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How do you decide who doesn’t have a soul?
I have to say I’m really surprised at how committed some people seem to be to the notion that not everyone has a soul, or that certain people are intrinsically somehow subhuman. As I said in my previous post on the subject, I think it’s fun as a game or as a model to imagine that “Hey, maybe this guy is an alien!” But the second you take it past that and start saying that some people are less-than-human, you get into trouble.
Jeremy has a good post about this from a gnostic perspective for anyone interested in continuing the debate. I also just thought of another perhaps better way to explain the danger of this type of thinking:
For just a second, let’s adopt the model of reality that says some people are not-fully-human. You can call them aliens, organic portals, demons, archons, whatever. Okay, now that we have decided this might be a possibility, the next and only question is: How do you decide who doesn’t have a soul?
What kind of criteria do you set up? Is it ethnic? Are Jews or blacks or Muslims subhuman? Is it based upon a person’s actions? What actions would constitute valid “proof” that someone doesn’t have a soul? Would it be rape, or murder? What about hate? Does someone who commits a hate crime have less of a soul? Guess what: If you answer “Yes” to that last one, then you also are committing a biased hate crime, and therefore have less of a soul.
Perhaps your answer is “Oh, you can just tell he’s different!” or “It’s something in their eyes,” or “I feel uncomfortable around her.” Guess what: this is completely subjective! This is you sensing something, and it may be something like intuition and perhaps you should steer clear of such people. But this DOES NOT constitute objective, valid, or verifiable “proof” at all in any sense. Ever. Period.
How then do you tell? What’s left to use as criteria? How can we agree on this? Or do we just need to wait around for a spiritual or worldly leader to tell us who has a soul and who doesn’t? There’s just no good way out of this that I can see. If you can think of one, please please tell me.
June 8th, 2005 at 3:47 pm
haha! that’s it, isn’t it? end of argument. this is pretty much the be-all-end-all answer to the whole nonsensical question.
June 8th, 2005 at 3:51 pm
[…] more concise explanation of why this idea is just so fucking bad, please read my article: How do you decide who doesn’t have a soul?
[…]
June 8th, 2005 at 6:07 pm
I had a series of bitter arguments about this topic in the late 90s w. Dr. Joseph Chiappalone of ANNWN Publications (SEE:http://www.fortunecity.com/roswell/prophecy/23/News/Sept98.htm) and also with the webmaster of rense.com
Both were on this tip that “ontological zionists” (gee, I wonder who they really mean?) are actually soulless demons in human form, empty of the light, robots, monkeys, etc ad neuseum
Hey I’m in favor of peace and justics for the palestinians too but why confuse the issue witha bunch of metaphysical malarkey.
EIther humans have spirits or they don’t, some may be evil (as INDIVIDUALS) but the idea that entire GROUPS are merely masquerading as human is really just creepy and pseudo-exterminatiomnsist/ proto-Hitlerian.
And needless to say it has nothing to do with Gnosticism either.
COme to think about it I haven’t seen much of Chiappalone lately I wonder if he’s still alive or if he and his creepy cult finally got raptured?
lates.
Max
June 8th, 2005 at 6:18 pm
man, i remember reading some of chiappalone’s stuff a long time ago! he was *really* freaky– lots of stuff about how aliens would *literally* come to save the spiritual elect in the year 2000.
June 8th, 2005 at 6:38 pm
hey rev, that link doesnt work for me. but otherwise, im totally down with what youre saying
June 8th, 2005 at 9:20 pm
Um, why is it important to define such an objective criterion. Its only practical application would be for legal distinctions that could not possibly lead to anything helpful.
June 8th, 2005 at 9:30 pm
thats what im saying is that there is no practical useful application of this idea
June 8th, 2005 at 9:36 pm
I should add that I realize Tim is asking a rhetorical question, and my question in the above post is also rhetorical.
I think the “soulless” model can be useful as a predictor of human behavior. As such, subjective criteria are fine, because the predictions obtained from the model will be evaluated by the same person who is applying the criteria to make an assessment. One only needs objective criteria if one wants to (a) define a scientific study; or (b) legislate. Since “souls” are notoriously difficult to study empirically, an objective criterion only has utility for (b). Leading of course to the slippery slope and consequent horrors described in comments to other posts.
