First they ignore you
Then they laugh at you
Then they fight you
Then you win
According to both Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump, this was said by Mahatma Gandhi. Like many others, they are wrong. But Gandhi’s collection of speeches,Freedom’s Battle, basically says as much. Variations on these words have been spoken by various political leaders from all parts of the political spectrum for over a hundred years.
Which is why I’m overjoyed to hear that Objection, a lemmy.ml user, has been making fun of us.
This post is great. “Soulism is a dangerous, existential threat to humanity that must be stopped”
It’s complete satire, of course. It’s a big joke about the tabletop RPG Mage: the Ascension. I’ve never had the pleasure of playing Mage or reading its rulebook, but I’ve heard it described in glowing terms. It’s actually part of the World of Darkness setting, the same as Vampire: The Masquerade, a much more popular game that I have actually played. In fact, I was part of a live action roleplay for several sessions.
Mage: The Ascension (MTA) has a lot in common with Glitch: A Story Of The Not, My favourite RPG. Like Glitch, it claims within the fictional setting that consensus reality is an artificial construct placed upon the world by unjust forces. This happens to also be the core principle of anarcho-antirealism. Objection is pretending to be a villain in the world of M:TA who’s scared of soulist wizards (player characters).
I would like to take this post seriously for a moment, though, and dispel any myths that may come from taking this satire too literally. Chief among the problems with this post is that it overly centers a white European view of pre-consensus-reality. And specifically a post-roman one. The Romans were actually the biggest force towards unifying Europe under one consensus reality, on account of unifying half of Europe under one empire. True, Enlightenment scholars performed the most impressive feats of redefining reality, but it was all built on the cultural genocides done by Rome.
Anyway, indigenous consensus realities of Africa, the Americas, Australia, and Austronesia deserve mention. While Objection’s post is at the very least relevant to the white experience of the Enlightenment, it’s a very different story in the colonised world. The destruction of indigenous governments, traditions, and economies was a crime of the highest order, and it disrupted the mechanisms under which problems were solved in the new world. These mechanisms are very different to what Objection describes. And erasing the cultural realities of indigenous societies is precisely what constituted their genocide in the first place. The bringing of white consensus reality to the new world was not bloodless. It was made possible only by the deaths of tens of millions.
Another big issue with the post is that the pre-consensus-reality state it describes is still a consensus reality. Much as the pre-Enlightenment reality of Europe was a consensus reality. The Enlightenment created our current reality, but it did not invent the concept. Objection’s description of people being forced to consult wizards and to endure the wars of angels — that’s a description of a reality. Soulists do not advocate a return to old consensus realities. We advocate the unconditional abolition of reality itself, in all forms. Those non-genocidal consensus realities which still survive to this day, kept alive by indigenous custodians devoted to their culture, should be converted from realities to mere subjective worlds. A process that is already complete in many cases. White consensus reality should be mined for everything of value it holds, and then left behind.
A soulist utopia will not look like the pre-consensus-reality that Objection describes. It will be a world where everyone is a mage. Where everyone has freedom over their own perceptual world. A multiverse of advanced technologies both psychological and material, universes working together, sharing trade and cultural exchange in mutual good faith. That’s the world(s) that antirealists want to see.
