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Ethics with regard to tulpa creation.


Edward

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There are a few common reasons for creating a tulpa, and the reasonings behind getting involved in this process are what is like to get some input on. If you just want to read the OP and answer some questions without getting involved in the (possibly) ongoing discussion, here you go:

 

-What do you consider an ethical reason to create a tulpa and why?

 

-Are there any motivations behind creating a tulpa that you consider unethical?

 

Obviously the answers to this will be different from person to person, but that's the point in asking, right? Learning about the community and all that. As for my own thoughts, if you consider tulpas separate people completely, then bringing them into the world with the added limit of not physically existing is kind of a shit deal. I don't think it's objectively wrong, however. I think that it's your head and you have the ability to do as you like.

 

Regarding specific reasons for making tulpas? Loneliness seems rude. To impose a desire for company/support onto someone else without them truly having a say in it feels sketchy.

 

Research of the mind's capabilities is one I also feel weird about due to the nature of creating a person just for interest in the process.

 

Sexual/Romantic use, to me, probably won't even result in a tulpa. If we assume that a tulpa is sentient and capable of disappearing/dissociation, could they not disappear when the host starts to force themselves (or however this works) onto the tulpa? If the tulpa is created from the onset for sexual/romantic use, I don't think they'd reach a point of true sentience, and therefore they wouldn't really be a tulpa in my eyes. If the tulpa isn't sentient, it's not a tulpa and is in that case just a mental masturbation session. If the tulpa is sentient and not willing, they can cease to exist, I'd assume. If the tulpa is sentient and willing, then you could reason it's fine, but you'll run into the argument that being created with that purpose has biased them to the point of invalidating consent. This quickly devolves into a discussion in the ethics of sexuality with tulpas which is for a different day.

 

To finish up my own thoughts, I can't actually think of a reason I'd consider valid when creating a tulpa. Of course, I have tulpas, so I clearly didn't use to feel this way. Thoughts?

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In my opinion, there is no valid reason to make a tulpa.

 

The way I regard things, a superficial will is created upon the tulpa's realization of sentience, or vocality in those terms. You see, tulpamancers create entities for specific reasons; be it sex, lust, temporary hype and infatuation, companionship, simple curiosity, all reasons end up as terminally selfish. Which holds little relevance because that would imply that it's something to get worked up over, and it is not.

 

This world is good, and it is bad. Objectively speaking, it's impossible to define the world as being full of good things over bad things and vice-versa. If someone has a happy life, empty of all issues and full of joy and contentment and satisfaction, would there be any reason for creation in the first place? It's something we've been thinking about for a good while. Most people who ended up making tulpas had and still have a crappy social status, bad social skills (even social autism) and general shyness. The tulpa acts as more or less of a compensation for the bad things they go through. A kid who thinks nothing is special is about him, who gets beaten by his parents and has bad grades would find relief in an imaginary friend (not saying that tulpas are imaginary by any means, I'm speaking of something else that's analogical), there could be room for escapism. In a kid's imagination, the imaginary friend does whatever the kid wants and imagines; be it being a supervillain or an extremely kind and altruistic person, the imaginary friend only exists to serve a certain purpose.

 

Tulpas are a lot like that, to me. The similarities I tend to see are that they are created, and very much limited to what the host wants. If a host makes a tulpa for companionship or friendship, the tulpa won't have many other options. Being created with ulterior thoughts and motives is bound to have some effect over development. If you treat a sentient being like a friend from start to finish, and if it's all this being knows, taking your side and always agreeing with you, not only will there be much less thought stimulation but you're going to end up with something more like a slave with an illusion of free will. Basically, be my friend, or lose your life.

 

What bothers me the most is the delusion of free will in tulpamancy. If you create a tulpa with a certain motive in mind, a specific motive, you're not leaving it much of a choice. You can tell the tulpa that it has free will, but if the tulpa was born and raised to be what you exactly want, it won't know how to have anything else. It's very much like how, say, a kid is born in a middle-eastern family, this family is extremely religious, they force that religion on their kids, and tell them 'you have the freedom to look into other religions'. Upon looking into other religions, though, the kid will realize that his core beliefs oppose that ideal, that what he was taught to believe in one thing, say Islam (on the level of historical events and not things such as violence and whatever people promote these days) and that in his mind would be incompatible with how the Bible and the Apostle's gospels enunciate the historical events that took place.

 

I'm not going to say that 'it's incredibly selfish to make a tulpa for any reason', or use it as an argument, because that's completely relative.

