#essaypost

Body diversity wasn't really that important in gaming until recent years where movements towards body acceptance and diversity in the real world.

When 3D gaming was primitive it made sense why NPC diversity didn't exist. You practically had polygons, very limited hardware specs, and programmers had to use tricks up their sleeves to use up all the juice of the hardware.  It was difficult to even consider focusing on body types alone, and much easier to copy paste different heads on the same body. Games like the original GTA were entirely top down and relied on swapped textures, but GTA III is known for having repetitive pedestrians. The "same hat different pedestrian" problem was just getting normalized.

Animating 3D bodies early on was nightmarish. They would look horrifying if they got too detailed, which is why developers would default to stylized, slim proportions because they were easier to work with without getting them wrong. Less math to calculate and less room for error. Fat, curves and muscles, on the other hand require a lot more calculations for the polygons to not look like melting wax.

But then in the 2000s it gets even more uncomfortable. By this stage games now can do decent 3D character models, but games like dead or alive still choose feature petite, anime style, big breasted women while having the hardware capacity to make and show body diversity and instead represent a very specific ideology about which bodies get detail and which don't.

There's a well documented thing in game development where the default placeholder model used during development is almost always a slim white male, sometimes literally called "the mannequin." That default has a way of persisting into shipped games.

What does it mean now? Well, rest assured gaming has been taking some positive strides.

The most diversity in NPC types I saw was in Cyberpunk 2077, more specifically there is an NPC who you need to have a boxing match with, his wife is also there but interestingly she's pregnant. You can see her body mesh is clearly made for a pregnant woman, and it amazed me, a shook me a little because it probably was the first time I've seen a pregnant woman in a videogame. 

Wikipedia documents Otherkin as emerging from the Elf subcultures on Usenet.  This is true but incomplete.  Otherkin seem to have been a nascent identity that, late in the 90s, coalesced out of a mesh of people who asserted their identities as elves, cats, witches, werewolves, dragons, vampires, and other animals and supernatural beings.  Not all of these stayed cohesive with the community (e.g. vampires have drifted closer and further away based on the alignment of the stars), but they were all influential.

Sometimes these proto-Otherkin came with factual claims about their existence, which usually did not hold up under the harsh light of empiricism.  However, some felt that they were such things on some sort of mental level, or to have spiritual experiences revealing past incarnations as such beings.  Usually they alloyed their beliefs with some kind of neopaganism, and explored spiritual traditions of therianthropy, sometimes derived from spiritual experiences asserted to be memory, sometimes drawing on existing or historical human cultures, and sometimes just made up on the spot.

In this sense, Otherkin can be understood as a sort of quasi-religious tradition, usually supplementary to any other belief or social system, but present nonetheless.  It is reasonably well documented that believers in a religious tradition can experience subjective phenomena that frequently accord with their beliefs, like visitations from angels or particular gods or so on.  The beliefs seem to shape the mind, priming it to experience those things, but that doesn’t make that mind nor those experiences suddenly invalid or worth disrespect.  Otherkin beliefs can provide the same sort of mental support structure that many people turn to religion for, but in an unfamiliar shape.

The Otherkin phenomenon grew alongside and was influenced and was influenced by the emerging Furry subculture.  This is probably influential on part of why, until the emergence of Fictionkin sometime around 2010, Otherkin as a term was identified strongly with animal kintypes.  Many Otherkin identified also as Furries up early on.  While the subcultures seem to have diverged as Furry became more associated with fetish and roleplay, and Otherkin with their belief system, there remain many individuals who are both to some degree.  I’ve certainly encountered them.

While Furry is nowadays portrayed as just a fetish, it is a bit more than that, having originated as a sort of pan-animal-characters fandom (that, like most fandoms, then turned into lots and lots of fetishry).  Many Furries empathize strongly with one or more animals, and consider them objects of admiration.  It’s not weird at all to want to be strong, powerful, subtle, or to otherwise have any of the other cool traits that other species were assigned by Epimethean Nature, that humans are notable lacking in, save the Promethean gift of knowledge.  Some Furries even consider other animals morally superior to humanity, or desire a simpler existence uncomplicated by the hassles of 21st century human life.  These tend to blur into the edges of Otherkin when they start thinking of themselves in the terms of an animal.

I would be remiss if I did not mention Stalking Cat, The Lizardman, Katzen the Tiger Lady, and Tom Leppard.  As these are all relatively mature people, around their 40s and older, the likelihood of them identifying with Otherkin, a 20 year old community that was still forming when they were getting their first tattoos done, is vanishingly slim.  But these people are still interesting because of the close comparison.  Some of them definitely do it as a circus act and thus hobby/career, such as The Lizardman.  Others had more spiritual reasons, such as Stalking Cat.  Some just really like leopards, like Tom Leppard.  However, whatever the reason, they are the logical conclusion, in some respects, of the Otherkin philosophy -- people who get themselves heavily tattooed and surgically modified (in the future, genetically modified?) to resemble what they feel like inside.  They are also organic, living demonstrations of how the world does not end if you have people running around saying they feel like or want to be animals (or whatever) and covering their body with stripes or spots or scales.  They get lots of looks, and are often pushed to the margins, but some of them have functional, ordinary jobs and exist within society just fine.

