Do Soothers Reduce Their Target's Identity?

[+hwiles]

Rereading SoS, I noticed that when Wax enters a soothing parlor, he describes the sensation as, "[tearing away] the core of his self."

My question is: is it Realmatically plausible that brass and zinc allomancy function through manipulation of a target's Spiritual Identity?  Meaning, does a rioter or soother influence the emotional state of their target by selectively enhancing/suppressing aspects of that target's Identity?

What I'm basically getting at is: Could a powerful soother, or group of soothers, concentrate their power on a ferring, and thereby allow that ferring to create unkeyed metalminds?  Is there any reason that this would be silly, inconsistent with what we know about the metallic arts, or broken?

I'm trying to reconcile this with the little we know about the southerners' medallion manufacturing and the Set's unkeyed metalminds (namely, the goldmind with vast stores that I assume required a compounder)

[Jedal he/him]

2 hours ago, hwiles said:

Rereading SoS, I noticed that when Wax enters a soothing parlor, he describes the sensation as, "[tearing away] the core of his self."

My question is: is it Realmatically plausible that brass and zinc allomancy function through manipulation of a target's Spiritual Identity?  Meaning, does a rioter or soother influence the emotional state of their target by selectively enhancing/suppressing aspects of that target's Identity?

What I'm basically getting at is: Could a powerful soother, or group of soothers, concentrate their power on a ferring, and thereby allow that ferring to create unkeyed metalminds?  Is there any reason that this would be silly, inconsistent with what we know about the metallic arts, or broken?

I'm trying to reconcile this with the little we know about the southerners' medallion manufacturing and the Set's unkeyed metalminds (namely, the goldmind with vast stores that I assume required a compounder)

I don't think they reduce Identity... Merely suppress emotion. Emotion and Identity in my mind are two very different things. Emotions are what you feel based on your Identity, while Identity is made up of experiences and the emotions surrounding them. Loss of emotion is not loss of Identity,

[+hwiles]

2 minutes ago, Jedal said:

I don't think they reduce Identity... Merely suppress emotion. Emotion and Identity in my mind are two very different things. Emotions are what you feel based on your Identity, while Identity is made up of experiences and the emotions surrounding them. Loss of emotion is not loss of Identity,

I'll be the first to admit I haven't presented a conclusive argument, merely some speculation to build off of.  But by your own words, "emotions are what you feel based on your Identity."  I agree with this statement, manipulation of someone's Identity would be a manipulation of that person's emotions.

My question is whether it would be Realmatically plausible and consistent with other forms of the metallic arts, for emotional allomancy to be operating at the Spiritual level, and I'm starting to think it might be.

My hypothesis is primarily based around a thought experiment regarding the extreme case where a person is targeted by extremely powerful soothing (either from one very powerful source or many individuals working together):  If they become completely numb to all emotions, losing all feeling about their circumstances, could that be equivalent to having zero Spiritual Identity?

[Caevita he/him]

3 hours ago, hwiles said:

I'll be the first to admit I haven't presented a conclusive argument, merely some speculation to build off of.  But by your own words, "emotions are what you feel based on your Identity."  I agree with this statement, manipulation of someone's Identity would be a manipulation of that person's emotions.

My question is whether it would be Realmatically plausible and consistent with other forms of the metallic arts, for emotional allomancy to be operating at the Spiritual level, and I'm starting to think it might be.

My hypothesis is primarily based around a thought experiment regarding the extreme case where a person is targeted by extremely powerful soothing (either from one very powerful source or many individuals working together):  If they become completely numb to all emotions, losing all feeling about their circumstances, could that be equivalent to having zero Spiritual Identity?

It's a fun idea, but it doesn't quite go one for one.  I think the case study here is Straff Venture, who had all his emotions duralumin Soothed by Vin.  His description of the experience, I think, made it clear that, while he did briefly feel no emotion whatsoever, he was never any less... Straff.  That lack of emotion felt horribly unnatural to him, indicating that his Identity was still at full strength; he knew that he ought to care about his experiences, even though he was momentarily incapable of doing so.  I think that, had his Identity been suppressed, he would not have seen the experience as something so horrific after the fact.

That said, I agree that Soothing and Rioting probably happen at the Spiritual level, but they are invaders to the other person's Identity.  In other words, they do not shrink or grow said Identity, so much as they graft bits on (or chop them off).

[Spoolofwhool]

Spiritual identity related to encoding investiture is just a mark of the spiritual aspect. It's not related to one's cognitive sense of self. As a mental power, rioting and soothing appear to affect the cognitive, so no reason why they would change the spiritual identity.

