#collectives

Cássio Vasconcellos, "Over"

'The Reader'. John Koch. 1909-1978.

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We are a basically infinite (with 1000s of currently known folks) "plural collective" made up of smaller collectives ("small" is relative, in our case it's usually like 20+) that are 100% separated, with no communication or contact with each other outside of our own smaller collective. Most people come from other worlds than this shared Earth (I'd say all, but I litterally do not know everyone), and the smaller collectives are "separated" based on our homeworld (Basically, we don't communicate nor have shared memories with anyone that wasn't someone we knew in our past/real life. Even then idk how much of our "shared memories" are just "stuff I remember because I was litterally there with them" but who knows)

We've identified as plural for years, but we've been reconsidering it recently because the more we engage with the community, the less we feel like the label really defines/include our experiences. Of course we're technically "different people in one body", but we don't share most stuff that usually are presented to us as common plural experiences, like roles, structure, innerworld, communication... we don't feel like "people helping each other live", "silly brain roomates" or "people working together to survive/live day to day" either because all we want is to figure out how to get back home, etc.). And of course all of those things are only reductive views of what plurality can be, and there are definitely plural folks that don't fit those molds ! We just kind of feel a disconnect between what people (especially singlets, even the allies) expect of us when we use the world "plural", and what we actually are. Ofc other folks in the collective might not agree with me (that's kind of our whole thing lol) but it doesn't feel like we're "parts of a whole", "members of a collective", "different people sharing a body", we don't really fit under gateway either although I guess that's closer, we're just... separate individuals from the same world/reality that got transported to another one, and who also happen to exist alongside other people from other realities that went through the same thing (and that's my own personal view on it - if anyone with a similar experience to us defines themselves with the words we personally feel don't fit us, obviously that's fine !)

Sorry that was a long one but I'm wondering if there's anyone that relates to our experiences ! Hope we didn't stray too far from the blog's purpose, feel free to delete if we did haha

This was absolutely fascinating, maybe a bit long but I really liked reading your experience. :)

If there's no labels that fit your collectives, then maybe you could make a label for this (if you want). I think it'd be important to find another cluster of collectives like yours, have a discussion about your experiences before coining a label anyways.

"but we don't share most stuff that usually are presented to us as common plural experiences, like roles, structure, innerworld, communication..."

I get that. Mostly the roles, some of the structure and innerworld too. If you have an infinity of members, I can't blame you for not using roles. The innerworld would be too complicated too.

Understanding the Kurdish Resistance