(no subject)

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

    Over the past few months, our system has been working on consolidating our identities. We've all been going through a few identity crises, but now we believe we have resolved them. It has been a long, arduous journey from the days when the Population Boom of our system started, until now. The reason I am telling ya'll this, is that I have a few comments to share on the idea of the "UBER EBIL ALTER!!1! OH NOES!" These are raw ideas, fresh from my mind, so I apologize beforehand if they make no sense: Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or snarks in our direction. This opinion brought to you by Jake Featherston:

    The whole darkness as evil thing, I believe, comes from a scientific notion that ape eyes can't see in the dark. Our color cells cannot perceive as well in nighttime, and so the human mind began to associate the danger of the night, where unseen predators lurked, as evil. From the Australopithecine and genus Homo fears of the large predators that could at any moment rip our ancestors limb from limb, came also a desire to see the Other, the strange, as fierce and predatorially dangerous. This could just be average psychobabble, except that I notice that when people mention evil, they associate it with the darkness of the night. This association causes all sorts of headaches, if you are rather "interesting" in personality. Thoughts of death, fear and mortality are seen as the dark, from whom the lions and leopards that devoured our hominin ancestors sprang.
  Now, I personally see the idea of the multiple, as seen on TV, as an attempt to define a state of existence that to me is beautiful and grand, with lunacy, violence and foaming at the mouth. I regret that  the male-bodied multiples are in particular victims of this notion, but the female multiples also get the ****ty end of the stick, and my belief on this perception of multiples in the media, comes from watching and seeing films such as Sybil, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Jekyll and Hyde, episodes of Psych and Criminal Minds.
  I have been trying to understand what  brings this endless portrayal of the multiple as lunatic, as the craven psycho with the knife ever ready to stab, and I have come to two conclusions. The first, is that thanks to psychiatric wackadoodles such as Allison, we are seen as broken psychics, with intense powers, who can be fixed by the Great White Coat. I, along with the rest of my system, am currently embroiled deep in therapy culture where this idiocy runs supreme, when I deal with the two therapists that have believed me. Psychiatry and psychology would have such beings as me, as the Id, the unconscious, the chained beast that rages for its freedom and ultimately wrests it and goes forth to destroy the Poor Weak Host's life, and then laughs about it. That's  what my system hears about ourselves in those offices, and that tends to make us angry, and vengeful, perhaps slighty demented, when we hear psychobabble tossed about OUR existence, by those who have not the slightest idea what we are. So, I see the first, simplest part of the portrayal of the person within as evil, as emanating from how multiples are portrayed in the popular culture.
       I also see another, more hidden aspect, one that I hope if I'm wrong on, you will ream us good on. This aspect, is the fact that the culture of America, at least the Southern part of it, is built on a slab of demonization of those who are under. The ideas of difference being tolerated are spoken of in theory, but in practice are far from realized. I see it in the not-so-subtle jabs at the GLBTQ folks at my school, and in the not-so-subtle racism of my family and my friends. Seeing this, has convinced us that an identity opposed to a narrow framework in cultural America, such as GLBTQ, or psychiatrically different, or religously or economically different, is seen as an enemy at whom a Two-Minutes Hate is directed at. I see this quite obviously in the reactions of the people I know when someone mentions the "terrorists" or the "illegals" or the whole of secular culture, in the backwater church I attend, as the enemy. The framework of someone they trust is narrow, and I cannot fit in that straitjacket of fundamentalism, and remain who I am. The underclasses are demonized, and I feel that I am trapped in a culture I want to escape. In the light of the hate, the mindless loathing of the differences that make up America rampant in my hometown, in my school, in the narrow opportunities available to a teenage body with a system attached in the deep southern part of the United States, I am not surprised by the depictions of the EBIL ALTER, only saddened.
  If ya'll are wondering what brought this, on, I simply have been stewing on the mindless happy-clappy God Warrior mentality I live in, and why I cannot fit in to that monstrosity. 

Comments

[tej-agni.livejournal.com]

I know that dark doesn't mean evil because there's some people in our group that are dark but they aren't evil. but like it doesn't mean that there isn't evil out there in places. I just don't get it when if someone in a group does some stuff that's reckless or whatever that it means the person is evil. :/ that's not evil or even dark. noone would think that I was crazy because I never do anything interesting lol I'm so boring :p unless like playing online games for like 12 hours a day is considered crazy woot! :p ♥ I don't even know if like we stayed on topic or not ^^;
LeAnne, Tina and some Cliquers

[shade-durza.livejournal.com]

I completely agree with your post. Popular culture and society as a whole are to blame for this. Another big factor is fear; people fear what they don't understand and if they don't fear it they make the thing or person that is different into something to be feared just so the people have a common enemy. It makes them feel safe.
Evil is also in the eye of the beholder. On of us could be considered 'evil' taken at face level, but I get along with him just fine.

[shadowsgroup.livejournal.com]

We think that sometimes evil shrouds itself in light to decieve people because we always expect it to come from the other, the darkness. Usually this comes in the guise of "betterment" and various other things.

Sometimes the dark is the good thing that is just being kept hidden by others because they do not wish for it to be discovered.

Of course, we're quite fond of dark things seeing as we're the Shadows System and all.