[Caevita he/him]

33 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Spiritual identity related to encoding investiture is just a mark of the spiritual aspect. It's not related to one's cognitive sense of self. As a mental power, rioting and soothing appear to affect the cognitive, so no reason why they would change the spiritual identity.

I have to question your implication that one's sense of self is a matter of the cognitive realm.  A friend's compliment pleases me, not because I think, "I am a person who cares what my friends think of me," but simply because that is who I am.  I do not think about it at all; it has no place in the cognitive realm.

Unless you were only trying to argue against my last point that Rioting and Soothing may touch on the Spiritual realm?  It's a fair point.  If I were to suddenly find myself happier because of a Rioter, it would have nothing to do with a reaction to my surroundings based on my Identity.  It is simply a transitory state of mind which I happen to be in.

So, consider me corrected.

[+hwiles]

Recall:

Quote

All things exist in three Realms, Gaotona. Physical, Cognitive, Spiritual. The Physical is what we feel, what is before us. The Cognitive is how an object is viewed and how it views itself. The Spiritual Realm contains an object’s soul— its essence— as well as the ways it is connected to the things and people around it. ”

— Shai discussing Forgery with Gaotona

This is an explanation of Realmatics from a Cosmere resident so it's fundamentally imperfect, however, I still find it to be useful.  Probably the easiest explanation is that soothing directly manipulates the a person's Physical presence.  I don't like this explanation because the Physical presence is subject to physical laws and limitations, meaning that for a soother to manipulate a target's emotions they would have to be triggering chemical reactions in that person's brain at a distance (which is weird).  Soothing the same person over and over would therefore run the serious risk of screwing up their brain chemistry (probably temporarily, but possibly permanently) triggering mood-swings, depression, suicidal thoughts, and potentially even cancer.

A reasonable argument can be made that soothing operates at the cognitive level.  I'd be willing to accept that emotions fall under the umbrella of "How [an object] views itself." But this fails to explain how hemalurgic constructs can be mind controlled via powerful emotional allomancy.

The last explanation is that soothing operates on the Spiritual level.  Kandra have holes in their spirit web.  Ruin can funnel power into these holes somehow to control them.  Therefore, I would speculate that emotional allomancy operates via a more-or-less similar mechanism, IE: it is a manipulation of a target's Spiritual manifestation.  I feel like the emotional changes could be affected most elegantly through manipulation of the target's Identity, though this isn't necessarily the only possible explanation.

9 hours ago, Caevita said:

It's a fun idea, but it doesn't quite go one for one.  I think the case study here is Straff Venture, who had all his emotions duralumin Soothed by Vin.  His description of the experience, I think, made it clear that, while he did briefly feel no emotion whatsoever, he was never any less... Straff.  That lack of emotion felt horribly unnatural to him, indicating that his Identity was still at full strength; he knew that he ought to care about his experiences, even though he was momentarily incapable of doing so.  I think that, had his Identity been suppressed, he would not have seen the experience as something so horrific after the fact.

That said, I agree that Soothing and Rioting probably happen at the Spiritual level, but they are invaders to the other person's Identity.  In other words, they do not shrink or grow said Identity, so much as they graft bits on (or chop them off).

I would argue that his horror at the experience was due to the fact that while his Identity was suppressed, his Spirtitual Connection and Cognitive aspects were not.  He still had full access to and awareness of the relationships and attachments he maintains with the world and people around him as well as all of his knowledge, but was forcibly made to view these these things without any of his sense of self.  I would speculate that the reason he was so traumatized by the experience was because he's such a crummy person; experiencing and viewing his own life, with all his intimate knowledge of it, without any of the bias conferred by his Spiritual Identity, left him repulsed.

[Spoolofwhool]

Spiritual identity in the scope of keying investiture to a person has nothing to do with the scope of defining them, as far as we know. It's just a marker, an indicator present in their spiritweb. Removing someone's identity doesn't change who you are as a person.

Here's an example if you want one: If you steal someone's feruchemical power through hemalurgy, you gain access to their metalminds because you've stolen a copy of their identity key. That wouldn't change you into being more like them though, I believe. I don't think Bleeder became a slightly better person after she stole that terriswoman's steelrunning powers. 

 

 

 

[Caevita he/him]

31 minutes ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Spiritual identity in the scope of keying investiture to a person has nothing to do with the scope of defining them, as far as we know. It's just a marker, an indicator present in their spiritweb. Removing someone's identity doesn't change who you are as a person.

Here's an example if you want one: If you steal someone's feruchemical power through hemalurgy, you gain access to their metalminds because you've stolen a copy of their identity key. That wouldn't change you into being more like them though, I believe. I don't think Bleeder became a slightly better person after she stole that terriswoman's steelrunning powers. 

