Processing Aloud - Language and Paradigms

[certified_system]

Below is just some stuff we posted on our plural.cafe account, and decided we wanted to dunk it here, for whatever reason.

Some musings / processing-aloud, on trying to create a paradigm / approach and find language that suits our system in a way that actually benefits us and helps to clarify some experiences. Pathologising language is discussed as something we don't want to use, as is stuff around finding the concept of personhood unhelpful.

2022-12-20:

we've know for ages that basically all of our learning about ourself came from learning about other people, from reading other's doscriptions of their experiences

but holy heck i guess we didn't click until just now how hard it is to figure out my own experiences without that.

We know our system is kinda complex but we haven't figured out the details. We decided to look up a term that we dislike because we associate it with the pathology paradigm, and we're pretty sure it's accurate to our experiences.

but most of the information about large / complex / "polyfragmented" systems takes a fundamentally pathlogising or trauma-centred approach, that it's so hard to learn anything from those resources. Not only do i have to put in the effort of understanding it enough to compare and contrast with my own experiences, but we have to somehow translate it all to a wholly different paradigm, one that we only partially know!! it's like translating two languages, but you only partially know them and have a dictionary for just one!

but those are the only resources that exist!!

2022-12-20:

I'm pretty damn sure we've got stuff going on in terms of... yeah, see, fuck this, the only language we *have* for this is wrong!! I don't wanna say it 'cause the only way i know how to describe it is wrong! The word definitions might be technically accurate but the connotations are all wrong!!

Polyfragmented describes our system, based on definitions of numbers, possibly subsystems and stuff, and having some stuff that other people would call "emotional fragments" or whatever but theyjre not emotional fragments! that's inaccurate!! But i struggle to *actually* figure out what we're experiencing here because it's drowned out by Wrong! Paradigm!

i like the word fragments but not like this. Not here, not in this context.

theoretically coming up with our own words might help to clarify and distinguish stuff but it feels like a catch 22. Need words before i can distinguish, need to distinguish to be able to come up with suitable words.

the way we seem to be uh, imagining? Visualising? This right now is akin to a thing about ghosts in an old series we read, but they're not ghosts, that's not the right word. Wisps, maybe? yeah ok, they're wisps now.

maybe having a word for it will help us look at them better.

 

2022-12-21:

so i think part of our difficulty is because of some cognitive dissonance between trying to distinguish between people vs not-people, while also finding personhood a fundamentally unhelpful concept just generally, 'cause all it really does is draw a line between "approach with decency and respect" and "no need to bother" and i think everything ought to be approached with decency and respect for its existing here and now, as it is.

and trying to figure out whether or not any given entity is a person or not or have them tell me, or trying to see each one as a full complex person, is stopping me from seeing them as they *actually* are and from working with them where they're at, however they are. And working with them as they are is far more respectful than working with them as i want them to be.

While attempting to categorise is not inherently a bad thing, especially while we're still learning, the categories of "person" / "not person" / "potential person" do not seem to be helpful categories for us.