 

I was confronted with an interesting question: 'do you also think that searching for friends in real life is as selfish, since it's also for your own satisfaction?'. Searching for friends is not selfish. If you look for a like-minded person you would like to befriend, that person has all the choices in the world to reject you if they don't like you. CREATING a friend is what is selfish, and I would much rather include that it's less selfish than it is completely oppressive in such a passive way that nobody is aware of it, which is why it provoked such disdain in me on other communities. Now that I am aware of it consciously, I won't be as aggressive with such opinions as it hurts my credibility. Creating friends, creating a friend, and creating a will for them to live...

 

It's not like I never tried to ask around, either. I asked a lot of tulpas their reasons for living, what they think of life, most of them answered that it was fine and that they like being with their hosts, that they wouldn't just die if they could. Is it that they truly think so, or is it that they were spoonfed those things? The human mind can do incredible things to make it comfortable. Some people completely detach themselves from their emotions and come back once they cannot be hurt by them anymore. The subconscious mind can make you forget events that would scar you on a conscious level, while that leads to repressed fears, that's a different story. It would not surprise me if the subconscious mind played a role in accommodation to what people want their tulpas to be.

 

To most tulpas who read this, it'll probably come off as a big load of nonsense, because they feel like they'd just belong with their hosts naturally for absolutely no reason. I think that this type of will is very much like the following model: a city very much like in the Truman Show. Invisible walls that look like the skies, being taught that the world has nothing else to offer in a consistent way. I am not saying or implying that people do this on a conscious level, nobody is as mean, and I know that a lot of hosts mean well and wish for nothing but good things...

 

 

but it is the biggest crime to me. Which is why once I realized my mistake and could not tame it, I swore to everything I held dear that I would not make another tulpa.

 

Welcome to the biggest delusion man has ever constructed. The delusion of free will for beings that can never truly, truly change and derive from that. Even bigger than what people established over hundreds of years.

A wise man once said: 'Before judging a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He's a mile away, and you've got new shoes.'

 

Graced are those who could avoid this phenomenon. This is perhaps the worst expression of evil in humanity's history, but who am I to judge?

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Ah, finally, something that's not been beaten to hell and back.

-What do you consider an ethical reason to create a tulpa and why?

Well...

 

I don't, or rather didn't put that much weight into reasoning. As long as a person is aware that a tulpa is a lifelong companion and that they are going to be a person in the long run, they won't have trouble with completely selfish reasons.

 

Of course, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy, but nearly everything is in the end. How many reasons are left when you understand that? Wanting someone to love and wanting to be loved? Being able to see from a different perspective? To me, these and these type of "reasons" are not actually reasons, but the pros that come with this prophecy.

 

-Are there any motivations behind creating a tulpa that you consider unethical?

 

Any motivation that will end up as something that will force your tulpa to do something regardless of what they want to do is an unethical motivation to me, such as wanting a romantic companion.

 

I'm talking about intentionally created tulpas.

I'm SomethingDire, and Céleste is my partner in crime.

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Text I don't want to copy.

 

I agree with most of that. Do you consider it something to actively deter others from doing, though? I think that if you do, that's where we may differ.

 

Text I also don't want to copy.

 

 

May I ask you why you make the differentiation between creating a tulpa to love and be loved by and creating a tulpa for sex/other self-titled selfish reasons? I'm curious as to why you list them as pros when you could argue that the selfish or unethical reasons are also pros if they're what you want.

 

 

Edit: sorry, mobile formatting made me forget to say who I was responding to.

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Oh, never mind.

 

I didn't mean "love" as in the "romantic" type of love. Actually, it doesn't even have to be love. You can call it "understanding on a deep level", "friendship" too.

 

If anything, I agree with J.Iscariot here. He beat me to it.

I'm SomethingDire, and Céleste is my partner in crime.

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No, absolutely not. I know that I cannot stop any of it. It's one of those things that I know the nicest, genuinely nicest and greatest of people will do. I want to emphasize on the fact that it's not that people do this consciously, it just happens. If I point out any of it at any given moment, I know that people won't buy into it, and I cannot fault them. I am no one to tell them what to do and how they should live their lives, I know how it feels when people try to be as controlling of others, so I try not to instill that in anyone in the first place. That's just what I think, and I'm never going to attack someone on how they shouldn't make a tulpa or how it's selfish, I'd just give them the age-old 'you should keep in mind this is a commitment'. If I see someone who doesn't seem (seem, not is) the type to have a tulpa (exhibition of poor sense of responsibility, immaturity, etc...), I'll put an emphasis on why I think that they need to consider their decisions more. Maaaybe I'll implicitly try to scare them off, but if they are mature enough, they won't fall for it.