 

 

 

Actually, it's been my understanding that taking a spike  does import some measure of the spiked person into your own Identity, making you less mentally stable (and more easily influenced by Ruin).  When Kell, as Preservation, saw Spook, Spook was cracked as all heck.  Ruin had been enlarging those cracks, sure, but he didn't create them, that Hemalurgic pewter spike did.  I could be misinterpreting that though; it certainly wouldn't be the first (or last) time.

 

8 hours ago, hwiles said:

Recall:

This is an explanation of Realmatics from a Cosmere resident so it's fundamentally imperfect, however, I still find it to be useful.  Probably the easiest explanation is that soothing directly manipulates the a person's Physical presence.  I don't like this explanation because the Physical presence is subject to physical laws and limitations, meaning that for a soother to manipulate a target's emotions they would have to be triggering chemical reactions in that person's brain at a distance (which is weird).  Soothing the same person over and over would therefore run the serious risk of screwing up their brain chemistry (probably temporarily, but possibly permanently) triggering mood-swings, depression, suicidal thoughts, and potentially even cancer.

A reasonable argument can be made that soothing operates at the cognitive level.  I'd be willing to accept that emotions fall under the umbrella of "How [an object] views itself." But this fails to explain how hemalurgic constructs can be mind controlled via powerful emotional allomancy.

The last explanation is that soothing operates on the Spiritual level.  Kandra have holes in their spirit web.  Ruin can funnel power into these holes somehow to control them.  Therefore, I would speculate that emotional allomancy operates via a more-or-less similar mechanism, IE: it is a manipulation of a target's Spiritual manifestation.  I feel like the emotional changes could be affected most elegantly through manipulation of the target's Identity, though this isn't necessarily the only possible explanation.

I would argue that his horror at the experience was due to the fact that while his Identity was suppressed, his Spirtitual Connection and Cognitive aspects were not.  He still had full access to and awareness of the relationships and attachments he maintains with the world and people around him as well as all of his knowledge, but was forcibly made to view these these things without any of his sense of self.  I would speculate that the reason he was so traumatized by the experience was because he's such a crummy person; experiencing and viewing his own life, with all his intimate knowledge of it, without any of the bias conferred by his Spiritual Identity, left him repulsed.

Well argued, hwiles.  I still don't fully agree with your interpretation of Straff's experience, but hey, who said I was so smart?  I leave you to your opinion, knowing it very well might prove closer to the truth than my own.

[Spoolofwhool]

1 minute ago, Caevita said:

Actually, it's been my understanding that taking a spike  does import some measure of the spiked person into your own Identity, making you less mentally stable (and more easily influenced by Ruin).  When Kell, as Preservation, saw Spook, Spook was cracked as all heck.  Ruin had been enlarging those cracks, sure, but he didn't create them, that Hemalurgic pewter spike did.  I could be misinterpreting that though; it certainly wouldn't be the first (or last) time.

 

I'm not seeing the connection between becoming less mentally stable and having a bit of the other person in you always with hemalugy. Do you have actual proof of this occurring because the example you've given has been explained as a known product of having holes jammed into your spiritweb as a result of the spike, which is a way, but not the only way of opening yourself to outside influences. 

[Caevita he/him]

6 hours ago, Spoolofwhool said:

I'm not seeing the connection between becoming less mentally stable and having a bit of the other person in you always with hemalugy. Do you have actual proof of this occurring because the example you've given has been explained as a known product of having holes jammed into your spiritweb as a result of the spike, which is a way, but not the only way of opening yourself to outside influences. 

Hm.  Yeah, maybe just an assumption on my part.  I was drawing a connection between the mentally unstable (who can be influenced by Ruin) and those affected by Hemalurgy.  But, thinking about it, probably just a correlation there.  Two different but unrelated ways of reaching the same thing (a damaged Spiritweb).  Sorry 'bout that.

[+hwiles]

On 2/14/2017 at 0:12 AM, Spoolofwhool said:

Spiritual identity related to encoding investiture is just a mark of the spiritual aspect. It's not related to one's cognitive sense of self. As a mental power, rioting and soothing appear to affect the cognitive, so no reason why they would change the spiritual identity.

Rioting and soothing allow for the mind-controlling of hemalurgic constructs.  What little we know of this process when it is accomplished by Ruin indicates that it is accomplished by directing Investiture into holes in a construct's spirit web.  Now, it's possible that hemalurgy causes holes in the Cognitive manifestation of hemalurgic constructs as well, I believe Khriss mentions that she doesn't understand what, if any, effect hemalurgy has in the cognitive realm in one of the Ars Arcanum.  I hadn't really considered this before, but if you're right then this might be how emotional allomancy allows for mind-control.

