We're still conflating intelligence with consciousness I see. And self-awareness. And LIFE. These are actually *four* different properties.

This is colonizer shit, actually. It sets human beings, who possesses -and define- all four, at the very top of an imagined pinnacle, with all other ways to exist defined only by comparison. It limits our ability to think clearly about either concept. This conflation is a huge part of the justification for genocide and oppression (against "lesser" humans), and justification for the exploitation of nature. It has been used to excuse the worst kind of ableism against neurodiverse humans.

Under the guise of science, it is core to the illusion that a hierarchy of life exists at all, instead of a wide array of diverse ways of processing sensory information and selfhood that exist across a spectrum, not just among human minds, but across all kinds of minds, about which we know very, very little. It is based not on evidence, but a mountain of untested (and possibly untestable) assumptions drawn largely by white men, more than a century ago, at the upper tiers of an empire.

I'm not really into arguing over anything today, and I don't have any particular hills to die on. Other than that we think more carefully about what it means to think.

#philosophy #psychology #WhitenessIsACult #DeconstructWhiteness

I have this 3-hour walking through the streets of Hanoi video on in the background, admiring the variety, color, art, and embedding of nature all around, thinking about how the construct of whiteness keeps us from having fun, human cities.

Whiteness is about seeming as inoffensive as possible. Or said better, about being as inoffensive to *other white people* as possible. While doing much worse than offense in the harms required to enforce such blandness.

Paint the walls beige so it won’t lower your house’s resale value (inoffensive), but withhold your tip to punish your server for slow service (an aggressive act).

Worse if you rent. Good luck painting any color but beige, you’re not getting your deposit back. Enforcement in this case is itself an act of offense, we must protect lest anyone’s eyes be nonconsensually offended with a more interesting color.

#AbuseCulture #deconstruction #DeconstructWhiteness