I'm Baumarius, telepathic wolf phoenix therian & film electronica composer. I am everything, I am nothing, and I'd like to know you. Talk to me and I will listen! https://linktr.ee/baumarius
Hi all! I'm sure you've heard the news lately and are aware of what this means - both for the US and for the planet. I want to offer you some words of encouragement.
I won't stop fighting for what I believe in, even if it kills me. Even if the world is looking bleak. Even if it's futile and my efforts will be in vain. I'm here to express myself, connect with whoever I can, learn all that I can, and to take that with me wherever and whenever I go. Death will not stop me.
You're not alone. You may feel the pull to withdraw and disconnect, and that's normal. Take care of yourself, first and foremost. And know that community is one of the most important things for us to maintain, as well as the values that unite us toward a future where harmless self-expression is free and safe to do so. If you believe in that too, you will always have a safe place in my community. Always.
May love win in these coming times.
My Discord is open: https://discord.gg/4MkdmuyreZ
Listen to Starlight Telepath, my latest album! Instrumental therian music, by a therian ^^
Against all odds, in spite of fear, regardless of the repercussions, and in the face of death. The reality is that what's coming may put us all to the test, but if we stand together, we won't fall. So hold the line and don't be afraid. Be proud and live and love like you fucking mean it.
Going dark on this site for a while, both for my mental health and so I can focus on fixing my health and financial situation. Turning off anonymous asks for now, too.
why do you accuse people of color of being AI when they criticize you for being racist? that's really weird, and looks even worse for you considering how you've been handling any criticism of your idea that doesn't pat you on the ass for it.
There are easy ways to tell that someone used AI to write for them, and for the sake of this example, I'm going to write (kind of) like one. This is by no means an exhaustive list:
Em-dahes (—). Most people don't know the shortcut to use these and simply use en-dashes (-) instead, even though it is technically correct to use em-dashes for pauses in thought. AI outputs are littered with them. On other sites, I literally have the em-dash muted so I stop getting fake articles recommended to me—they're full of misinformation, repetitive voicing, and a feel that screams laziness.
Text generated by an AI tends to describe things in lists of two, three, or more—most often three. It overuses them. This makes the text feel predictable, sterile, and bland. It comes with a cadence that is obvious and occasionally redundant. The moment you start noticing it you may find yourself disengaging, feeling upset, or becoming annoyed with the fact that you're reading AI slop now. Next time you peruse Tumblr, news articles written after ~2022, or the text of one of your family member's posts on Facebook, you may begin to question what's actually real. You're gonna see it everywhere now. If you're concerned that the discussion of a topic like empiricism is going to whitewash your subculture or prevent you from making others believe that you can physically shift, just wait 'til you hear what AI can do!
Text generated by AI also tends to be littered with comparisons. This isn't just happenstance—it's designed that way. It's not even subtle—it's obvious. It's not this—it's that. Run any of their responses through an AI text detector and you won't just be surprised—you'll be mortified by all the positive results. If for some reason their actual voice is indistinguishable from an AI's, I'd recommend they switch it up, read a book, or practice writing without a computer.
AI often uses metaphor in a way that's feels cliche, and occasionally obtuse. Saying "I'm closing the door and locking it from the outside" after seeing the rest of these tells immediately before blocking me is so blatantly obvious.
Anyway, I had no idea they were a person of color, but if anyone comes to my blog to feed me AI slop as a "genuine" rebuttal to points I've made, one's physical characteristics are beside the point—it's just plain trashy behavior and kind of disrespectful, tbh. It tells me that they didn't even take the time to consider my point of view—they needed an AI to summarize it and regurgitate a response for them.
This is especially egregious considering that AI gets important details wrong more than half the time and can even cause a person to develop AI psychosis. I have a feeling that this form of psychosis may also arrive through secondhand exposure—even if you set your search engine to something like DuckDuckGo and turn all AI features off, you'll find that nowadays most of the top results of any given search will be articles with text generated by AI. And that's not just annoying—it's terrifying.
Surely you must be tired of it by now.
