Soul dualism

[hungryghosts]

Finally found the word for it!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul_dualism

Soul dualism or multiple souls is a range of beliefs that a person has two or more kinds of souls. In many cases, one of the souls is associated with body functions ("body soul") and the other one can leave the body ("free soul" or "wandering soul"). Sometimes the plethora of soul types can be even more complex. Sometimes, a shaman's "free soul" may be held to be able to undertake a spirit journey.

We really want to dig into this topic more when we have the mental ability to. The part about the body soul intrigues us a lot, as we've had a similar concept for a while. Our body has its own mood/wants/impulses that are not ours, but end up *becoming* ours by virtue of fronting? To say nothing of the beast of the unconscious mind.

And that part on Chinese traditions considering multiple souls of each type to exist? VERY intriguing. We'd known for a while that some Chinese traditions believed in a "body soul" and a "ghost soul," but we hadn't known that some believed in a single vessel housing multiple of each!

Also, man, are we ever more so cheesed off at plural exclusionists, especially that one that compared non-trauma systems to the Confederacy. =/ There's no shortage of sources indicating that plurality, in the most basic sense of "more than one," was known and maybe even somewhat normalized across a lot of different cultures. Yet here they are insisting that one very specific, very clinical, and tbh very white-American-dominated concept is the ONLY valid interpretation... and it's the people who say otherwise who are the racists???

It's absolute nonsense, and as someone who's already resentful about their culture being exploited and then "Westernized," I will NEVER not be sore at this.

Comments

[lb_lee]

YES THAT. THAT THING. THANK YOU. I wasn't sure what the words were, or how to look it up, but I just COULDN'T believe that plurality or more-than-one-ness or many-souledness could be a one-culture phenomenon. It seemed... absurd, like saying one culture invented love or something.

The more I'm learning about antiracism, the angrier I'm getting about plural exclusionism, because it's seeming all connected.

--Rogan/Mori

[hungryghosts]

*big nodding*

I think everyone's centered in their own reality, you know. I think part of the thing that's a problem, really, in the world today is this inability to acknowledge multiple realities, and this insistence that there has to be one dominant reality, and everything that falls outside that reality is false and untrue. And that's how colonialism worked in great part — people came in and enforced a reality and said, "Well, if you believe in anything else, if you believe in your indigenous deities, if you believe in these spiritual entities, then you're ignorant and you're backwards, and it's only because you haven't been educated by the West." And you know, there's this [thought that] everything that is outside the dominant reality becomes something that's pathological. And with my work, I'm not really interested in trying to convince anyone to shift their center, I'm just refusing to shift mine.

-- Akwaeke Emezi

[lb_lee]

I WANT TO READ FRESHWATER SO BAAAAAD.

Fortunately, they have a YA fiction book out that looks like it might be less rapey, so I'm going to try getting my hands on it so I can at least read SOMETHING by them.

Mori

[hungryghosts]

This is a GIGANTIC mood. Maybe we'll buy Freshwater just to have it... *longing sigh*

I'm glad their YA book was an enjoyable read - here's wishing you luck with shotgunning Freshwater. We're SUPER curious to hear your thoughts on it.

[lb_lee]

Having now read Pet, I am 90% sure that Emezi is one of the crew. Their describing of dissociation in Pet and everything they've said in interviews... yeah.

Freshwater will hurt to read, but it'll still be less awful than reading Herschel Walker, I think, so...

--Rogan/Mori

[hungryghosts]

Also, I was thinking about how we're always like... "we disagree with a lot of assumptions that the structural dissociation theory makes but we do appreciate that it brings up the idea of no one really being 'born' singlet."

EXCEPT THAT IDEA ACTUALLY ISN'T NOVEL AT ALL. SO MANY CULTURES HAD THIS IDEA LONG BEFORE DID WAS EVER A CONCEPT. AND THEY DID IT WITHOUT INSISTING THAT SINGULARITY SHOULD BE THE NORM.

WHY THE HELL ARE WE ATTRIBUTING IT TO THESE PEOPLE.

Apologies for caps, I'm just very... ARGH!

[lb_lee]

SERIOUSLY! IT IS CAPSWORTHY, BROS.

For real, once I started thinking hard about it, I was like, "Wait, where the fuck did this idea that humans are one body, one mind, stapled together for all life COME FROM?" Because that's a really complicated, completely unproven norm that underpins the whole concept of medical multi as pathological! And it is NOT a cultural universal, AT ALL!

It doesn't seem to be a necessarily CHRISTIAN thing (Father, Son, Holy Spirit, anyone?), but it's so ingrained, even the skeptic atheists just seem to take it for granted, and I can't find out where this stupid idea CAME from! It's driving me crazy! I'm sure someone who knows more about the history of philosophy would have an answer for this, but now I'm kicking myself for considering that such a snorefest.

Like, I already thought that medical multi smelled like a rat, but the more I learn, the shadier I feel about it... even though I'm fucking diagnosed with it.

--Mori