So I’ve covered all the sources for Otherkin ideas.  What’s the actual result? Like most communities, there’s a lot of variance.  There are true believers, those who consider the idea mostly fictional but think it is valuable, and those who don’t care, they just are there for social reasons and pay lip service to the ideas.  It is a strongly empathetic community built around accepting “weird” thoughts and impulses as legitimate, sharing grievances about our society being a pain to deal with, et cetera.  Some of its members promote vegetarianism, animal rights, or environmentalism because of their beliefs.

Largely, Otherkin are aware that they are not physically so-and-so animal or supernatural being, that there is some physical gap.  While it can be argued that Cartesian duality results in some irrational thoughts, most Otherkin people seem to manage with their human life just fine.  Psychology is largely concerned with thoughts and belief that are distressing or harmful to the bearer or others, not odd quirks of personal belief.  Yes, some do in fact grow out of it -- a notable example is Lupa, who wrote “A Field Guide to Otherkin” (now out of print), who decided being Otherkin was not very useful for self-description anymore and that they “merely” identified with the wolf as part of their personal narrative.  But for many it seems to be a healthy and helpful idea for these people.

Finally, a desire for transformation is common but not universal, as a sort of Otherkin “end game.”  A rare few do wish for a sort of self-annihilation -- an ego-death as a human being and the beginning of an animal life.  But, most that I’ve spoken to want to become something better than either a human or any other animal -- a being with a mostly human mind, but a superior physical body, and perhaps less of the dishonesty and suffering of our current human lives.

Some trans people find Otherkin a nuisance, believing that they are politically unhealthy for some reason.  However, I think the people who are all that interested in conflating the two are mostly oppositional bigots, who also will whisper that trans people are infiltrators on behalf of the patriarchy, scions of Satan, delusional freaks, and so on.  It is also true that trans people face a lot of kinds of bigotry -- with real, fatal consequences -- that Otherkin don’t.  However, Otherkin still get a lot of harassment online, and it is worth considering that very few of them can in fact transform themselves to their preferences, due to technological reasons.  While Otherkin may have reasons that are fundamentally different than transgender people, anyone who does take the plunge and deviates from the societal norm will likely be treated with similar hostility.  Even expressing their feelings, thoughts, and desires -- largely harmless, again -- has already won them quite a lot of pointless bullying and antagonism. So, in the end, I do stand by them, as my pet peeves mean nothing next to standing by people who need my support and will need even more in the future.  No one deserves to be harassed.

It did help that the ethical stances of those I started paying attention to were those who already bridged those gaps.  The classical example of this -- this moral inaction, in spite of having every available resource -- in my history, has been failing to argue we should show mercy or at least not take joy in the fate of those who have been judged inappropriate by people doxxing others for “social justice.”  I feel now, very acutely, how low cost that action would have been, when it was in a relatively small discussion group with relatively little risk of backlash and a high likelihood of maybe persuading people to be less awful to each other.  But I am not inclined to be too harsh with myself because it wasn’t exactly like any of the people were active participants.  It also is rather telling that I was able to argue for dropping a similar subject, even when the cost was higher.  Perhaps I felt the stakes were higher, and thus it was of more concern?

I am pretty sure that I still will experience this “moral akrasia” to a degree.  I noticed that sort of inclination towards inaction in a recent conversation.  I played off my indifference towards the person’s social fate as a joke, but I was quite serious.  I don’t feel I ought to harshly judge every such failing to step forward -- there will inevitably be a lot of them, as I must prioritize some things over the others.  But I will try to check myself and ask now if it is really just time, energy, and priorities holding me back, and not some sort of irrational tribalism.

On the other hand, the person in question who I failed to defend this time, is exactly the sort of person who relentlessly trolls social media, uses brigading as a tactic, and espouses openly misogynistic views.  I am not sure they shouldn’t be tarred and feathered, either, which is part of my indifference.  It is rather a shame that their actual misdeeds get so much less coverage than things of much less certainty and importance.

Of course, I used a variant of this argument last time with myself, and it worked marvelously at rationalizing away my inaction.  Should I accept it this time, when now I deem that previous decision inappropriate?  Should the response to those who perpetrate call out culture be that they should finally be dashed upon the very same rocks?  Or should I find some sort of higher moral stance?

No, I know this detour is irrelevant.  I almost accepted this rationalization, but I can tell now I’m trying to distract myself.  Their actual virtue is not relevant to what they stand accused of, which is not of certain accuracy.  I ought not accept someone being punished for a crime they did not commit, even if they certainly have committed other crimes, because that way lies madness.  Of course, I am not certain of the truest story, so I am not sure I could usefully participate anyways, but identifying a real barrier (“lack of truth”) is what I want to do, rather than a merely psychological one (“they’re a jerk”).

