You should read up on tulpamancy. There is a subset of people who would argue that the consciousnesses in your brain are just as much deserving of a life as you are.
There is a subreddit (r/tulpa) that deals with questions about tulpamancy. They are very very insistent there there is a difference between mental illness and tulpamancy, primarily because tulpas are not supposed to bring you any harm.
I don't practice tulpamancy, but my mind was just so blown by this other perspective that I've been passively observing them for the past few months.
I'm not sure what level of contrarianism this is, but my armchair speculation is:
- "Tulpamancers" are mostly not mentally ill (beyond the ailments shared by a lot of nerds, like social anxiety), and probably very few actually have psychotic conditions
- Some variation of a multi-consciousness theory or adjacent theory has a decent chance of being true
- Even if one of those theories is true, and even though tulpamancers aren't mentally ill, tulpa construction is still basically bullshit self-trickery and not an actual other consciousness you're dealing with
Humans are good at creating fiction and myths. Maybe constructing a tulpa is kind of like when you write character dialogue in a novel. You can really embody the characters and hear them talk and make choices, and they basically start to write themselves. If you spend enough time with your characters, you'll start to feel they're real.
There is a subreddit (r/tulpa) that deals with questions about tulpamancy. They are very very insistent there there is a difference between mental illness and tulpamancy, primarily because tulpas are not supposed to bring you any harm.
I don't practice tulpamancy, but my mind was just so blown by this other perspective that I've been passively observing them for the past few months.