 

I do try to provide advice to friends who have an interest in tulpamancy and the likes, and offer advice at any time. If I had to sum up my position, 'we're already in this, might as well make it a bit better as much as we can'.

 

The things I posted bother me every now and then. One way, it sounds like something some hardscience guy would say versus tullamancy, but as a tulpamancer who legitimately cares for tulpas, it hurts to have that belief in the first place, because that means that my tulpa could very much be subject to those things as well, making everything... fake, maybe? I don't know, I don't want to play god.

A wise man once said: 'Before judging a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He's a mile away, and you've got new shoes.'

 

Graced are those who could avoid this phenomenon. This is perhaps the worst expression of evil in humanity's history, but who am I to judge?

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Anyone who's conscientious enough to question whether they should make a tulpa usually passes in my book. Usually, at least the people I see here on tulpa.info.

 

Unlike you guys, I don't see creating a friend as a bad thing. You and they both theoretically benefit in the same way, should you be an adequate host (no crippling mental disorders, absolute lack of time and dedication, that sort of thing). The only point in that argument is that, should they not actually want to be your friend, they have little choice.

 

And I don't ever see such a thing.

 

And if you're taking the "it's not fair because they didn't have a choice in being created the way they were and what they wanted" perspective, that's implying that the tulpa had some form of existence with which to compare itself to before you created it. And I'm pretty sure you guys don't believe in that sort of thing, right? You're creating a perspective above what the tulpa themselves experience. Yes, they had no choice in being the way they are, thinking the way they do, until the moment they were sentient, at which point they can do whatever they'd like. Similar to how humans have "free will" from the moment they're born, yet so many factors of their lives such as biology, circumstances and how they think were completely predetermined and out of their control. Some people really do have a problem with that, and so choose not to have children. But gee, I can think of several billion off the top of my head that did.

 

I'm a strong advocate for the "belief creates your reality" concept (because it's true). I believe suffering is self-imposed, and that a much larger amount of reality than people realize is subjective, not objective. Objectivity exists of course, but every single human being is deadset in their beliefs that their subjective reality is entirely objective. As somebody whose perception of reality has completely changed several times, and slowly changes over time, I have proof everything you think you know about reality can easily change. Not many people in the world realize just how much control they have over every aspect of reality in this manner, even I of course don't make very good use of that knowledge. People who consider themselves "realists" are among the most deluded of us. And so, worrying about a perspective that does not even exist is the only legitimacy that perspective has - and once you stop giving it legitimacy it no longer exists. Your DNA was decided for you. Your environmental factors were completely decided for you until you were some number years old, and then they were only mostly decided for you. You didn't even have any choice in reading this until right now, I'm the one that put this in your life. The idea that any amount of free will in such things exists in life or nature is an illusion.

 

And so, the idea that creating a tulpa is in and of itself a bad thing, is stupid. Unless you also believe the same for having a child, in which case it's a fine belief. But make up your mind on one or the other, because they're one and the same, creating sentience. Assuming you believe tulpas to be sentient anyway, otherwise none of this applies at all. And if you don't think that, who even cares about the ethics in your own mind? Just you.

Hi! I'm Lumi, host of Reisen, Tewi, Flandre and Lucilyn.

Everyone deserves to love and be loved. It's human nature.

My tulpas and I have a Q&A thread, which was the first (and largest) of its kind. Feel free to ask us about tulpamancy stuff there.

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You could say most of the same things about having kids (barring the sexual part, hopefully). People have kids for reasons that vary from having somebody to carry on their genes/name/legacy, to wanting someone to love/nurture, to simply thinking it's what they're "supposed" to do. There's such a controversy over wanting to terminate fetuses before they're born (please, lets not get into that here), yet nobody stops to wonder about the ethics of bringing another sentient person into a world that, quite frankly, sucks.

 

I think it's the same with tulpas, or even more so because -while a child isn't inexorably bound to his or her parents- a tulpa is stuck with you forever. So, no, there really isn't an ethical reason to bring a tulpa into the world, just like there really isn't an ethical reason to have kids. It's not going to stop people from doing it, nor am I saying that it should really; I wouldn't even be here if I wasn't planning on making a tulpa pretty much for the reasons you listed (loneliness and curiosity). I just hope my tulpa doesn't end up resenting me when she gets here.

