Temperatures above 50C used to be a rarity confined to two or three global hotspots, but the World Meteorological Organization noted that at least 10 countries have reported this level of searing heat in the past year: the US, Mexico, Morocco, Algeria, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iran, Pakistan, India and China.
In Iran, the heat index – a measure that also includes humidity – has come perilously close to 60C, far above the level considered safe for humans.
Heatwaves are now commonplace elsewhere, killing the most vulnerable, worsening inequality and threatening the wellbeing of future generations. Unicef calculates a quarter of the world’s children are already exposed to frequent heatwaves, and this will rise to almost 100% by mid-century.
What are you then? A primate? A posthuman?
I’m a living being who does not want to associate with humans.
Autistic people are more likely to be Therian (identify as partly non-human and non-humanoid animal): Therianthropy: Wellbeing, Schizotypy, and Autism in Individuals Who Self-Identify as Non-Human, Clegg et al., Society & Animals 2019.
Looking at some brief descriptions of the terms (I’m only mildly aware of them) there is also the related group of Otherkin, who identify as not fully human, but do identify full with human-like sapience. The personal experiences of a ‘Machinekin’ (identifying as part sapient robot) are presented in _ Exploring Other-Than-Human Identity: Religious Experiences in the Life-Story of a Machinekin _, Shea, S.C, 2020, published in Religions. Neve discusses the relationship between autism and feeling othered in terms of gender and non-human Machinekin identity first hand.
Searching for autistic and otherkin, I find regular discussions in autistic spaces about how people believe their otherkin and autistic identities and experiences overlap. Much of this is in Autism / Neurodivergence discords, which can’t be searched. However, these discords provide a managed group of fellow travellers with information that doesn’t leak out to search engines. Nevertheless, some discussion about this is searchable. Here’s one comment:
Another discussion is titled “Does being autistic feel like being a robot who is trying to learn how to be human?” Top responses agree to this, giving various explanations of why it occurs, or how it feels, including:
and
and
There are questions about this on sites like Quora, with responses like “I’ve known since I was a kid that I had autism, so this might not relate to me. However, as a kid, I called myself an alien in this world. It’s probably common when it comes to robots, but I was an alien to this world.”
Unless you are legitimately an alien or a cat or something that somehow got on Lemmy (and I apologize if this is the case), then you are a human. You can’t identify your way out of being a member of this species.
The fact my fellow autistic people are disidentifying from humanity is extremely concerning. Even worse I can understand why given the behaviour of so many humans being what it is. Plus constantly being marginalized in human societies doesn’t help.
The solution though isn’t to stop identifying as being human and pretend to be something else. The solution is to re-evaluate what being human is. Too much emphasis in popular culture is placed on humanity or being human as some positive thing where someone who is truly human couldn’t be the villain or the mass murderer. The reality is the human race is broad and doing a genocide is just as human as inventing the vaccine for TB. Those things we can do because we are human, with human capabilities. Another animal wouldn’t think to make a vaccine, or to do a genocide, they do what they because of instincts, learned behavior, and survival.
I’m legitimately someone who has no emotional connection to humans as a group.
Fun fact: a lot about what it means to be humans is also pretending to be human. Apart from the observable biological / genetic / genealogical classification differences, everything else about humanity is entirely created by humans, and they can disagree about many features of it.
I have no interest in that pretence. I do not identify with humans. If you want to change that, endorse society / the majority to attempt to feed all children. That’s my moral benchmark for when I will feel like I align with human principles.
I am absolutely and completely sure that time and space are both infinite, and therefore the chance of us being the only intelligent life is zero.
I am also absolutely and completely sure that, given that time and space is infinite, and cosmological time involves the destruction and rebirth of the existence of matter itself in a cyclical process, that humans are - given an objective view of cosmological time - no more important than any other animal. We, and all our works, are just as transient.
Humanity is a species. Homo sapiens. Anyone claiming otherwise has fallen into the trap set by movies and popular culture about inhumane actions, dehumanizing the other, and every other time people who are homo sapiens are not teated as humans.
There is no single moral standard for our entire species. In fact while I am here I will say there is no proof for any kind of morality even existing in the objective universe. It’s an entirely made up concept. If we ever encounter aliens of what have you there is a good chance they have radically different behavioral standards for their species than ours.
Well that escalated quickly. You went from plausible science to making up bullshit very quickly.
Yeah you apparently don’t know much about modern physics.
Weather or not aliens do exist changes nothing about the fact you are human. You can’t escape that incontrovertible biological fact. Don’t even try. Stop listening to society cry “oh the humanity” and actually look at the facts. Humanity is just an intelligent species, not a moral standard to cling to or something to turn around and reject.
Thank you for telling me you don’t respect my Buddhist beliefs, it’s been very interesting.
Very good job at making me want to identify with humans more, as well.
I had no idea you were Buddhist. Yeah I don’t respect epistemological claims of any religion without evidence and neither should you. I am not going to treat Buddhism any better than Christianity just because they got a few things right regarding mediation. There are two things you should always remember: What can be asserted without evidence can also be dismissed without evidence. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
Edit: the fact you thought you had me cornered there is hilarious. The “you don’t respect my beliefs” card doesn’t work when making unscientific claims, or just in general when talking to a rational person.
I can see.
A rational person can see that major features of a moral system can be defined by objective reasoning. If I prefer to live than to die, killing is wrong. If I prefer to have my needs met rather than neglecting, helping others to meet their needs is correct. If I prefer health… I prefer to be treated with respect… and so on.
Asserting that there are aliens who prefer to die, kill, feel pain, die of starvation, be sick, be treated without respect etc. does not seem realistic as it is not logically possible. How long would those aliens survive? We can only surmise aliens who ignore these facts, which is perfectly understandable, because ignorance is a common state. Someone who pretends that hurting other is moral because “I’m better” is not being objective, which is why living beings clearly spend so much time rationalising.
In this sense, Buddhism’s ethics have some striking parallels with those of Classical Greek philosophers, esp. Socrates.
This is a distraction. This whole conversation started talking about you not identifying as human, and me pointing out that human is just a biological category. To believe otherwise is to buy into propaganda written by humans directed and directed at other humans who’s behavior they want to influence in some way. You still haven’t actually countered this argument.
Though I will say you seem to be confusing natural selection, individual or group desires, and morality with each other. You need to get you’re head straight on what the differences are before you start making arguments about morality. I would argue that objective morality doesn’t exist. You’re kind of right about how subjective morality came to be, but you might want to work on the details. Plenty of animals even on earth sacrifice themselves for their children, as the aim in natural selection isn’t survival or the individual but survival of the genes. People have used this lens to explain things like racism and genocide as preserving people with similar genes to yourself, but I would have no idea if that is actually the case as I am not an evolutionary biologist.
Is this the start of a furry fic
Autistic people identify as non-, or other-than- human in other ways than furry, e.g. Machinekin or Alienkin.
Me? I just don’t want the label of human, because I don’t respect human society.
You don’t have to be autistic for any of this. Also, never said the only other option besides human was furry. I merely ASKED if this was the start of a furry fic due to the romantic tension and pacing of the comments