The first definition I am going to talk about deserves some explanation.  It is the bigotry that is arrived at by the formula of "prejudice plus power equals bigotry."  Usually, racism or sexism is highlighted.  This snappy definition, like all snappy definitions, oversimplifies a bit.  The point that was arrived at (in academia, mostly) is that in the institutions of society, the mechanisms of power can transform an existing prejudice into an ongoing societal bias.  This will keep grinding away at the oppressed long after the initial architects of this structure have gone, because it is self-renewing and coopts people into maintaining its power structure, often without them being overtly conscious of it.  And this is what transforms "mere" prejudice into a serious problem.  We can call this institutional bigotry.

This academic understanding of institutional bigotry and how it works in our world can be rather confounding to negotiate, and there's a lot of discussion of whether it even happens.  For various reasons, including having experienced some of it based on gender-related issues, I'm inclined to say "yes."  There are also people who wish to insist this covers all forms of racism, sexism, and so on, and that any other developments in hatred are only outgrowths of this.  I disagree.

The second definition of bigotry is the one we are much more familiar with.  It is when individuals act on prejudice, and the ideas that maintain prejudice.  It is the hand that steers violence against women, and the voice that mocks black people for talking different.  It is very real and terrifying, and we notice it much more easily.  While it can also be enacted by groups, the chief characteristic is that it can remain a problem even if only one person is around to act on it, so we can call this individual bigotry.

Much activism has focused on minimizing the harm of individual bigotry, because it is easily noticeable and understanding why it is wrong is easily digestible.  So individual bigotry, while it can be devastating, has been slowly edged out of society where these efforts are successful.  This has gradually improved the well-being of those who suffer from it.

This results in some confusion.  With two definitions afoot, people start talking about one, and other people respond assuming they mean the second.  As we can see, the definitions are pretty different.  But delineating these two forms of bigotry from each other is useful because while they obviously benefit from and support each other in our real world, institutional bigotry can make itself manifest in people who would otherwise oppose individual bigotry, and likewise individual bigotry can survive without power structures.

For example, institutitional bigotry usually preys on ignorance and internal blind spots, often resulting in problems that are subtle, even if they have big effects, like people with black-sounding names getting less callbacks.  Meanwhile, if you put a white man with overt racist prejudices against black people in another country, he'll... probably still be racist, regardless of whether white people are on top of the food chain there or not.  History suggests he will try to colonize the area by pitting the locals against each other.

Nowadays we see individual bigotry becoming more and more unpopular in society, even amongst those who nominally espouse it, such as the KKK insisting they're "not racist."  I have my doubts as to their sincerity, as one might expect, but it is a sign of the times.  But as one problem diminishes, the other grows in relative size.  Consequently, opposing the bigotry that has been built into and hidden inside institutions has become more valuable as a pursuit.  We can naturally expect institutions to become the primary focus of most anti-racist and anti-sexist activism, and right now that shift in focus is ongoing.  This is also part of the motivation to redefine racism, sexism, and so on, but that doesn’t mean patterns of behavior changed.

Your information, whether the recording is destructive or not, “wakes up” on this new substrate.  This new being might be you in every way, we might copy you down to the last molecule, but then those two look at each other, and because there is only weak, noisy bandwidth between their brains (eyes, ears, etc.), they have different continuities.  So this continuity is something that is not your brain’s connectome -- not simply your information -- that makes you into “you.”  Given prior history on this conversation, we might call this a “soul,” for it is something that makes up your personal identity that is not identical to your brain.

This objection suggests uploading needs to be a more complicated process if we want to preserve our continuity of experience -- our “soul” -- through the transfer.  There’s lots of arguments about how this can be done and whether that matters and so on and so forth, but suffice to say it is a major stumbling block in transhumanism.

Here’s my problem:

If my lover dies, and I want them back, I don’t care if it’s them or a copy of them.  The person will be the same in all respects save one I will not experience.  I will grieve that their “soul” has been lost, and I will feel empathy for the departed, but if you give me the option to perfectly copy them, if you give me back all the moments of joy and happiness I was hoping to have with them, I will smash the button, unless their last will directs me otherwise.  Likewise, the world can benefit from certain individuals being preserved and recreated in this way, even if their “soul” has gone.  Because we know we are in a physical universe made of physical things, if this copy is indeed flawless, then aside from the resources spent, the difference between bringing them back and them continuing to live is one we cannot taste, as it were.  If we decide that, say, Stephen Hawking has not finished his life’s work yet, a work we consider important, and we have a copy of his connectome, we might well decide to restore him from backup in the event of his tragic demise.

For you, your death under this scheme would be a loss, absolutely.  I do not wish for anyone to die.  But for everyone else, restoring you -- even if it is “just” a copy of you -- is a gain.  A gain of a person they were happy to see, who they miss in absence, who they want to love and laugh with.  A person who others might reckon was more important than they thought themselves.

So...

What does your soul matter, anyways?