Native Americans had the term skin walker to denote animals in human form or vice versa.
There’s the obvious explanation we accept, with almost no evidence that it was referring to witchcraft or shamanism. Maybe a rogue god.
But what if it’s a way to dehuminize someone to make them easier to out-group. A person from another tribe, a person who’s committed a grievous sin, like murder.
Is it describing a mythical creature, or the soullessness of the expression of a murderer. Or “rheumy eyes” of the sick. Something you need to desperately escape to keep your group whole.
true, some people who are up to no good, you can see it in their eyes.
Perhaps even scarier though is when people are up to no good but you can’t even tell, like remember there was a serial killer in the late 1970s early 1980s who ended up on a nationally-televised dating game show before anyone knew he was in the middle of a several-years-long killing spree. He looked like a perfectly normal harmless charming guy like anyone else just wanting to find a date.
IIRC The woman chose him as her date, he won the dating game show, but after initially getting acquainted with him, she decided to stop everything and NOT to go on a date with him. She dodged a bullet there.
He’s still kind of creepy when he’s on The Dating Game. The problem is that whole show is designed for men to be creepy and for women to give them that opportunity, so it’s not exactly the best metric. Anyway, here he is-
Native Americans had the term skin walker to denote animals in human form or vice versa.
There’s the obvious explanation we accept, with almost no evidence that it was referring to witchcraft or shamanism. Maybe a rogue god.
But what if it’s a way to dehuminize someone to make them easier to out-group. A person from another tribe, a person who’s committed a grievous sin, like murder.
Is it describing a mythical creature, or the soullessness of the expression of a murderer. Or “rheumy eyes” of the sick. Something you need to desperately escape to keep your group whole.
true, some people who are up to no good, you can see it in their eyes.
Perhaps even scarier though is when people are up to no good but you can’t even tell, like remember there was a serial killer in the late 1970s early 1980s who ended up on a nationally-televised dating game show before anyone knew he was in the middle of a several-years-long killing spree. He looked like a perfectly normal harmless charming guy like anyone else just wanting to find a date.
IIRC The woman chose him as her date, he won the dating game show, but after initially getting acquainted with him, she decided to stop everything and NOT to go on a date with him. She dodged a bullet there.
He’s still kind of creepy when he’s on The Dating Game. The problem is that whole show is designed for men to be creepy and for women to give them that opportunity, so it’s not exactly the best metric. Anyway, here he is-
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cq0JSl6W74E