June 8th, 2005 at 9:39 pm
remember when bart sold his soul to milhouse? bart became a demon and, after much tribulation, came to appreciate the value of his soul and pleaded for god to return it. meanwhile lisa had bought his soul back for him, showing characterstic compassion, despite the fact that bart had originally sold his soul in order to terrify lisa with a fake monster [2012 anyone?]. notice that it is not god who answers bart’s plea, but lisa, playing god’s role.
had she used his soulless condition as an excuse to kill her “enemy”, she would have given away her soul in the process. maybe having a soul just means being bigger than all that?
interesting too that at the start of that episode, the sunday school teacher threatened the kids’ souls with purgatory as a method of social control, whereas bart’s soulless purgatory was actually the source of his redemption.
god i love that show
June 8th, 2005 at 11:26 pm
from a religious stand-point to have a soul means that you have a leash around your neck by which to pull you.and anyone who has felt the pull or witnessed that action on others can tell who has one.the army does things slightly differently.six weeks of yelling at you and getting you up at 5.30am will make you a robot ready to kill.the bank uses the visa card to model our behaviour.once you work for the bank you are a slave.
i think that the concept of a soul is a construct of control.we all have the potential to be controlled.that is what the media,including church and government do.
we allow souls to be constructed on our behalf and then we stand witness to it.
June 9th, 2005 at 7:05 am
I would like to explore a slightly different question. This thread is as good a place as any. We have been discussing whether there are apparently human beings who may not have a “soul” (whatever a “soul” is). But are there perhaps non-human entities that also have souls? In particular, are there entities that are more powerful than human beings that might also have souls? (In the following commentary I’m blurring the distinction between “spirit” and “soul”, which many occult writers have been careful to distinguish. Please bear with me.)
I’ve long thought that a corporation has something like a spirit or a soul. Large corporations certainly behave like intelligent organisms. But since the 19th century in the United States corporations have been considered as “individuals”, with the same rights under the 14th Amendment. (The 1886 decision Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific Railroad Company set the precedent. See here and here for more information.)
Up until last night I’ve always assumed that the “spirit” of a corporation developed after its legal formation and its subsequent rise to power in the marketplace, as a so-called “emergent property”. But this morning I woke up wondering if the existence of a corporation’s “spirit” actually precedes its temporal manifestation. And whether “corporate personhood” was intentional all along. Accepting for (the sake of argument) an Illuminati/Freemason-type conspiracy, one might wonder whether the legal fiction of corporate personhood was created specifically and intentionally as a vehicle for the incarnation of powerful spirits. Certainly every corporation has a logo, which is pretty much the same thing as a sigil.
I find this model very compelling because it links together political observations about increaseing corporate power, its relationship with fascism, and the relationship between fascism and the occult. I was wondering what other people thought about this line of inquiry?
June 9th, 2005 at 2:18 pm
WHen I was working on the first iteration of enemies.com I was convinced that all of the entities described in the various gnotsic texts were actually metaphors for various psychological, biochemical, physical and cognitive proccesses. SO that was a huge stumbling block for me, when the Valentinans describe what are (in effect) incubi and succubi I wondered “what are they talking about, really?”
My views have since changed as a result of ingesting massive amounts of entheogens as well as branching out to experiment with folk-magic practices and paradigms, e.g., invocation, evocation, divination, etc…
EVerything around us LITERALLY ALIVE form the grass and the rocks to buildings and paintings.. all have personalities, consciousness, a sense of playfulness, trees, streams, etc.
I’ve seen the Devil walking in the woods and he’s not such a bad guy, really, once you get to know him. He’s green, actually, not red, and he looks like a cross between a goat, a wolf and a tarantula. Constantly shifting surfaces and geometry, multiple eyes of evey genus and species… a powerful spirit of nature who is capable of conferring great blessings.
I guess my view on a lot of things now is basically animistic, I’ve seen to much to be able to turn my back on it. I recall a line froma Rumi poem about “can’t you hear every stone on the earth cry out with love for god?” Well, yes, I can, and they all do too!
Actually, now, I take that back- they don’t all cry out to God with love. A couple of year s back my then-girlfirend (now wife) and I spent the weekend in Napa Valley with my Mom, who booked us to stay at a charming little B & B.
Now personally I hate fucking B & Bs because there’s little privacy and you always have to be “on” for the host… I mean, gimme a Motel 6 and a bottle of scotch and the Spice channel and leave me alone for Chrissakes, i don’t want some dimwit with a perky smile “popping in” on me to check if I’m sleeping OK, just leave me alone!
Anyway, neither of us could sleep, so we walked down the gravel road on the side of the gable to the backyard, whcih was set up sort of like an old fashioned English garden.