As for the accusations of racism, they're just plain false. Advocating for empiricism is not racist - it's just a tool. Neither is reblogging a post where someone referenced existing colonialist tropes such as the "noble savage" to describe y'all's apparent terror of a thought experiment that might make you reconsider what you believe. Y'all keep trying to make me out to seem invalid or racist - grasping at straws to stop the spread of my ideas. If you would like to provide a non-Western alternative to methodological solipsism that might invalidate my thought experiments, I'm still waiting. I'm totally willing to consider other alternatives, but y'all have yet to provide any examples except to say "Your ideas are problematic because they sound like this horrible thing and now you don't want to debate us!!! Delete your account!"
Wandering up to a missing persons poster on a telephone pole, and even though your new brain can’t understand the words, you still recognize your former face in the picture.
A long since finished com from 3/19/25 for my girlfriend, cadencecall.bsky.social
On Therianthropy, Otherkin, Zoesthesia, and My Perspective on Subjectivity
This post might make your brain hurt, so take your time with it. As someone who was raised in a cult, escaped, and was forced to deconstruct the origins of belief in order to stay sane and retrieve control over my life, this topic is very important to me. Some of the thought experiments I put forth were originally defense mechanisms against others trying to rewrite my own beliefs with theirs. You may or may not agree and I don't necessarily posit that I am "correct" in my analysis; I don't really expect anything one way or the other, but I am curious what will come of it. I want to emphasize now that I do not necessarily think that anyone else needs to adopt this perspective, only that it is useful to me.
Yesterday I met face-to-face with a researcher to discuss the "zoesthesia" term I proposed a few months ago as a potential precursor or stand-in for terms such as therianthropy and otherkin. They brought up a number of good points. It was a delight to hear the insight of someone both educated in psychology and external to the community, and about some of the future studies they're still formulating (I can't discuss that at this time, but they are entirely unrelated to this topic).
It became clear that adoption of this term may be unlikely to aid many of the major social issues plaguing the community both here and abroad. Although it sounds like "synesthesia" - a phenomenon rarely, if ever, targeted by bad actors, zoesthesia may still be a hot topic for those who take offense to the non-conforming simply because of its nature. They did find it interesting that zoesthesia prioritizes experience over identity. Whether zoesthesia is actually adopted, improved upon, or thrown out, I have no preference.
What I proposed during that meeting was a slightly more refined version of the previously proposed definition, which does not necessarily try to include every form of alterhumanity, some forms of which I've learned may be entirely unrelated. After more discussion and thought, I refined the idea further. This is what I arrived upon:
Zoesthesia
Zoesthesia ('zo-esthesia') is the experience of sensations, perceptions, and behaviors subjectively interpreted as belonging to something incongruent to one's own biology. Interpretations and identities arising from these experiences are personal and diverse; zoesthesia can be present without interpretation, especially at early ages, but is often experienced as an embodied identity.
Individuals who experience zoesthesia have a wide spectrum of experiences, often leading to unique endeavors and forms of expression in social, artistic, literary, and professional contexts.
The experience of zoesthesia involves:
Experiences (e.g. sensations, perceptions, memories, behaviors, desires, social cues, states of consciousness, and/or involuntary urges) that are often subjectively interpreted as belonging to something other than one's own biological species,
Experiences that may vary in form and intensity, remain at a stable baseline, or become triggered by internal or external stimuli,
2. And may include any number of the following:
An identity or overarching sensation that embodies these experiences,
An understanding that one still has a human body,
Dysphoria regarding the incongruence between one's physical body and perceived embodied experience,
Dreams or trance-like states that are experienced through the lens of something incongruent to one's biology,
A strengthening or increased frequency of experiences after one becomes conscious of them,
And/or a personal interpretation of these experiences as non-human through psychological or spiritual means.
"Zoesthesia" is derived from "zoe" and "aisthesis" - Greek, literally "life perception" or "animal perception."
So why did I create this?
Obviously, this could technically be considered as a refined definition of therianthropy and/or otherkin. It does not deny the existence of spiritual experience or belief, but doesn't assert that anything we feel (whether interpreted as psychological or spiritual) is objectively "real" or "unreal." This avoids language that reifies belief as fact, since it is impossible to measure how objectively "real" something is in the first place. It also avoids the linguistic ambiguity present when someone says something like "I'm a nonhuman animal," which is typically inferred to be about one's subjective interpretation of reality, but can - from a purely linguistic standpoint, be confused with an assertion of objective reality. That kind of ambiguity has resulted in some individuals claiming that certain identities under the alterhuman umbrella are inherently delusional.
