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Comment by dsego | Hacker News Reader

I've come to believe that some people don't have a soul, they are basically NPCs in that sense. I also think there is a spectrum of insight and lucidity between different people and in different states or stages in the life of a person, eg. when you're on auto-pilot vs not, many people are on auto-pilot for most of their existence. I know it's a dangerous belief, but I can't help shake this feeling. Dolores Cannon also speaks about backdrop people, so it's known in the spiritual circles (I know, I know, quacks and nut cases, whatever).

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Define a soul, please? The first sentence doesn't make sense without that definition.

This is one kind of dehumanizing thinking, and it’s a belief category that can eventually lead to genocide when it becomes widespread. We have many examples within the past century with death counts in the millions.

Doesn't that kind of prove the point? Masses become involved in a mass delusion, an egregore, a social contagion if you will, people start basically behaving like bots. It's like some outside force takes over. I'm speaking about the ones committing the genocide in this case. I understand the danger of dehumanizing people though. Tbh, being a kid during the war in ex-yu I am also still very disturbed with how little it took and how easy it was for some to do horrible things, which is probably also why I consider some of those people lacking something within, or at least not being fully self-aware beings during those times.

> consider some of those people lacking something within,

If it was only so easy, that those who were evil could just be separated from the rest of us, but alas, the line that separates good and evil cuts through the heart of every person

Paraphrasing Solzhenitsyn, of course..

Categorizing, reducing, and dismissing things is also something, which may also have negative consequences. There is also no shortage of examples of this phenomenon, some people even believe the whole world runs on it.

Or I have too much going on in real life, so I have NPC for a few days to get by.

https://xkcd.com/610/

But on a more serious note, there are definitely bouts when reality feels more real and the mind feels more present and aware, like being hyperaware or experiencing hyperrealization, whatever is opposite to derealization and depersonalization (not sure if I'm using the correct terminology, so please bare). The feeling is akin to waking up and realizing that the past month has been a blur and you weren't yourself exactly, even though you remember, it feels like you weren't consciously making decisions, or being in the moment so to speak. Similar to that exhilaration of reigniting old passions that you'd forgotten about for some reason.

One of the grand secrets of various flavors of esotericism is that 'not everyone has a soul'.

Don't be so quick to apply the quack and nut case label, please.

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