Both of us had sort of a tentaive attiitude towards this endeaver, as the gravel crunched beneath our feet we both saw something - something waist high and shadowy - move with tremendous speed though the back yard past our field of vision and cause teh foliage to sway and startle.
We both stopped in our tracks, wondering if it was a dog - the entire back yard was fenced in and there was nowhere for it to go, so if there was a vicious dog back there were didn’t want to be in the same pen with it. But we got up to the chain link fence and looke din and there truly was nothing there.
Anyway, we looked into the garden which was bathed in moonlight and really very pretty, filled with wandering paths. There was huge oak tree in the middle with a bench in front of it, so we enter cautiously and sat in the bench.
I looked around. It was poeaceful, quiet. But I still had an ominous feeling I couldn’t shake. My wife, who is quite a bit more trusting and I (and also a bit of a new ager) decide dto “make friends” with this great Oak tree. So she stood up and walked over to it, and hugged it, and began talking to it.
“Well now Mr. Tree, we are happy to be vidsing your home, and thank you for your hospitality, and my aren’t you big and beautiful,” etc. I sat there smirking and smoking a cigarette.
Suddenly, she turned on her heel and walked quickly over to me. Her voice was shaking and her face was ashen.
“So what did the tree say to you?” I asked her.
It said “GET OUT!” she responded. “Let’s go.”
So we got up and walked back in the house, and as we were walking back up the driveway we could feel small things swirling across the ground and a cold draft at our back. ANd we went into our B & B bedroom and locked the door and tried to go to sleep. I had a lot of strange nightmares that night but I can’t remeber any of them.
So, the next morning we woke up and went into the “breakfast nook” of the B & B to eat omelets prepared by the “hostess.” The interetsing thing about this breakfast nook is that the walls were bookshelves on three sides - and every shelf was filled - I shit you not - with “The Wit & Wisdom of L. Ron Hubbard, Vol.s I-XXVI,” “The Science of Diuretics,” “Deprogramming Yourself the Scientology Way,” etc.
L. ROn wasn’t an occultist be he knew a lot of’em - he set up his religion as a hoax to make money but did combine a lot of genuine occult teachings in with his pseudoscience… so there may be some power there even his followers aren’t fully aware of.
In the case of this quaint little Napa B & B there was literally some sort of dark vortex in the backyard, fear, control… even the nature spirits were hostile, angry, bitter, territorial, BENT…. ick, yuck and ugh.
RE: fascism, Norman Mailer says that fascism is the natural state of the human animal, the Stanford Prsion Experiment certainly shows that people will revert to fascist models when they are stressed or afraid, welcome to 1984 folks cause here we are!
I am especially interested in the occult secret society started by Geroges Batille called the Acephale society, meant as an anti-fascist resistance group. No so much what the intended to do, but the imagery of the headless man as a sigil of autonomy and freedom:
“Lift the curse of those feelings which oppress men, which force them into wars they do not want, and consign them to work from whose fruits they never benefit. Realise the universal fulfilment of individual being through the revelation of a headless universe, a universe which exists in a state of play rather than one of obligation. Assume within oneself perversion and crime, not as exclusive values, but as a prelude to their integration into the totality of humanity. Participate in the destruction of a world as it presently exists, with eyes open to the world which is yet to be.”
Sorry for the long post I am new to this blogging and responding to blogs stuff and my thoughts are spraying all over the place.
June 9th, 2005 at 4:46 pm
no way, dont be sorry! that was awesome!
June 9th, 2005 at 6:56 pm
unfortunately norman mailer is what the media wants us to believe an intellectual is.his view resonates with the fear and futility of consumer life.thanks for your memory of the garden spirit.real is what we bloody well say it is.if you look away and it`s the same when you look back,it`s real enough.l.ron hubbard undoubtably had his entanglement with something malevolent.in the book love and rockets he was mixed up with an inventor of rocketry,i believe it was goddard,and things went tragic. i have the book in a box somewhere,i`ll dig it up if it`s important.
everything is alive.everything contains matter,which is energy organised in reasonably permenant ways.although the closer we get to matter,the less stuff there is to observe and measure.
i believe it`s what we agree it is that makes it so.a consensus reality.
about corporations.i contend that corporations are individuals and act accordingly.just try to pose a threat to one.especially if the incorporated entity is a government.it will protect it`s self with all means available.
i call it alistair`s first law of corporate organisms.
when a threat(real or imagined)is percieved the,organism will protect it`sself with all means available.
it`s valid and true of a biological organism and i make the leap to apply it the legally constructed one too.
using this rule in a formula socially,it suggests that governments and companies are self-serving and defensive,y`know,like people.
why would you think it was any different,unless you take the moral stance that these organisms would act against thier perception of thier best interest?
