"imagine if" i can imagine anything. i can imagine that sometimes i'm a rock. i can believe it passionately. i can decide XYZ traits and behaviors are rock-like and act them out when i think i'm in rock phase. i can make a subreddit for other rock people. i can make a rock avatar on tiktok and call it my alter.
so what?
i'm still a human. everything i imagine is fantasy, and all those fantasies - interpretations - are based in language and arise from my fleshy brain. even the mere act of interpreting my inner world is fantasy, powered by a real-life brain.
in centuries past, these fantasies were flattened into stories or books. now, they're flattened into bundled avatars across a bunch of digital properties. just because other people can now interact with them in more complex ways doesn't change what they are - fantasies, anchored at the starting point by flesh-and-bones me.
physical reality mediates our subjective experiences, which themselves are mediated by language in our minds. the further you get from physical reality, the further you get into ideology or mental illness (which should be treated properly as mental illness, not an alternate reality that the rest of humanity has to accept).
and to wrap - i'm also an actor, and this looks and feels like method. mimetic roleplay with a lot of method, rationalized with computer-adjacent mental models.
In the Author the JT LeRoy Story documentary I vehemently rejected being tagged as a multiple personality, a label which had been established by Hollywood (Sybil) and was not at all what I experienced. I still do not feel there a full understanding of dissociative disorder, but is was very much a part of my psychology existence. It seemed many folks prefer that old Hollywood version of a mental disorder and anything other is too complex to comprehend. How could I be driving the car and still have fully formed others within "me" which I allowed to take the wheel. while I had the power to keep my feet on gas and brakes. All I know is writing and also facilitating them having bodies and lives outside of my own somehow worked to allow me to ingrate.
As for imagining that one's brain would contain multiple consciousness, my immediate reaction was to think about the double consciousness of Du Bois and many others. Not exactly the same use of the word, but interesting nonetheless. I'm sure someone has written an essay connecting the oppression that generates the double consciousness to greater traumas that might induce the identities to become dissociated with each other.
this is a lot of hypotheticals.
"imagine if" i can imagine anything. i can imagine that sometimes i'm a rock. i can believe it passionately. i can decide XYZ traits and behaviors are rock-like and act them out when i think i'm in rock phase. i can make a subreddit for other rock people. i can make a rock avatar on tiktok and call it my alter.
so what?
i'm still a human. everything i imagine is fantasy, and all those fantasies - interpretations - are based in language and arise from my fleshy brain. even the mere act of interpreting my inner world is fantasy, powered by a real-life brain.
in centuries past, these fantasies were flattened into stories or books. now, they're flattened into bundled avatars across a bunch of digital properties. just because other people can now interact with them in more complex ways doesn't change what they are - fantasies, anchored at the starting point by flesh-and-bones me.
physical reality mediates our subjective experiences, which themselves are mediated by language in our minds. the further you get from physical reality, the further you get into ideology or mental illness (which should be treated properly as mental illness, not an alternate reality that the rest of humanity has to accept).
and to wrap - i'm also an actor, and this looks and feels like method. mimetic roleplay with a lot of method, rationalized with computer-adjacent mental models.
In the Author the JT LeRoy Story documentary I vehemently rejected being tagged as a multiple personality, a label which had been established by Hollywood (Sybil) and was not at all what I experienced. I still do not feel there a full understanding of dissociative disorder, but is was very much a part of my psychology existence. It seemed many folks prefer that old Hollywood version of a mental disorder and anything other is too complex to comprehend. How could I be driving the car and still have fully formed others within "me" which I allowed to take the wheel. while I had the power to keep my feet on gas and brakes. All I know is writing and also facilitating them having bodies and lives outside of my own somehow worked to allow me to ingrate.
Be sure to read about how "Sybil" turned out to be a fraud. I'm assuming everyone knows about this book and case that popularized the concept of multiple personality disorders. Book was published in 1973. Before then there were only an incredibly small number of cases in the history of the world. https://www.npr.org/2011/10/20/141514464/real-sybil-admits-multiple-personalities-were-fake https://www.kirkusreviews.com/news-and-features/articles/mesmerizing-story-sybil-exposed/ https://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/16/magazine/a-girl-not-named-sybil.html
As for imagining that one's brain would contain multiple consciousness, my immediate reaction was to think about the double consciousness of Du Bois and many others. Not exactly the same use of the word, but interesting nonetheless. I'm sure someone has written an essay connecting the oppression that generates the double consciousness to greater traumas that might induce the identities to become dissociated with each other.
All of this is conceptually fathomable, is it actually occurring and possible?