I feel like Identity would be largely redundant if it functioned only as you say.  That by no means is an indication that you're wrong, heck, aluminum mistings get a raw deal so why not aluminum ferrings?  Thanks for the feedback.

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, hwiles said:

I feel like Identity would be largely redundant if it functioned only as you say.  That by no means is an indication that you're wrong, heck, aluminum mistings get a raw deal so why not aluminum ferrings?  Thanks for the feedback.

Redundant? Spiritual identity is extremely powerful when manipulated. Across a number of systems it is what prevents other people from directly tampering with investiture you're using. It creates separations which prevents people from trivalizing the magic use of other people. If it didn't exist a number of systems or technologies would become a lot less powerful as people could a lot more easily interfere in what others have done. It being as simple as I explain doesn't make storing it anywhere close to a raw deal as being to burn aluminum. In any case, aluminum allomancy has huge potential as well, so it's not that useless. Duralumin is the true raw deal as far as I can tell. 

Here are a few examples where identity comes into play I believe.

Foremost, feruchemical metalminds. Without the existence of identity, anyone could access anyone's metalminds. Stealing them would become a danger and feruchemists would be a lot less willing to make them. The fact that storing identity is possible is what enables the creation of medallions. Furthermore, a full feruchemist who has learned to store their identity could probably access any metalmind they wanted, regardless of it being keyed or unkeyed.

Warbreaker:

Spoiler

Identity is probably what prevents people from taking the breath other people have invested into objects. Without it, there would be a lot less awakening.

Stormlight Archives

Spoiler

I think I read a WoB somewhere which said or implied that identity is what prevents a surgebinder from taking the stormlight from someone else's shardplate. 

 

Edited February 15, 2017 by Spoolofwhool

[+hwiles]

To clarify, I meant redundant as in: if it's the only power you have, there's not a lot you can do with it.  IE: storing and tapping Identity, by itself, isn't particularly useful.

I've heard speculation that one Trueself could store their own Identity in a metalmind and be able to tap Identity stored by another Trueself in another metalmind.  And there's a scene in BoM that seems to promote this idea, so I'll concede that it could have some potential use that isn't readily obvious at the moment.

Hadn't ever heard that about Stormlight Archive, but. it does make a certain kind of sense, so good point.

[Spoolofwhool]

Fair enough. Without any other magic system or other investiture interaction, it is as useful as aluminum allomancy, so under that extremely limited scope you're correct. Although, since feruchemy, as far as we know, defaults to all the powers, being alone is an exception, so you still can't really call it redundant. 

[Yata he/him]

2 hours ago, hwiles said:

To clarify, I meant redundant as in: if it's the only power you have, there's not a lot you can do with it.  IE: storing and tapping Identity, by itself, isn't particularly useful.

The same thing may be told to the Soulbearer.

Anyway I have this theory, that tapping Identity (and improve the Investiture's Interference) may work to a some extent as a Investiture's Defence. Like to say: It's more hard to affect you with direct magic

[+hwiles]

29 minutes ago, Yata said:

The same thing may be told to the Soulbearer.

Anyway I have this theory, that tapping Identity (and improve the Investiture's Interference) may work to a some extent as a Investiture's Defence. Like to say: It's more hard to affect you with direct magic

True, soulbearers don't seem particularly useful by themselves (except to serve as targets for hemalurgic spiking ).

Your second point is very interesting.  I could definitely see a Trueself tapping Identity being harder to soulcast into smoke than another kind of ferring (all other things being equal).  I wonder, would that would make them more resistant to soothing and rioting too?

[Spoolofwhool]

1 hour ago, Yata said:

Anyway I have this theory, that tapping Identity (and improve the Investiture's Interference) may work to a some extent as a Investiture's Defence. Like to say: It's more hard to affect you with direct magic

Possibly, though I don't think identity would work that way. Burning aluminum would be a superior defense I think.

[Yata he/him]

1 minute ago, Spoolofwhool said:

Possibly, though I don't think identity would work that way. Burning aluminum would be a superior defense I think.

Indeed you may be right...I worked on the premise of "identity and Investiture's interference aren't an on/off switch" but this may be wrong and maybe Investiture's Interference is already at its top in nature.

Indeed burning Alluminium is a good countermove to flush all Investiure effect on you but I would point on the fact that a Trueself may allow effects to affect him using his power. He may offer a better target than someone else and use this ability strategically, much more if he is a Alluminium twinborn who may later discharge the effect (if it is not a one-shot kill)