@PatrickG
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You need to go back and read my comment again, and consider your views in light of larger issues that have applied to other communities over here.
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Here, you find it harmless:
I did not say it was harmful or harmless, you are inserting that. Given how shitty our society is when it comes to issues of mental diversity I make the assumption of harmlessness unless there is evidence of harm. All human behaviors that I have seen have harmful and harmless contexts. Your burden of proof.
I don’t see you explicitly saying they are mentally ill, but the manner of your observations are a lot like what I hear out of people that are justifying their mockery of people that deviate from the norm. If you want to start talking harm and mental phenomena you have some work to do. I’m not saying that you are intending to connected this stuff to mental illness but given the nature of the discussion the worry is rational. I have to point out that for something to be defined as mental illness it has to be perceived as harmful to the person experiencing it and/or harmful to others. So analogously if you want to act like something that people are saying they can’t help is harmful you have some work to do.
“Because some people use that internal sense of self to impose on others. Like, hello, anti-choicers? racists? nationalists? Not imputing that behavior to anyone here, but .. you do immediately go on to say:
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Heck, I’m an atheist with the religion OCD.
Seriously? A group of people describe their experience and you go to imposition by anti-choicers, racists and nationalists? Yeah, I want to see you defend that. So how are otherkin imposing on others in similar manner? All I see is mere existence so far. You brought it up so you must think it’s a significant problem if you think that anti-choicers, racists and nationalists is the best comparison.
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Could you please think about that a bit? If you recognize your own behaviors, why forgive comparable behaviors elsewhere?
This has to do with how a negative medical bias has led society to doing some really rude and insulting things. Some people have experience of other ways of being that society has mostly only portrayed from a medical perspective which is negative by its very nature (that paper on audio hallucinations is one of a very small number of papers that consider non-pathological phenomena like that). Because of that society misses the people who meet diagnostic criteria and do just fine with the associated characteristics that we call conditions and illnesses. Many people with Tourette’s Syndrome, ADHD, autism and more are happy to be what they are and are not hurting anyone else beyond giving other people funny feelings that they use for mockery and “jokes” at best. You are taking a very negative stance with respect to people who do not appear to be harming you in the slightest.
I don’t need to think about that if I’m not harming anyone and if other people and I have found ways of channeling the phenomena into something useful. Sometimes it’s unpleasant but I would not get rid of it because it’s emotional fuel for the things I like to think about. There is nothing to forgive.
If you want me to think about anything, the way you are treating people who already get a huge amount of crap everywhere else on the internet is not a good way to go about it (seriously, reduce the tone and remove the offensive imagery and the attitude here would fit in on 4chan or 8chan).
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You also bring up clinical lycanthropy… outside of sites that propagate magical thinking, it’s fairly well described as delusional and disturbances of identity. You seem to think that’s wrong, but … I’m kind of at a loss to express how much I disagree with your position. Porphyria is a thing. Lycanthropy is not, thanks.
I said “clinical lycanthropy” which is delusional because the person or others is being harmed by the condition (presumably, that’s debatable given historical treatment of people like LGBT). I’m not assuming that every person who experiences this is feeling harmed or harming anyone, many otherkin would seem to fit non-clinical lycanthropy. The medical literature will tend to neglect those people by design.
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No. That’s bullshit. A “human being” is very specific, and has nothing to do with how one expresses as a a human being. Particularly if one is expressing as a dragon, or a lion, or an oyster.
I said “FEELS”, and clearly feeling as if you are not human despite reality is part of how humanity is expressed. There is more than one group here that says they feel something that they KNOW is not consistent with the reality they can put their hands on.
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And you quote this as… support?
Damn right. Human creativity, symbolism and diversity in ability to interact with and manipulate the world as a group come from our ability to make connections that can only exist because minds exist. Like every other area of human psychology it needs moderation and context to be expressed without hurting the person or anyone else. My oppositional psychology has the potential for harming other people, but I can shape it into the instincts of a
social gadfly. Not the most respected of social roles, but one I embrace regardless.
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Hallucinatory experiences may be very human. Having them is not necessarily healthy. Like great, we consider all sorts of behaviors “normal” and “otherwise healthy” that really, really aren’t. This link does not support your claim.
It supports my claim when my claim is that society has an individual obligation to confirm the existence of harm before mocking, joking about, speaking as if they are universally negative and other means of socially isolating people. You have the obligation to demonstrate harm.
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This kind of thinking is woo. It’s right up there with acupuncture, spirit-talking, homeopathy, and (quite literally) reincarnation. It’s magical thinking, and it’s absolutely ridiculous. Belief does not equal fact, no matter what neurochemical biases are at play
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There is no woo in describing how you feel regardless of reality if a person knows that their feelings and reality are not consistent. Did you see this part?
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On one hand the elements that are religious and worth giving some criticism to are fine as long as it’s analogous to what we do with religion.
But on the other hand I actually have a respect for what religion is in a naturalistic sense and it’s deeply tied up with experiences that matter even if the stories we create with them do not reflect reality.
I probably should have worded that “…the harmful elements that are religious…”.
If they are making comments about how their wings and tails are knocking things over criticize away. That does not make the reality of what they feel go away. If I use my Tourette’s Syndrome to gain insights into deeper aspects of human nature like authoritarian behavior it’s your obligation to demonstrate the woo. If I use my ADHD to more easily escape from a conceptual context in order to detect hidden connections it is your obligation to demonstrate the woo. If I use my social emotion-related intrusive thoughts to essentially construct and fuel an internal social simulation that I use to think about social things it is your obligation to demonstrate the woo.
Otherwise you are acting as if a whole group of people are like a stereotype. We have an otherkin right in here that has said they know they are not an animal but that does not matter to how they feel. If you are going to be rude, you will get criticized.
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It has become very clear that one of the amazing things the human brain can do is convince a person they’re not human, but an animal (sometimes reincarnated, at that!). That’s truly amazing, but it shouldn’t be celebrated. It should be recognized as a cognitive flaw that we’re all susceptible to, and in extreme cases, should be treated appropriately.
Your word “convince” does not apply universally. Do not act like it does. MANY cultures around the world have actual respected and celebrated social roles for people whose minds do not function like the norm. You will lose this fight because we are not going anywhere and some of us are even psychologically advantaged when it comes to expressing criticism. I’m perfectly willing to use that in defense of other people like me and the only one that needs to celebrate that for it to mean anything is me.
Wanting people to refrain from socially isolating whole groups of people through assumed harm, mockery, and similar is not unreasonable. Criticism and mockery of specific manifestations of experience of reality that is not consistent with reality that harm people is fair game.