If I'd like you to have a clear picture of why this proposal exists so that we can have constructive discussions, I must assume that you're entirely unfamiliar with my worldview and deconstruct its basis for you. Before we continue, I would like you to consider the following terms and thought experiments and how I use them. I ask that you try to understand my perspective on these ideas. As I've said previously, some of these things are thought experiments informed by my upbringing and experiences. I cannot assert that they are objectively true.
If you would like to skip this, go to the "Current Definitions" section.
1 . Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is the view that all knowledge and belief is derived from firsthand experience, e.g. through the senses. This philosophy is the basis for the scientific method and the following thought experiment:
Consider that you may have already taken for granted the belief that a real person wrote this post and not just a collection of subatomic particles resembling a person. I believe it to be a fact that I wrote this because doing so is now within my memory and I believe that my memories were not placed there last Thursday. I might tell you that this is a "fact," but then you have to believe that I am a reasonably trustworthy person and that a "reasonably trustworthy person" is an inherently "real" fixture in your reality.
You also may believe or take for granted that the conversion of the letters you're reading on your device into concepts in your consciousness isn't just zeroes and ones but a complex process derived from quantum mechanics, psychology, or the amorphous idea of "the soul" that none of us can put a definitive finger on.
These beliefs are not empirically verifiable or unverifiable because we cannot physically sense the world on this scale (as far as is generally understood). Even if you use tools to measure the world on that scale, you then have to believe in the accuracy of your tools.
With this in mind, you may need to be wary of what you assert as "truth." The only thing you may truly be able to know without the need for reason is what you are currently feeling and thinking in this ever-present moment. Everything else in your head that you "know" (e.g. your memories) is made up with varying measures of belief. It is entirely possible that the past may not exist. Attempting to make judgements on that information can result in some pretty funky paradoxes, but there are ways to talk about experience without invoking belief. This is why I have structured the refined definition of zoesthesia to emphasize interpretation.
This thought experiment is a robust methodology known as methodological solipsism. If you still don't believe that any of this is valid or useful because you believe in another kind of philosophy, religion, or dogma...can you see where this is going? I cannot emphasize how important it feels to be precise in the language that we use so that we might avoid creating and promoting dogma while just trying to discuss and share our experiences.
Growing up in religion we are often taught that belief is virtue and that you must believe in one way or another. After all, taking the stance of "not believing" something is the belief that something is not. It seems like a circular dilemma on the surface and cults will often try to manipulate that intuition. I've since found that the responsible thing to do is to simply observe the moment and decline to believe in the first place. There are plenty of beliefs you can function without. The state I get into when I'm feeling particularly mental-shifted is a state in which belief and language is largely reduced or implicit, my inner dialogue is non-existent, and if I do think it tends to be in pictures. If one can exist and thrive in such a state, why don't so many of us ever leave that monologue?
2. Spirit
Often thought of as a force, being, consciousness, or presence
For the purpose of sticking to the concept of empiricism and the previous thought experiment, I would suggest that a spirit is no different from any concept that you can interact with in your head that is based in something you have observed externally or internally. It may also include any actual object or being in the external world (some would call beliefs related to this animism or panpsychism).
It is not possible to verify the "being-ness" of any particular object or animal, whether it is conscious or just a bunch of atoms playing the part. Just watch Vsauce deconstruct a chair's existence. You are free to believe that it is more than that, but that will dive us into spirituality, dogma, and paradox. I see "spirit" and "object" as synonymous with "concept."
3. Spirituality
A preoccupation with or capacity for understanding moral, existential, or metaphysical questions without the dictation of dogma.
Whatever you've experienced through your senses is something that you have come to know, and in that sense "spiritual experience" is just another way to describe firsthand experience that falls perfectly under the umbrella of empiricism. If you have the firsthand experience of going into trance and entering [what you believe to be] the astral plane, that is still received through your senses and is a part of your conscious experience. Even your mind's eye could be considered a kind of sensation. Your experiences, no matter how you see or discuss them, are inherently valid because you experienced them.
