Or the biological need to be afraid of ourselves because if I saw a human standing in my backyard in the shadows I would be as scared as if it were an alien, humans aren't a joke when they want to kill or maim and humans love to kill or maim if they need something you have
I call this feeling "The Holy Spirit" and no I'm not religious, hear me out.
So there's "The Father" which is you, in charge of everything.
Then there's "The Son" which is your Jesus, the bit of you that does shit mostly perfectly without any input from you. The scary example of this is when you drive to work and can't remember the drive at all. Jesus Take the wheel. Teach your Jesus right and you can trust he'll do things fine.
Then The Holy Spirit, which is that part of you that sees everything, before the filters are applied, and let's you know something is off. There's no obvious reason for it, but there's something off about this guy and we need to get away from him as soon as possible and never interact with them again.
The Jesus part is the important bit for most of us. Learning to play the guitar? Teach your Jesus. When you've practiced enough you can just trust that Jesus will hit the notes while you concentrate on singing along.
When I learned to Juggle I just taught my Jesus how to throw properly so it lands in the other hand.
At work I teach my Jesus how to do the manual labour, do the checks I need to do, and I can concentrate on ripping on my work colleagues.
"But in general, take my advice, when you meet anything that's going to be Human and isn't yet, or used to be Human once and isn't now, or ought to be Human and isn't, you keep your eyes on it and feel for your hatchet."
Illness, death, and antisocial behavior. All of these were threats we evolved to handle, people who are "a little bit off" in one way or another, who might endanger the group or individual. This, and that our pattern seeking brains don't like it when something doesn't easily fit within an existing schema, even more so if it lies just outside of our existing preconceptions.
Obviously, I can't say that these definitely are the reasons why we experience the uncanny valley, but I think it's probably a better explanation than... Skin walkers? Or whatever else the meme would be implying.
Still, it's a cool premise for a horror story at least.
Our instincts draw from pretty far back in our biological origins as well. The notion of mimiclike predators is pretty damned ancient and likely a factor for very earliest common ancestry.
Psychopath is derived from Ancient Greek... And even besides that, laymen generally use the term to describe ASPD despite the two conditions not being entirely the same. Don't be obtuse.
The best non-DSM category for socio/psychopath I've come across is the lack of affective empathy, but intact cognitive empathy. (non-DSM because that's just symptom clusters not aetiologies, you quite literally need to have broken laws to be diagnosed with ASPD). Then you have a look at what skills are useful to have as a surgeon, like not flinching when you cut into people, and their character traits including their bedside manners, yep there's plenty of perfectly integrated psychopaths around. Same goes for pyromaniacs fire departments are full of them, you only ever hear about the ones who don't get the curve.
Or you need to identify those who aren't behaving properly (sickness or other resource intense disability) and should be outcast from the group (something we don't need to do today, but the right wing narrative insists that need to do)
I was thinking psychopath. Someone who tries to blend in and act normal but never quite gets it. We have no problem be horrors to other species, but early humans couldn’t afford a psychopath willing and wanting to kill their own tribe.
Psychopath is just Latin for mentally ill person. Someone suffering from depression is a "psychopath", and no, depressed people aren't dangerous. What the fuck is wrong with you?
Even though that's what the latin translation is, that's not what the word means. The definition is "Psychopathy, or psychopathic personality is a personality construct characterized by impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egocentric traits masked by superficial charm and the outward presence of apparent normality".
Okay, first of all: the DSM is used primarily in North America. The majority of the world uses ICDM.
Secondly, the DSM has gone through many iterations and changes. For instance, DSM-I and -II contained psychopathy as a mental illness. It was replaced by ASPD in DSM-III. What we term today as "major depressive disorder" was also introduced in DSM-III. Did depression not exist prior to the third DSM? Did ASPD not exist? Does psychopathy not exist now that it has been replaced by ASPD?
Thirdly, there's so much bloody overlap in conditions listed in the DSM that you could present two psychiatrists with the same list of symptoms and they would diagnose two different disorders. And to my mind, this lends more credence to the first DSM's principle classifications of psychotic, neurotic, and behavioural disorders.
To summarize, the DSM is regional and therefore cannot be applied globally. It describes medical conditions and those medical conditions can be redefined at any time. And it is borderline unreliable due to diagnostic confusion and overspecification. In short, the presence or lack thereof of some cluster of symptoms in the DSM is not an indicator of the existence of a condition.
The DSM removed it because it was fake. Early psychologists believed in it, and over time they were proven wrong, so the official materials were revised.
Actually, tribal humans tend to support people with disabilities, even severe ones. It's only feudal and capitalist societies that treat disabled people with cruelty. It isn't natural.
Back 4 million years the whole world really was a planet of the apes. So in some ways recognising something that wasn't your species, but looked like it might have avoided conflict, loss of territory, loss of food..
I think you missed the proverbial point. We likely slaughtered the chimps and put their heads on pikes. Chimps have nothing on the violence humans are capable of inflicting.
Yeah the context is that many indigenous people depended on the buffalo for food.
It was basically the same as when Israel pours concrete down wells and burns olive groves that took centuries to get that productive. They knew for every buffalo they killed, an indian would starve.
That image is similar to the rooms full of luggage in Auschwitz in what it represents.
I remember a documentary about a famous northwest passage expedition that was never seen again. One of the inuit people they talked to during an investigation claimed they found a boat, and in the captain's quarters they found a body in the bed with a big smile on its face. That would be absolutely terrifying, but apparently that's what naturally happens to corpses when their lips and gums receed.
You've just ruined my night. I screamed. My phone was like an inch from my face and I was all tucked into bed. That triggered something primaly unsettling for me. Thank you
You're right though, as soon as someone dies, there's something not right at all about how they look. They don't look asleep, they look uncanny valley.
