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Souls and Spirits - are they necessary in order to exist?
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<blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9255125" data-attributes="member: 18"><p>Personally my take would be similar to what you're describing.</p><p></p><p>I don't really like takes which involve people losing empathy or humanity if they lose their souls, because, it's very clear in our own scientific world that, if there are souls, they're not needed to explain empathy, humanity, decent or the like. Personality seems to mostly a fusion of memories/experiences, how well the brain is functioning, and the endocrine system. You don't need to force/jam in a soul to try and explain stuff that's already well-explained.</p><p></p><p>Thus someone who lost their soul shouldn't change in personality or the like from the mere loss - if they didn't know they'd lost it they shouldn't change at all. If they did change it would be likely from the trauma of finding out, and perhaps subconsciously acting into stereotypes of how they thought a "soulless" person would behave.</p><p></p><p>I see the soul, unless specified otherwise by the setting, as more of a "restore point" or "archive" of a person's mind and body - this works pretty well with most fantasy cosmology and magic systems.</p><p></p><p>Yeah and his endocrine system - that's a big part of who we are too (something often overlooked in sci-fi stuff about body-hopping and the like). But I agree. Unless you jam the soul in and have it start replacing the role of parts of the brain and endocrine system, there's no reason someone without a soul should be "passionless" or "having no empathy" or "no remorse" or the like. </p><p></p><p>I'd also say I personally object to that, because the same negative things people often like to assign to characters without a soul are also assigned to atheists (and sometimes even agnostics!) by various religious leaders and politicians (and their followers) in the real world, and can have real negative consequences for how people who are atheists or the like think and feel about themselves. We can't discuss religion/politics in detail, but I wanted to bring this up primarily as a diversity issue - I don't think it's great to ape anti-atheist stereotyping as "what it's like when you have no soul". Obviously you're doing the opposite of that, thankfully!</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Ruin Explorer, post: 9255125, member: 18"] Personally my take would be similar to what you're describing. I don't really like takes which involve people losing empathy or humanity if they lose their souls, because, it's very clear in our own scientific world that, if there are souls, they're not needed to explain empathy, humanity, decent or the like. Personality seems to mostly a fusion of memories/experiences, how well the brain is functioning, and the endocrine system. You don't need to force/jam in a soul to try and explain stuff that's already well-explained. Thus someone who lost their soul shouldn't change in personality or the like from the mere loss - if they didn't know they'd lost it they shouldn't change at all. If they did change it would be likely from the trauma of finding out, and perhaps subconsciously acting into stereotypes of how they thought a "soulless" person would behave. I see the soul, unless specified otherwise by the setting, as more of a "restore point" or "archive" of a person's mind and body - this works pretty well with most fantasy cosmology and magic systems. Yeah and his endocrine system - that's a big part of who we are too (something often overlooked in sci-fi stuff about body-hopping and the like). But I agree. Unless you jam the soul in and have it start replacing the role of parts of the brain and endocrine system, there's no reason someone without a soul should be "passionless" or "having no empathy" or "no remorse" or the like. I'd also say I personally object to that, because the same negative things people often like to assign to characters without a soul are also assigned to atheists (and sometimes even agnostics!) by various religious leaders and politicians (and their followers) in the real world, and can have real negative consequences for how people who are atheists or the like think and feel about themselves. We can't discuss religion/politics in detail, but I wanted to bring this up primarily as a diversity issue - I don't think it's great to ape anti-atheist stereotyping as "what it's like when you have no soul". Obviously you're doing the opposite of that, thankfully! [/QUOTE]
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