I saw that post about the people needing to abandon the idea that they're separate from their body and obviously I understand that those two things aren't separate but I guess I'm struggling to understand what about this line of thinking is harmful (specifically when it's not tied to religious shit like the "soul"). It seems to me even most non-religious people feel like their body is just a vehicle they drive and other than it shaping the way we talk about our bodies it seems pretty innocuous to me but that may just be because I've never been put in a position to be harmed by it. If you're up for it, could you expand on your thoughts about it?
[the post in question; my brief post on a similar topic]
I'm struggling to understand what about this line of thinking is harmful
so neither winged-void nor I said that the idea of the mind and the body being separate things was "harmful" in so many words. ae said that it was an "idealism," meaning that it is an abstraction not owing to a materialist analysis of the world. I said that the idea of the mind as basically being the pilot of a meat suit was "disturbing" to me, which is just an emotional response. I don't think that "this is a difficult idea to move away from" entails "this is a harmful idea that everybody needs to move away from," but if you wanted aer opinion you would need to ask aer.
(specifically when it's not tied to religious shit like the "soul")
philosophy is not my area of expertise, but I don't see how one could posit that the body and mind are separate—that is, that consciousness is anything other than an emergent property of matter organised in a certain way—without positing something that is effectively a "soul," whatever name you end up calling it.
It seems to me even most non-religious people feel like their body is just a vehicle they drive and other than it shaping the way we talk about our bodies it seems pretty innocuous to me
this imagined relationship between the "body" and the "mind" is imo one that emerges at a certain point in history to serve a certain purpose. just as capitalism and the Industrial Revolution promoted a mechanised idea of time (time moves constantly forward, it is possible to "waste" time, it is possible to fail to be "on time," when people go to work, eat, sleep &c. should be regulated by the time, and so on), they also promoted a mechanised idea of the body.
according to this idea, not only is the bodymind split into "body" and "mind," but the body is cast as a machine to be ruled & piloted by the mind. the mind needs to have the body under constant subjection. the body has illicit, extravagant, and potentially boundless desires for food, for rest, for sex, &c., that the mind must overrule and manage for the hygiene of the individual person. the mind can and must force the body to work even when "it" is in pain.
you can see why this idea is attractive to the capitalist: according to its dictates, the worker must overcome laziness, the desire to eat or to play, the desire to do anything that interferes with work. this is how you get advertisements that say things like "you're a real go-getter. you had coffee for breakfast and work for lunch. buy product."
but of course this idea has not historically applied equally for everyone. the healthful & necessary subjection of the body to the mind is more or less possible depending on one's race, sex-gender, and class. the life of a white man is the life of the mind; a cisgender white woman is always at least partially ruled & represented by the body, but her gendering may still partake of the mental & moral (mostly through reproduction); a subject who is both feminized and racialized is totally embodied, "sexed" rather than "gendered" (per María Lugones). consider for example the idea that Black women are unable to control their bodies—more libidinous, more "lazy" (the myth of the "welfare queen"), less reproductively responsible, than white women.
so this idea as it exists today (not to say any instantiation of mind-body dualism, which obviously predates capitalism) has its roots in racial capitalism. but I think the harm that it does in a given situation is more than likely to the self: if you envision yourself as just a mind piloting a machine, you're more liable to push yourself too hard, not pay enough attention to the environment's impact on your mood and overall well-being, ignore pain, starve yourself, subject yourself to an "exercise regime" with the goal of punishment or discipline rather than just doing movement that feels good, etc. etc.
also, if we're supposed to be communists and Marxists and do dialectical materialism and things—and as far as I'm concerned, we are—this is just simply not a materialist idea.