"Valid" in this context simply means that you experienced what you experienced and we are giving you the benefit of the doubt because we can't see inside your consciousness. To say something is valid is not necessarily to make the impossible assertion that your interpretation of your experiences is based in "reality." Good researchers try their best to maintain this perspective to respect everyone they study. To claim that someone else's experience is invalid is a just another belief that no one can definitively assert as truth.
4. Dogma
In religion, dogma is typically referred to as a collection of deeply held beliefs often passed down through generations. Those beliefs can seem "spiritual" in that they may have once been based in someone's firsthand experience, but this quickly leads people into a trap.
It can also be thought of as the rules, laws, and rituals you believe in. We create new rules all the time as we gain new experiences. If you're open to new experiences, you may find that it is possible to break whatever rules you've previously prescribed to existence. No law can be empirically verified as universal or eternal except maybe entropy - until even that breaks down at the event horizon of a black hole, which typically breaks our understanding of the laws of physics.
Some rituals may be useful to you, especially if they help promote or maintain your well-being. Practicing something like Tai Chi every day is a ritual that can keep your mind and body healthy. Actually practicing it and believing that it helps you (because you have, in fact, found that it does in your own experience) is entirely empirical. Believing that it will make you super lucky and start seeing synchronicities everywhere would be superstitious. Superstition is often based in dogma too.
You create your own miniature personal dogma every moment you look to the past for guidance. Even firsthand/spiritual experience can transform into a kind of dogma the moment it becomes a variable for calculating future actions. In some cases this is necessary for your survival. It can also become overblown and lead to things like depression and anxiety, especially in the form of trauma and limiting beliefs. Trauma can become a form of dogma, too - if it changes the way you live and behave.
Finally, dogma is often the result of:
5. Heuristic Processing
To put it simply, heuristic processing means that your brain makes judgement calls based on limited information. You flop three dates in a row with potential partners you were interested in and your brain wants to jump to generalizations like "Maybe I'm just an unlovable person, I'm ugly, I'll always be lonely, etc." And then bam, 6 months down the line your life is agony and you've done nothing to actually improve your odds of connecting with somebody, reinforcing your confirmation bias (also what I would consider to be an element of dogma) that you're just not cut out for love. And so the downward spiral goes. It is so tempting to do this - heuristic processing is the primary mode of the brain, after all. Years of reinforcement only makes the resulting neural pathways stronger and harder to move on from. This is especially apparent with addictions like alcoholism, which literally alters the structure of the brain over time.
Everyone is guilty of this. It can useful because analyzing every single point of data would be absolutely debilitating, but it is a double-edged sword I believe you should be aware of. Look for it and you will find it everywhere.
These ideas, and perhaps relativism, are some of the pillars of my worldview and understanding of the thing we call reality. It's not an exhaustive list, but was wholly necessary for me to break things down this way so that I could purge myself of the dogma of the cult I was raised in. I'm not necessarily suggesting that you should subscribe to these ideas, but now you should be able to see where I'm coming from.
Now that these things are defined, I can get to the point!
The Problem
I'd like you to take a look at the following definitions and see if you can spot the problems:
If you don't see it, I'll explain in a moment. In response to the initial zoesthesia discussions, TG also published their own "Definitive Stance" in the forums, which suffers from the same problem. The definition above remains on the main site. This is the new one:
Wikipedia's page on "Therian subculture" (there isn't one for therianthropy itself) primarily focuses on identity, but at least mentions "the broader lived experience of therians":
Therianthropy's Fandom wiki page is much closer to emphasizing the experience, if a little term-heavy and requiring the use of "therian" in the main definition:
Pluralpedia's definition...
There are countless others, but I want to focus on the first two for the moment. Both definitions for therianthropy on TG take for granted the interpretation of one's relevant experiences as "non-human" or "animal." By omission, these definitions can ambiguously be taken to assert that we know for a fact that there are individuals out there who are having non-human animal experiences and aren't just delusional or whatever else. But the interpretation of these experiences as non-human is subjective belief, not an empirically tested fact.