[kyanve.livejournal.com]

I suspect in fiction at least, that it crops up just because it's a very dramatic situation to play with in writing. (And let's face it, the old Jekyll and Hyde novel has become something of an archetype...where the original literary idea wasn't so much an awareness of multiplicity as just a way to explore the struggle between a person's better nature and their temptations to do wrong/"what if those were separated" >.>; so the Jekyll-and-Hyde character(s) are, themselves, a bit archetypal.) Of course, any subculture or "deviant from normal" approach to things tends to draw the most attention when it's going horribly wrong. (Does the Child's Play charity drive by gamers for children's hospitals make national/international headlines? Nope. Does a highschooler who happens to play video games going on a batshit shooting spree make headlines? Yep.)
There's also just this tendency to define a median-norm as "healthy" and deviations from that as "unhealthy" or "strange"; I've seen "belief in paranormal phenomenon" crop up as a "sign of mental ill health" question, nevermind the not-that-rare generalized-story of high-schooler that wears black, games, and draws something creepy getting sent to the school therapist even if they're a well-behaved honors student. If the tendency is to treat "non-normal" hobbies and religious beliefs as "being a bit crazy"/"something might be wrong with them", of course it's gonna get worse the further from the perception of "norm" you get. (I'm sorta lucky to be in an area that's a little less culturally tweaky, thou I hear horror stories about the deep-south along those veins from good friends who live there and you have my sympathies.)
At least larger-culture sense there is a trend in media-in-general towards making "less normal" lifestyles/etc. more sympathetic, which I figure is probably a good sign in the long run for a lot of things - it may not be everywhere and it may not always be acted on but at least people are starting to think about "not Normal = still people".

[e-mily.livejournal.com]

so the Jekyll-and-Hyde character(s) are, themselves, a bit archetypal.

Indeed. Given that Jekyll/Hyde was written such a long time ago, the awareness of multiplicity was probably nil to those who weren't. It is a VERY archetypal story, and exploring the idea of what happens if one separates the "better nature" and the "darker" nature is something that humanity plays with all the time.

See: many religions. Prime example: Christianity. There is good, and there is bad, and they are separate and highly distinct.

Christianity is like Jekyll & Hyde compared to... oh... let's say... some Eastern-based religions that say almost everything is just a learning experience, that what is is, and it's not really either good or bad "morally," it's just either good or bad for your body, and that's just a physical fact that can't be dealt with. (Relative example, sort of, would be Hinduism.
. . .
Sort of. With its base concepts, anyway.)

[kyanve.livejournal.com]

Mmmnh, the other "religion" that doesn't work on clear dichotomies that comes to mind is - Chinese (Daoist I think largely the origin? Basic ideas sorta cross back and forth between different camps/religions/etc., but there's also a little less "any one of these is mutually exclusive of others" going back a -long- way) originating sense of metaphysics, where relative moral status is an independent quality from light/positive/active and dark/negative/passive and too much of any extreme is harmful/dangerous - "healthy" would be maintaining both general "qualities", and going too far with the "light" side is just as potentially bad as going too far with the "dark".

[tatteredscars.livejournal.com]

ah, yes. the good ol' south. *raises hand* born and reared in the baton rouge suburbs. my whole family is shamed if i live with a significant other before marriage. god forbid (ha!) i be multiple also.
that's about all the insight i have right now. it's late. really just wanted to say hello to a fellow "ya'll"-er. *grins*
alison

[ksol1460.livejournal.com]

Demonizing or otherwise shunning (or objectifying, or patronizing, or what have you) the different or "underpeople" is not just a southern thing by any means. We know exactly what you're talking about.

Also

[spookshow-girl.livejournal.com]

Fear of letting go of the tight reins the average person puts on themselves.

The "What would I be capable of, if I weren't such a good little drone?"

Note how they often do all those bad little things many people have thought of doing at least once.

See also: A general obsession with Antisocial Personality Disorder.

Also, there is the whole fear of the you/!you, doin' stuff, and besmirchin' your good name. See: Doppelganger/Evil Twins.

--Me

[e-mily.livejournal.com]

The idea of darkness as evil also can be traced back to early cultures that have known-about religions.

For example: the nomadic almost barbarian-ish (or at least considered so by others, at the time) of what would be Germania.

Their religions associate the colour black with death. Black is associated with night.

With humans, night means death. Night means lack of the sun, which means lack of warmth, and lack of light for us to see in, and it means predators which are better than us.

You're not just spouting "average psychobabble." You're very much on a right track.

It's a very well-documented development in humanity as a whole. Darkness is associated with bad things because bad things happened in the dark. Even nowadays, bad things are more likely to happen at night than during the day. The lack of light allows for the hiding of certain things that one wishes to hide.

---

Re: Part Two.

Unfortunately, the base subconcious of human society is build on the biggest slab of demonization that you ever saw. If you don't fit in and fill your niche in society, you are not seen as a productive and contributing member to society. This means that you are hindering the society, and should be exiled, to die on your own, or destroyed before you can harm the society.

It's a subconcious desire, mostly, and can probably be traced back to evolutionary ancestors, if not early true-humans.

Different works together in a less effective unit than same. That's why the military removes your individual nature and programs you to be part of the unit. The unit works more efficiently as a whole, which is better for the goal of the military, plain and simple.