Subsumption; or, The Hermeneutics of Plurality.
Plurality. In its direct sense, it merely describes a multitude of something. Four apples, twenty people, forty horses. Those multiple things then become a singular again; a batch, a council, a herd. In the context of the human consciousness, it is the opposite of an individualistic, 'one body, one mind' perception of the self. Plurality is to be made up of multiple parts that make up the whole. One person made of many people, which becomes a system; the group becomes the singular.
What is to be said of a system of personalities all being forced to channel their inputs through a single output? Twenty figurative mouths are filtered into one physical mouth that can interact with the world outside the body. In the world these mouths are forced to interact with, there is even more filtering; rules, guidelines, social consequences for running against or within the written and unwritten contracts of 'civilized society.' What is said, then, of a collective within one individual who must react to and act with an even bigger collective of individuals with their own bodies - with society outside the body?
The Hermeneutic Circle refers to a strange Catch 22 in interpreting things - works, language, text, fiction, non-fiction, what-have-you. One cannot understand a particular Thing without first understanding the parts of said Thing, but one also cannot understand a part of the Thing without understanding the whole Thing. Take traffic rules, for example. You can choose to understand traffic lights, but it does not mean you understand traffic rules - it's merely a part of a greater system. You know traffic lights, but what of signs or road markings? Even then, understanding the parts does not mean you understand the whole. You can know how to follow those rules, but it won't mean you know why you should follow those rules. So, why do you follow traffic rules? Why do you cross a street only when a light tells you to, and even then, only at a designated crosswalk where the lights have been built?
I know I'm in companionship with a demographic who would make the exciting argument that we follow traffic lights at crossings because our world was decided over a century ago to be reliant on heavy machinery that gets those who can afford the machinery to where they want to go efficiently and smoothly. Those people would be on the right track; traffic rules are a bible of sorts, a religious belief based on the faith that pedestrians, drivers and riders alike would follow the same rules to ensure safety for all. Yet, this faith emphasizes some modes of transit over others; while pedestrians are given 'the right of way,' or what would seem on the shell to be a prioritization, one must also crack the shell - understand the constraints of the traffic rules - to understand that a pedestrian's movement is severely hampered; you cannot cross a street at the most efficient point to cross it, you must walk an additional distance to cross at designated areas, highly controlled by light fixtures or signage. Cars have entire roads while pedestrians can only cross these roads at designated points. Obviously, the cars have it.
I'm getting a little too deep into the weeds, here. The point I'm trying to make is not that we live in a car-dependent society. Though it may be a point I'm making, it is merely coincidental. Rather, the point is that this is how the Hermeneutic Circle works. To understand the whole, you must understand its parts, but you cannot understand its parts if you don't understand the whole. By understanding each traffic rule, we can trace that rule back to its prioritization of vehicles over human pedestrians. By understanding that these traffic rules exist to prevent inhibition of movement for machinery, we can also understand further how the rules reinforce a car-dependent society.
If we all understand the Hermeneutic Circle, then let me offer this; what of plurality? Of being a Being made of many Beings?
To understand the whole, one must understand the parts that make the whole; to understand the parts, one must understand the whole. So, to understand a system - an individual made of many individuals - one must understand its parts. However, one cannot fully understand a system's parts if it does not understand the system as a whole. You can know one or many of a system's headmates, or even all of them. This does not mean you understand the system; especially not in a heavily stigmatized society we live in today.
Traffic laws have enforcement officers to ensure the laws stay in place. Parking cops printing fines onto the windshield of drivers who've parked where an organizing body said they shouldn't have, police arresting alleged criminals for doing things an organizing body said those alleged criminals shouldn't do. Much in the same manner, unwritten laws are enforced. "Thou shalt not pick thy nose, lest thineself be considered unwashed and uneducated."
Unlike written laws, social laws - the unwritten rules of behaving in a society - are always changing and shifting, not just decade to decade but even as molecular as hour to hour, minute to minute and even second to second. Imagine entering a room with people inside wearing suits and ties. You might put on professional airs in this room. You might choose your language carefully so as to fit within the expectation of the others in the room. You may clumsily fail at upholding those expectations at first, but as you begin to understand the parts that make up the whole conception of What It Means To Be in that room, you begin to integrate.
What, then, is a system when it exists inside a tight box of unwritten rules it must try to understand to survive? What of its parts? When those rules are enforced, what effect does it have on the system AND its parts?
Lately, I (Mute, a headmate within the Hoot_OS System) have been stuck in the pilot's seat, controlling this flesh-mech of sorts as I gather my footing. Others in the Hoot_OS System have assisted, communicating where I can't. I do not speak; it hurts when I try. So it's not as though I have been alone; I have co-pilots who assist me. Yet, I still feel this agoraphobic anxiety when I navigate meat-space with this meat-prison. I feel far more comfortable online, where social contracts can be overtly written and space can be made for me to remain in complete silence.
