kittenzrulz claims that the takeover of this community was entirely over links getting burned out. this post would appear to contradict that.
furthermore, they completely disregarded my points in the questions i asked, particularly around the ideological motive around the changes they made when giving feedback, and failed to respond when i pushed them on the point, despite posting elsewhere.
i would argue that both the mod of this community, and the admin of the instance, are hostile to anarchist and leftist politics, and cannot be trusted. recommend finding a new instance.
Every single person I’ve interacted with trying to preach the wonders of soulism has been controlling and belligerent towards other leftists and trans people.
Starting with DRONERIGHTS/PM_ME_FAT_ENBIES and ending (hopefully) with Mindgoblin and Grail.
I engaged with grail in good faith at first over soulism but at this point I’m wholly convinced that the philosophy where one can simply decide that someone else isn’t human probably isn’t the best because every single person slinging it has left me with a horrible experience.
I engaged with grail in good faith at first over soulism but at this point I’m wholly convinced that the philosophy where one can simply decide that someone else isn’t human probably isn’t the best because every single person slinging it has left me with a horrible experience.
Doing a quick skim through claimed tenants, it does indeed appear that way. If I’m reading it correctly, the philosophy claims that objective reality is an unjust hierarchy… following that absurd line further, it means that everything is subjective and mutable at the whim of a given individual (is it anyone or just those who are more anti-realist than others?). So, social contract then also becomes mutable at an individual’s whim, etc. Seems like it rhymes heavily with right-wing “post-truth communities”.
That’s not really true anymore, and it wasn’t ever true if you ignore terminology and just look at the beliefs. Soulists have been fighting against imperialism for hundreds of years.
https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/a-history-of-soulism-b11a99fd54c4
Soulists do not believe in social contract theory. The social contract was invented by Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, the “father of liberalism”. Locke was a capitalist. Soulists are anarchists. We don’t like liberals.
When it comes to Soulists, you’re more likely to find utilitarians among our ranks. We punch Nazis not because Nazis violate the social contract, but because Nazis threaten to bring genocide and war. While a social contract theorist would happily deal with a Nazi who was polite, well-mannered, and followed all the rules, a Soulist would not. A Soulist would pull out the baseball bat and tell the Nazi to get the fuck out, no matter how well the Nazi follows the social contract.
Clearly not what happens in practice though given the events that’ve transpired over the past weeks caused by a soulist forcing their reality of support for liberalism/the party of polite fascists.
Soulists do not believe in social contract theory. The social contract was invented by Enlightenment philosopher John Locke, the “father of liberalism”. Locke was a capitalist. Soulists are anarchists. We don’t like liberals.
I do have some philosophical disagreement there. I’m roughly an anarcho-syndicalist by ideology but don’t believe in the plausibility of an anarchic society in my lifetime. Tools of the oppressors can still have value. Social contract, at least as nomenclature, is a very useful tool for describing and theorizing around social cohesion in a non-hierarchical society. In order for humans to coexist in a mutually beneficial manner, they need to agree on “constants” that can be deemed objective. Without this, there can be an “impedence mismatch”, to draw an analogy from electronics, that can cause undue strife because of a lack of agreement on ethical basics. “Social Contract” can be a useful term/concept for describing this, even if not agreeing with the content of it proposed by liberals.
…While a social contract theorist would happily deal with a Nazi who was polite, well-mannered, and followed all the rules, a Soulist would not.
Here, I’d disagree with scoping. I think that you have put all who use Social Contract in the group of (neo)liberalism. I do not find this accurate. As I stated earlier, it is useful as a tool for describing basic ethical “constants” to enable social cohesion.
A Soulist would pull out the baseball bat and tell the Nazi to get the fuck out, no matter how well the Nazi follows the social contract.
Under an anarchic “Social Contract”, that would be the correct action. Those wishing to enforce unjust social hierarchies, inflict suffering sadistically, and commit mass murder would be violating “Social Contract” (not just under most forms of anarchism).
Soulism doesn’t endorse assigning a species identity to someone else. We are all assigned human at birth, and this is an act of abuse against those of us who are not humans. Assigning a different species identity to a human would be the same violence and the same abuse. Using dehumanisation as a justification for further violence is even worse. Soulists believe that forcing someone else into a reality, including the reality of a particular species identity, is violent and wrong. Everyone deserves the right to choose their own species, and if they choose human, nobody should be able to take that away from them.
