What I’m noticing is that you keep saying objectivity exists in fiction because objectivity is the will of the author. That we can say the author objectively said XYZ. But a soulist doesn’t believe anything is objective. Not the existence of other people, not our interpretations of their work, and not their ownership of canon.

We don’t actually know that other people exist. It just seems as though treating others with kindness is an important part of living a good life, whether or not they exist. I like playing evil characters in RPGs quite often, but everyone needs to play games where they’re a good guy, and playing life as an evil character seems like too much for anyone’s conscience to bear. Plus, jail and other consequences.

Second, we can’t treat the words of others as objective. We misunderstand the words other people say all the time. We misunderstood Lucas’ intention with the word “balance”, and we’ve misunderstood a lot else. The entire concept of words doesn’t have any objectivity. They’re just shapes on a screen or on an auditory waveform. We choose to give words meaning because it’s useful. That’s soulist thinking too. The word “gubernatorial” isn’t possessed of an objective meaning, it means something because we choose to believe it does.

Third, an author’s ownership over a work is kind of a recent capitalist invention. Copyright law was only invented after the printing press, in order to guarantee businesses would earn the same revenue in a printing world as before. (Or perhaps much more). Nobody acts like Homer owns the Iliad. It’s a cultural myth. Stories used to belong to everyone. Copyright introduced ownership of the means of production to stories. It made myth capitalist. Soulists are anarchists, and we hate that. Writing fanfiction is anarchist praxis, copyright be damned. It’s even more absurd with entities like Disney which appropriate or buy old stories and then claim to control them. Disney shouldn’t get to decide the “canon” of The Avengers or Cinderella.

In all three of these cases, derived from a single statement, belief in objectivity blinds us to the complexity of the world and our agency in building it. Soulists take responsibility for what the world is and how it can be made better. We don’t pretend the world is happening to people, we encourage people to build a better word.

I think Mohamed might be a robot

Yes, I use capitalised pronouns. https://medium.com/@viridiangrail/introduction-to-capitalised-pronouns-f5140e722b48

Are other people not implying that part when they say things like that? I’m autistic and this is a genuine question.

I’m not implying that part. I’m making a statement that applies to Luke Skywalker, the fictional character, on the universe’s own terms. I might even make a statement about the philosophy of the Force that conflicts with George Lucas’ vision. I might say that two Jedi and two Sith is balance, and that George Lucas misunderstood his own fiction. I might say that JJ Abrams is a hack writer and substitute My own headcanon as a preferred subjective truth, according to the principle of useful truth, because I think My story is better and does more interesting things with the fiction and philosophical themes.

In fact, if all the fans disagree with the author and agree with each other, the owner of the work might even retcon it to say the fans were right. In the new Star Wars lore, light and dark exist in natural balance instead of light alone being balanced. That’s because everyone agreed that George Lucas doesn’t understand Star Wars very well.

Thank you. In the spirit of this article which says that everyone naturally thinks like a soulist, please allow Me to argue that you’re already familiar with the concept of subjective truth. “Darth Vader is Luke Skywalker’s father.” That’s not an objective truth either. Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker don’t exist. Star Wars isn’t real. It’s just a story. Yet, the vast majority of people in our society can all agree that Vader is Luke’s father (unless they’re making an argument that Anakin and Vader are different people). It’s a truth culturally ubiquitous. Everyone knows it.

You already intuitively understand how to navigate the concept of fictional truth. You might be familiar with the term “canon”. You know how to make arguments about what is and isn’t canon, and you have opinions about canon, which you’re capable of defending. There is no objectivity in fiction. It’s all made up. If we all decided that Luke is Rey’s father, it would be true. The truth is whatever you can convince people to believe. And you know how to navigate these kinds of situations. You don’t need objectivity in order to work with truth. You never did.

Soulists definitely don’t believe in an objective anything. I wrote the article, and I can’t see any part of it where I said soulists believe in an objective truth.

Let’s take this theory into the practical. “Trans women are women.” Is that an objective truth? No, women don’t objectively exist. It’s a subjective truth. But it’s a very important subjective truth that everyone needs to agree with and genuinely believe in if we’re going to have a free society.

The truth is what we should believe. According to realists, we should believe in reality. According to realists, truth is objective. According to soulists, we should believe in whatever’s useful. According to soulists, truth is a choice and we have a responsibility to make a good choice.

I don’t see the contradiction between soulism and anarcho-antirealism. Soulism as a term originates on the internet as anarchism which opposes natural laws. Destroying natural laws requires destroying the system that places reality above people. In other words, destroying realism.

In a fundamental sense, everyone does. But most people don’t think of themselves as operating that way. They deny that instinct in themselves. They believe in objectivity and a real world. That’s why so many arguments about religion focus on the question “are the gods real?”, rather than “is religious thinking good or bad for us?” There’s plenty of debate to be had about the utility of religion. Prayer healing works through the placebo effect. Religion is a part of programs like Alcoholics Anonymous. And on the other side, people argue that dogmatic thinking leads to oppression and atrocities. But most arguments about religion don’t go along those lines of utility. What most people care about is reality and objective truth.