Saying that "therianthropy is the internal experience of being a non-human animal" as TG maintains is the equivalent of creating a "true" statement and then forming a hypothesis that might make it seem true. At that point, you may as well be practicing Biblical numerology or quack science. The problem I have with this is, once again, that subjectivity and objectivity are not crystal clear.
Over years of certain members policing labels and experiences, there remains an ache for feelings of legitimacy in the community. Many feel like if they aren't "committed" enough to their identity, their experiences won't be seen as real and they won't get to be a part of the club. Some such people are coming back after being turned away by sites like TG years ago. I'm not active enough in the community to know what it is generally like now, but I would be concerned if these attitudes remain.
Those who put forth the idea that certain sensations, behaviors, or lack thereof are concrete proof that one is or isn't a particular nonhuman animal engage in something known as reification. According to David K. Naugle's Worldview: The history of a concept, "Reification takes place when natural or social processes are misunderstood or simplified; for example, when human creations are described as 'facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will'." Engaging in this itches at the incredibly human fear of social exclusion, especially in kids just trying to make sense of themselves. Some of these definitions keep the existence of this fallacy hidden by not emphasizing the fact that all of this is based on interpretation to begin with. This isn't an exact science and may never be. As much as one may desire for their experiences and identity to be perceived as legitimate by their peers, there is no empirical way to do this except to say that your experiences are valid because they're yours. Gatekeeping legitimacy encourages members to preen their experiences and limit their interpretations of them to a prescribed box.
This will not lead in a positive direction.
According to Therian Guide, we don't just have "therianthropy." We have suntherian, contherian, non-shifting therian, standard therian, polytherian, cladotherian, shifting, aura shifting, bi-location shifting, phantom shifting, dream shifting, astral shifting, and a whole slew of other terms. Point #1.1 in the definition of zoesthesia eliminates the need for this obtuseness entirely, reducing the need to use seemingly woo-woo terms like aura shifting, astral shifting, bi-location shifting, and more. I don't believe that these extra terms need to be publicized as part of an official definition, but instead as a historic note. Obviously I can't advocate for the outright removal of these terms and microlabels from the community's lexicon (this likely isn't even possible), but this all looks wildly disorganized.
Many of the other definitions on other sites (not all can be pictured here) emphasize either identity or a combination of experience and identity. Every site is different and some are better than others. Several have 5+ terms within the first couple paragraphs. For ease of understanding, I wonder if this may need to be refined.
Something I recently realized was that the younger alterhuman community is the only one I can think of that coins new terms every week to describe their own flavor of experiences. I feel that there must be some deeper commonalities that people are trying to get at. I believe that zoesthesia may alleviate some of those efforts, but I can only use it for myself.
I also believe that potential authority figures such as Therian Guide, as well as general members of the community at large, have a responsibility to avoid the promotion of magical thinking. By not educating people about the fact that the "non-human animal experience" is an interpretation of one's experiences as "non-human" rather than objective truth clearly within the definition of terms like therianthropy, magical thinking is encouraged. Anything and everything can start to become cultish when this responsibility is ignored. I'm not a fan of ambiguity. I bring this to everyone's attention out of concern more than anything. I was raised in a cult, which the new owner of TG herself rescued me from and helped me process. I've seen a lot of dangerous patterns that have left me observing from a distance. It is my hope that the future of the community is a positive and healthy one.
Okay! Finally got the spoons to come back to this.
First of all, I love this. Which isn't me saying that it's perfect or anything, but I feel like as a community we (general alter/nonhumanity, I'm not a therianthrope myself but I'll get into that later) are bizarrely resistant to taking any kind of empirical approach to discussing our experiences and identities. And like...why, you know? There's a lot to be learned there. And I also feel that as a whole we're wildly allergic to the idea of academia, which is really unfortunate. We say we want to be taken seriously but then we actively reject the currently existing route to being taken seriously¹, which I think is really counterproductive.
