Destroy Reality. Create a Multiverse.
MULTIVERSE is a PieFed instance for soulists. Our rules are designed to create a safe space for minorities, including those considered unreal by society. We are also an anarchist instance and do not allow tankie propaganda. We aim for transparent and fair moderation in line with the principles of anarcho-antirealism, and to be fertile ground for discussion of soulist ideology. We also aim to be intuitive to use for new fediverse denizens who don’t care how federation works, and are just interested in the politics. Our manifesto can be found at http://soulism.net/.
WTH is a “soulist”?
An anarchist who views natural laws as unjust hierarchies. Most of our community is on Discord, but we have a few mostly abandoned subreddits and some local action groups. Now we also have a federated forum.
So gravity is something you consider unjust?
Yes. Gravity does not ask one’s consent before pulling. If one has arthritis or chronic fatigue, gravity will hurt them. I believe in building technology to challenge the dominance of this law, such as wheelchairs, fitness programs, and science fiction antigravity machines.
This feels like satire, ngl
I don’t think Gravity is the hierarchy preventing arthritis patients from getting medical care
Interesting. It sounds like soulism is very similar to anarcho-transhumanism, but with a spiritual component, is that correct?
Many soulists believe in two different branches of soulist thought: scientific soulism and spiritual soulism. I disagree, I think magic is a science and spirituality can be a technology. But there are soulists who reject spiritual means of changing our perceptions, and there are spiritual soulists who do not use the scientific method. So to answer your question: sometimes.
What is meant by “natural” laws?
The laws which people believe to be part of reality. Such as gravity, time, human nature, and species.
So you don’t believe that people have a right to not be murdered?
all of these anarchist flavors are a form of relativism where all that matters is people’s individual feelings.
it’s a form of solipsism when you start asking questions about it.
and when you draw it out, it inevitable leads to consequences that totally contradict it’s tenants. but anarchists… don’t do that… they just feel the feelings, man.
anarchism is great if you never think, but some flavors of it regard thinking as an undue burden foist upon people by a unjust society… hence why you are getting these absurd answer about how gravity is unjust and cruel. I suppose they also regard having to eat/drink/breathe as injustices that ‘society’ forces upon us.
My experience with anarchists, limted though it is, their hearts are in the right place, they know what sides they are not on, but do not neccessarily know a lot outside of their doctrine. But they will fight.
So better than most all. Knowing what side you are NOT on is becoming rarer.
most people don’t care about sides. they just care about money.
and rightfully so. your theory or political stance can’t buy you food or a car or other basic necessities.
That is true. They would care about sides if there was a good side that fought against them being taken advantage of. People try to win rural, red areas being conservative light. They need new dealist. Too late now maybe.
I skimmed the manifesto because I felt like I was about to waste my time. Since reality is to be rejected, the only thing that matters is your perception, which you should subjugate to your will in order to… well that’s what the manifesto doesn’t really answer. At least not satisfyingly.
Their objective is to spread kindness, so subjugate your perception to your will, in order to be more kind to others. An example was rejecting your perception of gender in order to be more kind to trans folks. It was a lot of words to basically say "change your views to accommodate other people’s feelings abd make them more comfortable.
But finally, from my understanding of this ideology, yes, murdering others is okay, you can simply reject your perception of their rights. Hope that helps!
The manifesto fails to define any sort of metric of what is considered “kind” or “moral” (doing so would require a reality). But they do define “magic”, and then declare that money isn’t real, thus commerce is magic.
EDIT: The manifesto is kind of a ramble, hard to follow and doesn’t even answer the question of what the hell this philosophy wants from me. Usually a philosophy implies an MO I can adhere to, but this one doesn’t really do that. It lists examples of how this philosophy helps queer, trans and neurodivergent folks, but doesn’t explain how. Just that it’s possible. It doesn’t explain why I would want to do that.
Anarcho-antirealism is a political philosophy building upon anarchism, not an ethical philosophy. I deliberately avoided inserting My own views on ethics, because I don’t believe they’re relevant. There are people with very different ethical views from My own, such as deontologists, with whom I believe a political alliance would still be very beneficial to both of us.
I may one day write a description of My own ethical philosophy on My blog, is that something you’d be interested in reading? I would assume anarcho-antirealism would be applicable to your own personal values if you’re aligned with anarchism.
If it’s a political philosophy, then what political points is it trying to make? Because most of the concrete applications of this ideology the manifesto makes are basically that it treats marginalized groups better. And it even fails at that:
This is honestly delusional. Pretending the transphobes bigotry isn’t real doesn’t help at all, they can still go ahead and harm trans folks in the reality they live in. I don’t think that sticking your head in the sand is the solution to this.
It follows that transphobic hate crimes are magic. This entire section just feels pointless, I just skimmed that paragraph about wizards and dungeons and dragons, and when I read that financial transactions are magic I just stopped reading because I felt like I was wasting my time.
In my understanding, most of the examples given in the manifesto essentially boil down to “I will change my behavior and opinions, because I believe it is the right thing to do”. The whole “reality isn’t real” and “magic exists” stuff around this are just so confusing, because it is not at all clear how it relates to the examples. The beginning feels more like a rant or ramble about history and metaphysics.
This is equivalent to stating “be nice”; a request that clearly does not work. All the other stuff in that text about the realities and perception is just noise that distracts from the already very sparse points it’s trying to make. I get the feeling that solipsism is a huge inspiration for this ideology. The main issue with solipsism is that it draws no useful conclusions from its main argument. If there is nothing I can extract from solipsism to act on, then it is pointless to advocate for it. Obviously it cannot be disproven, but it also cannot be explicitly proven
Alright, here’s a concrete example of using magic to help somebody in a clearly beneficial way.
lol ok, i believe you’re just taking the piss, and I’m sure it’s not just my perception
No, they aren’t.
People genuinely believe this stuff. Just like they believe in astrology. It’s a form of magical thinking, it’s a magical political theory. The core premises being ‘liberation’… which just means being a delusional twat who thinks reality horrible and scary and the ideology helps then deny it.
In other words, it’s the equivalent of a child ignore their parents requests res to do chores in the hope the parent/chores will stop asking.
If you join The Outside on Discord, you’ll meet many other antirealists and be able to ask them if soulism is a serious and helpful ideology. If the effort I have gone to in preparing these resources and the testimony of others in the community will not convince you, then I will bid you a good day.
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I’m not a soulist like the user you replied to, but for another perspective, mine is that rights are imaginary constructs which mean nothing if unenforceable.
People have some rights to not be murdered; that’s not an opinion if we have a compatible definition of ‘rights’, it’s written in law, it’s ingrained into mainstream liberalist social norms and ethics. So the right exists as a social idea which sometimes manifests in real consequences. However: