There are many "isms" that I have encountered throughout my time in cyberspace, and there is this particular "ism" that caught my eye. The "ism" in question is called "soulism." If you're living under a rock (i.e., not being terminally online), soulism is an-

"ideology that believes that the individual should be able to fulfill desire through limiting suffering and reverse-engineering the universe, simplifying it to a state where suffering is minimized as much as possible, and all hierarchy is abolished." -polcompball wiki [1]

I would like to add that soulism originated as a joke ideology on Reddit as a "parody of extremist libleft ideology." By it being a joke ideology, you would expect that there wouldn't be any people out there trying to make this a real and serious ideology. You would be wrong; there are like 2 people who wrote stuff trying to contextualize soulism as a serious ideology. The two people are Vi (someone who thinks they're a goddess and that they "should be worshipped as one") and Azsula (someone who got outed as a pedophile and thinks that the "age of consent should be lower)[7] it but rather the theory that has been written around soulism.

Note that the two writers' theories are two different thought of soulism that currently exist that I'm aware of.

For Vi, let's look at their definition of Soulism.

"Soulism, also known as anarcho-antirealism, is a school of anarchist thought that views reality and natural laws as unjust hierarchies. It is the basic principle of anarchism that hierarchies in which one person holds power over another are not inherently self-justifying. They must justify themselves through good work, and it must be possible to dismantle them at any time. It is the opinion of soulists that this principle must not be extended just to people, but also to the world itself. This is soulism at its most basic."-V [2]

I have a few things to say about this definition, first of all, that "reality and natural laws are unjust hierarchies." How do we achieve this? The writing does not give any reference to escaping the "unjust hierarchies of natural laws and reality" in any of their other writings. Like, for example, escaping the material realm after achieving gnosis or achieving the state of nirvana. Like, there's no solid ground in any of the writings other than "We want to abolish reality because it's unjust or something." In their manifesto talking about soulism, it goes all over the place; first, it goes over a term called "consensus reality," then talks about racism and how soulism can help us by saying that bigotry is not real. "Soulism can help us win ideological battles with transphobes who would do our trans friends harm, as well. No matter what assertions they make, we can simply choose to recognise them as not real." -vi It implies that "species dysphoria" is a real thing, but that's a whole other topic of its own.[2]

What is their form of soulist praxis? Starting a cult!! I'm not joking; here's a snippet from their Q&A page. "But the best advice I can start you off with is: get involved in local politics. Join a climate, queer, or indigenous protest group. Attend local council meetings. Start a cult." -vi [2] Do I need to state why cults are a bad thing? Anyways, they also sourced Rick and Morty as an example of Soulism [3] [6], so there's that, I guess.

I could not find Azsula's definition of soulism but other than that, I do not understand any of their writings because it's all over the place. They talk about concepts they made, such as "entanglism," "prereality," and "alienism," while trying to take another joke ideology to something serious, such as "communalism" (the people's toothbrush kind). [4][5]

I'm probably missing something in both Vi's and Azsula's writings, but overall it's all just pseudo-intellectual garbage trying to take a joke ideology as something serious that will somehow make any meaningful changes in the world and should not be treated as such.

thx for reading!! -Zalosu