June 9th, 2005 at 7:29 pm
that makes me think back to the 8 circuit model, and how bio-survival is the first and primary instinct activated. it might be really cool to go through that model, and try to apply it to corporate entities, and how they survive and exist in society and amongst one another
June 9th, 2005 at 8:11 pm
I think corporations are egregores sort of like that movie “THE CUBE” they are headless monsters, nobodies in charge really but yeah there is some sort of emergent property or identity to it
In av ery similar way there are egregores pretecting all sorts of things, that nonsensical NECRONIMICON book for one
I mean the book is nonsense but nontheless it fights back when critiques or analyzed
Like a servitor or tulpa that has been on it s own for too long, “Unwholesome survival” (one of lovecraft’s themes) they become feral over time, like a pack of feral Furbies
June 9th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
the coolest people at the corp i work for are in the 8th circuit, the basement furnaces and shipping receiving plumbing, i guess that would qualify as the 1st chakra or anus of the building, those cats be where its at
How is Leary’s circuit model differnet from chakras BTW? I see no diff. except for it sounds kinda pseudo-scientifc
June 9th, 2005 at 9:25 pm
Max, if you ever get near Rockville, head up to the park one night- those things (we called them gnomes for lack of a better descriptive) are all over up there (and some other oddities to boot). Luckily, the trees out that way are friendlier. (I’m going to sound like a major dork for saying this, but they actually helped us find our way out one night when we strayed too far after dark and got lost)
June 9th, 2005 at 11:39 pm
I was just browsing Wikipedia, and while reading their entry on The Logos, I found this:
“One must follow what is common; but, even though the Logos is common, most people live as though they possessed their own private wisdom.” (Fr.2) The common is what is open to all, what can be seen and heard by all. To see is to let in with open eyes what is open to view, i.e. what is lit up and revealed to all. The dead (the completely private ones) neither see nor hear; they are closed. No light (fire) shines in them; no speech sounds in them. And yet, even they participate in the cosmos. The extinguished ones also belong to the continuum of lighting and extinguishing that is the common cosmos. The dead touch upon the living sleeping, who in turn touch upon the living waking. (Fr. 26)”
- Heraclitus
June 10th, 2005 at 12:07 pm
i councel displaced executives as part of my work and a particular phenominon is emerging.mobbing,or corporate bullying.the stressing of lower executives by the higher ones.this is certainly not new to the workplace or unique to upper management but it is particularly macciavellian,and if it wasn`t happening to real people sitting in my office telling me blow by blow thier accounts,i would find it entertaining.
i am wondering which of leary`s circuits are at work in this scenario.or which chakra point the energy for this flows from?
i see it as a reaction to less food in the arena.an indication that,certainly in specific sectors,there is an economic downturn.redundancy gets reabsorbed into the system and eliminated,to use a biological metaphor.
June 10th, 2005 at 1:49 pm
i councel displaced executives as part of my work and a particular phenominon is emerging.mobbing,or corporate bullying.the stressing of lower executives by the higher ones.this is certainly not new to the workplace or unique to upper management but it is particularly macciavellian,and if it wasn`t happening to real people sitting in my office telling me blow by blow thier accounts,i would find it entertaining.
i am wondering which of leary`s circuits are at work in this scenario.or which chakra point the energy for this flows from?
i see it as a reaction to less food in the arena.an indication that,certainly in specific sectors,there is an economic downturn.redundancy gets reabsorbed into the system and eliminated,to use a biological metaphor.
——————–
I think this would be first chakra or more prosaically the lizard brain which is responsible for territoriality, rituals of dominance and submission, stc.
June 11th, 2005 at 11:26 am
thanks rev.i realised that as sophisticated as some of these bureaucrats can be,on the surface, they are still operating on a pretty basic level.you confirmed it for me.
most of my councelling is a transition for these people.a lot of time they are looking for permission to get out,more than a strategy for coping.thier whole support network is geared to,”ok,are you ready to get back at it?”,whereas they need to get a divorce and move on.for some they are asking the meaningful questions for the first time.
cheers.
July 3rd, 2005 at 8:01 pm
[…] vanced do totally fucked up stuff. Lastly, it comes extremely close to what I think is the dangerous idea that some people don’t have souls, or […]