforms which are in turn loosely bound collections of molecules. You can just draw a circle around it, call it a tiger, and model its behavior at that level.
Which works fine when you're dealing with tigers, but not so well when you're, say, making things out of plastic. They appear to be unitary objects which remain unchanged... until you develop the technology to detect the microparticles that they shed and which are now in everything everywhere...
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@chandra *looks down around her feet and sees a circle drawn around them*
*humps and ponders for several minutes how to cross this mysterious and surely sacred barrier, gives up, and takes a nap*
(This is why tigers would run the world much better than humans.)
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@chandra (er, that should have been "humphs" and I deny any scurrilous rumors -- the circle and i are just good friends *blush* )
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@chandra (And I totally agree, your point is all VERY reminiscent of something I read in a dusty old Erich Fromm book once that stuck with me for years. Humans, self regrettably included, LOVE intellectual shortcuts.)
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
It's not even intellectual shortcuts, exactly. Our brains fulfill the purpose for which they evolved VERY WELL. That's how we had enough free time to get into all this other trouble. We are now putting brains to uses for which their heuristics are not well suited, and it is amazing how far we've gotten, but it's not surprising that there are problems too.
re: identity politics, otherkin (and otherwise), bona fides
@zebratron2084 I mean, to me, it's very much a matter of layers of realness in the end (which I tried to get at in my post last night, while admittedly also pretty drunk and redrafting things several times to avoid going full Pepe Silvia on y'all); identity and free will are about as real as money is, or borders, or really pretty much any other meaning we've assigned to the constellations of matter and energy we encounter in our daily lives. They aren't real in the sense of having a distinct set of atoms bound to them, but in the sense of having a greater impact on the way we experience and interact with the world? In making a noticeable difference in the way the overall timeline goes, however subtly? Yeah, they're real as fuck. We're capable of experiencing reality on a level beyond simply locating particular sets of atoms that may be useful in continuing our existence; we can dream shit up from whole cloth, and build what we dream up in those weird meat brains of ours in the real world, be that physically or simply through sharing those abstract experiences with others.
And frankly, that's real enough to me.