though I shouldn't need to say it, this is The Internet:
this article is not meant in any way to reject the validity or existance of plurality. [silly]some of my best friends are headmates![/silly] it is mostly about my own understanding of plurality, in particular in how it relates to me. if you personally feel insulted by this page, read the last sentence again.
:D
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------once you learn to see it, there's no unseeing it.
that applies to a lot of things, and it is how I feel about the framework of self-understanding commonly called "plurality".
because I feel it. I know what pluralism is, and I know how to recognize its components, and I feel them. if I were less stubborn, I would be content to label what I see in my soul pluralism, and go on with my day.
well, where's the fun in that?
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I called pluralism a "framework of self-understanding", but that's not entirely accurate. it is, I think, a feedback loop. the mind is naturally inconsistent, and naturally opposed to inconsistency. one has impulses, mannerisms, beliefs, behaviors, and so on, that may seem at odds with eachother. understanding those inconsistent parts as separate, smaller, consistent selves is an obvious way to reconcile this.
but, the engine of understanding is also the thing being understood. as one begins to understand their thoughts as plural, one's thoughts increasingly structure themselves in that way. at a certain point, the framework becomes the reality. disassociation.
I'm sure there are other ways for the underlying disassociation to come about, but I think pluralism is naturally contagious in this way. if you learn about it in others, it can become the way you see your mind.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------I am, at present, in such a way where to divy myself up into many selves would be trivial. I can see the joints where I may be like a good butcher in my categorizing of myself.
but, where's the fun in that?
personally, I find categories rather drab. much too limiting. I find identity nebulous, and I am terrible at keeping track of people. I would far rather allow my cognitive dissonance to be laid bare before me, and try to understand the fine structure of my own self-inconsistency, than reject it or add layers to it.
I want to accept my own mind as a vast, flawed, incoherent artifact, rather than a collection of discrete things.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------so, in short, I'm not plural.
maybe I do meet some ontologically pure definition of plural, and maybe in the future this post will be amended with a "well, I thought more about this and im actually 17 whores in a trenchcoat", but for now, I am a proudly irrational and incoherent entity.
:3:3:3:3
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