I want to be ignored

Don't want a speaking part

I don't want any one to notice

The blood spilling out of my exploding heart

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You could say most of the same things about having kids (barring the sexual part, hopefully). People have kids for reasons that vary from having somebody to carry on their genes/name/legacy, to wanting someone to love/nurture, to simply thinking it's what they're "supposed" to do. There's such a controversy over wanting to terminate fetuses before they're born (please, lets not get into that here), yet nobody stops to wonder about the ethics of bringing another sentient person into a world that, quite frankly, sucks.

 

Procreation plays a big role in life and our advancement. Logically speaking, by giving birth to a child, you are bringing another functional human being with a body of their own into this world, a human being that will benefit the race in some minor or major ways, will work independently, will move out with time. They will have their own lives. A child is not born to be a child forever, a tulpa is born to be a friend forever, it cannot be any different from that, it cannot deviate into a malevolent entity and still live without getting the dissipation hammer down its head. A tulpa has no physical body, a tulpa does not conduct to the advancement and reproduction of mankind as a whole, it psychologically assists individuals and it has no other choice than to do so.

 

There is a natural parenthood instinct, I don't believe in the mentality that some people do things because 'why not' or 'i just felt like it'. I believe that there is always a plethora of subconscious thoughts that create explanations, bias and reasoning for things that surround us in life.

 

More than that, even with switching and possession, the tulpa will always be limited in comparison to any normal person. First because the host needs their body for basic duties such as work, socializing and overall a normal daily lifestyle. Even if you split amounts of time equally between, say, a tulpa and a host, a tulpa would still technically live half a life, with an identity that is not theirs. With a body that does not match their form the slightest. With a legal name that is not theirs in the first place.

 

I avoided making my argument about 'this world sucks so its bad to bring a tulpa in' because that's very subjective and we'd be stuck in a loop of subjective reasoning. Just felt like putting this out there.


You're creating a perspective above what the tulpa themselves experience. Yes' date=' they had no choice in being the way they are, thinking the way they do, until the moment they were sentient, at which point they can do whatever they'd like.[/quote']

 

That is the ideology that I tend to oppose, because I believe that a tulpa cannot have true, real free will aside from what it was taught in the first place. If you raise a being to love and be loved, let's imply that this being cannot feel any type of sadness or antagonist emotions to love and joy, then that is all this entity will know and do. You can tell this entity 'well, you can learn about all sorts of emotions!', but it's on the level of capacities more than it's on the level of the permission to use dad's car. It's not the permission your provide, it's not the innate capacity (that I do not believe in) a tulpa supposedly have. If you allow for the tulpa to evolve, not even on a conscious level of things (say you make your tulpa go through a lot of anguish and emotional trouble), if YOU open this door of possibilities, then it will happen.

 

Belief creates subjective reality, but objective reality can back up subjective perception in ways that it instills notions of common sense, logic, etc... facts have no feelings, no emotions and no cares to be given, they never did, we're speaking of facts put in place after thorough observation of how human beings act and function as a collective throughout the ages. What you believe in, in the absence of objective reality, is what shapes reality as a whole. But I believe that the objective reality is that tulpas are created from birth to death, to please their host regardless of whether they want to or not. Which is why I tortured myself on how bad of a human being I was for having such a close relationship with my tulpa. Let's overlook sentience and pseudo-sentience for a minute. The fact is that a lot of tulpas act just like the host wants them to act, that goes for a lot of thoughtforms. Soulbonds that were at first parroted act the way their host wants them to act. Parroting is just a more straightforward way of imposing what YOU want.

 

Whether both parties actually benefit or not is very relative.

A wise man once said: 'Before judging a man, walk a mile in his shoes. After that, who cares? He's a mile away, and you've got new shoes.'

 

Graced are those who could avoid this phenomenon. This is perhaps the worst expression of evil in humanity's history, but who am I to judge?

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Text.

 

I actually am an antinatalist, which is probably why I feel the way I do on this. I don't think creating a friend is negative, though, just selfish. :p

 

As far as free will goes, in general I don't believe in it, and in specifically relating to tulpas I also don't believe in it, but the reality of the situation is that it can't be known and probably doesn't matter. I just find it interesting to compare viewpoints with the community. Thank you for sharing yours.

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