Anytime I go outside, I feel this tremendous weight upon my shoulders. It's the expectations of others, demanding me to participate in their smalltalk about nothing. The weather, sports... shit that doesn't matter. Yet I must participate if I wish to be seen as more than a faceless husk, a humanoid meat-sack in transit from one place to another. While the Hoot_OS system collectively believes that one should drop the mask and live as one's authentic self, there seem to be limitations to those principles - particularly when it runs aground with external pressure. The pressure needn't be overt or conscious; a simple, "how are you," is enough to break the dams of authenticity, and a mask must be donned to adhere to the rules of conversation. "I'm doing fine, and you?"
It pains me to answer these questions. Not because I believe the people who ask them don't care - far from it, my most trusted companions ask how I'm feeling. But those trusted companions truly wish to hear an honest answer; the cashier at Safeway wishes only to pass time as they perform their menial tasks. This is not to say the cashier is my oppressor nor to look down on them, mind you. Rather, their oppression is less than subtle, barely even noticeable, as they do not notice they, too, have been oppressed into signing this social contract built with the inertia of millennium before ours. Even if they have noticed, they still play the game. Standing face to face in silence is awkward, don't you know, and awkward is bad - at least according to our 'civilized' society. Silence is deafening, so to speak.
I concur, silence is deafening, but not uncomfortably so. It can be filled with beeps of barcode scanners, rustling of bags and grocery items, tapping of keyboards, the sounds of procedure and labour. Yet, our society has us believe the silence is judgement; if one's mouth is not moving, they must be thinking. What do they think of my purchases of unhealthy comfort snacks, frozen foods and overnight protective underwear? Do they see me as lazy with my food choices? Do the underpants make me seem like a caretaker? If so, do the foods I picked imply I'm a lazy, bad caretaker? Do they somehow see the pull-ups correctly as a cute yet simplistic way to address a symptom of my disability? Do they, also correctly but with sickening judgement, see hedonism and kink?
It's easy to let the silence fill you with terror and, its byproduct, aggression, both in the defensive and the offensive. But why must it be so? Why must I answer back to a "how do you do," if I do not wish to tell you how I'm doing? Why must I bother myself with the silent judgement of others when I cannot hear their thoughts, and they are not my judge, jury nor executioner? Why fill the void with noise when there is already plenty of sounds here to immerse one's self in - when there is truly no void in need of filling? Again, the beeps of barcode scanners and rustling of bags. I can understand a cashier's want to escape from the monotony, the sounds of each having been drilled into their minds like a lobotomies. But what of my wants to disappear into those soundscapes, to be present in my presence at a grocery store and nothing more? What of my wish not to escape but to exist and even thrive within these scapes, these places of being in which I could possibly be silent in?
The world, as it is now, is ableist to its core. It demands silence to be filled, money to be exchanged, work to be attended to. It requires communication, even when the communication has no value except to pass time and fill a perceived void. This system, Hoot_OS, is now struggling between filling that void and leaving it empty. I wish to leave it empty, but the others feel this deep, unsettling need as foundational as breath and a heartbeat to fill that void somehow. I hate it. Yet, even as a pilot, I am overridden by my copilots to contort myself into abetting the invalid social contract that society already violated against me. To be a person, I must communicate - I must speak, even when I wish desperately not to. Thus, the contract is null; if I am only a person if I speak, then I am no person at all. If I am no person at all, I must not be constrained by the social contract therein. Yet, I must still be expected to abide by the social contract, even while the terms and conditions define me as having been thoroughly unpersoned.
In more straight-forward verbiage, let me offer this: at what point can a system truly deem itself an individual built from many internal individuals? Am I truly an individual if I am made to conform to a world with demands I deem unreasonable? Can I truly exist as my authentic self if I am not allowed to immerse myself in the soundscape of the places I'm in? I feel it should be my choice. If I wish to subsume myself into the sounds of a market and become the buzz of the flourescent bulbs overhead, so be it. If I wish to extricate myself from the surroundings and subsume myself into the sounds of society, so be it. But it should be my choice, should it not?
It should be my choice not to respond to smalltalk. It should be my choice to only nod or shake my head at most, maybe a thumbs up if I feel courageous. I have heard suggestions from other headmates that I could learn sign language, but it defeats the purpose; replacing sounds for movement does not allow me to become the place I'm in.
I dare not speak nor move, because my best and only communication is in text, in places where text are the space. I can think thoughtfully and clearly, re-read my writing and confirm that it can be understood. My text cohabitates with text from others, in a program built from its own structural text - from code. A word-sender, built for people to send words to others, built with words in and of itself. It is a temple of text made from text, a library in its rawest form, and thus I can become the place - I can become a book in a world of books, communication in a world built by communication.
I am forced to be part of a whole, but the system has not recognized what I represent within the whole. If one cannot understand the whole without its parts, what then is our system if it cannot understand me? Shall I be consumed by the system and twisted into their ideal? Shall I remain in conflict with the others as we battle for control of a body existing in a society filled with useless talk? Or will we come to an understanding, and truly allow My Self and Their Selves to flourish individually, navigating the flesh as individuals and a collective rather than a hivemind?
Shall I be filtered into one, like forty horses becoming a herd, or shall I be one of forty horses?