As someone who hasn't interacted with the therianthrope community, I don't feel like that's a label I can or should adopt. I do feel some kind of heavy draw towards the idea of being a trumpeter swan, but I don't feel like I can claim that I'm a therian. That entails a whole lot of social meaning and implications that simply don't apply to me. I am not following the same norms as the majority of therians, I don't hang out in those spaces, basically none of that. However, that doesn't change my experience of having experienced some kind of swan-ness. I feel like zoesthesia is a perfectly good and useful word to frame that: implying nothing further than the definition itself nor any allegiance to any societal group or set of norms, I have some subjective experience of being a nonhuman animal.
Where I'm less certain of the term is what the boundaries are regarding nonhuman and specifically nonanimal experiences. I am also fae, which isn't a known kind of animal. I'm also also a reploid², which is not just an inorganic thing but also a fictional³ thing. I wouldn't say that my experiences are tremendously different in kind, however, beyond those details. The definition and etymology of zoesthesia doesn't really include either of these things, though, or many other identities that involve having experiences of being non-living things; is that by design, or oversight?
Another question that I have is, is there a specific reason that the phrasing, "[...]a personal interpretation of these experiences as non-human through psychological or spiritual means" (emphasis mine) like the experience to being limited to just those two means? I ask because I'm one of those who does not attribute my overall state of alter/nonhumanity to either of those things, and while I do realize that the category could simply not apply to me in that case since it's in the "may include" section, there has been a major shift towards communal acceptance lately of other possible ways that one can identify oneself as nonhuman⁴ and I think it would be worthwhile to include some reference to that in the definition of zoesthesia.
I've very much experienced what you have in others trying to claim that they know my experiences and internal life better than I do and/or trying to claim that they have authority in labeling myself. It's ass, to be blunt. I shed every label that anybody else had perceived control over to escape it. I feel very strongly that we need labels like this that specifically cannot, be definition, have a gatekeeper.
And now the footnotes, because it was the only way I could wrangle the ADHDtism parenthesis habit...
¹ Yeah, I know it would be nice if society would just take us seriously without study, but if you have to start your thought with, 'If everybody just...' then you've already lost. Nobody will 'just' do anything en masse, that's not how society works, you can cry colonialism or whatever if you must but I'm being realistic here. I'm not saying, 'It's good that it works this way,' I'm saying, 'Currently it does work this way, value-neutral statement.'
² A type of android with free will, sentience, sapience, and human emotions, from the Mega Man X series of games.
³ Arguably, fae are fictional as well, being from mythology, but many draw a hard line between those concepts. I don't, but for convention and conversation's sake, let's draw the line anyway. Line-drawing is, after all, the great community pastime.
⁴ Phrasing it that way for brevity, but let's pretend I said 'possible ways that one can come to understand one's subjective experiences through the lens of nonhuman identity' or something more empirically precise. Long day, tired brain.
Brave of you to voice support for this idea considering the feedback so far. I appreciate the thoughtful response.
It has gone through several iterations, and I'm still refining it. "Nonhuman" in the definition of Zoesthesia was originally "something incongruent to one's biology." I'm not yet sure if there's a better way to word the fact that there's a difference between your physical appearance and what you are feeling/perceiving/etc.
On the psychological/spiritual bit - it may be better to simply say that the available reasons for this kind of interpretation of one's experiences are diverse. Also not sure what other options there are.
I clarified the thought experiment a bit more in one of my recent responses, too, though it is long. I may put parts of this in the original post as well.
hey idk how to tell you this other than to outright say it but agreeing with Sundragon in that reblog after Sundragon said some super racist/anti-indigenous shit makes you look REALLY BAD and makes you come off as racist and deeply anti-indigenous; your response to a lot of the criticism is just continuing to make you look like a very unsafe person to be around for a large portion of the community
i dont know if it was intended or if you just magically overlooked the issues in Sundragon’s response because he was agreeing with you- but it appears as if you are okay with referring to indigenous people as stupid & are willingly overlooking users using slurs/harmful stereotypes when referring to certain groups
I think indigenous cultures are really cool! Learning about their beliefs and practices is always fascinating. Calling them savages is most certainly disrespectful; that didn't click at the time, since it seemed they were making a different point entirely: dismissing an idea as *insert blanket statement here* is not a valid counterpoint. Besides, many of the injustices that occurred at the hands of Westerners were not because of the idea of empiricism, but because of all the crap they believed about God and manifest destiny and etc.
You know, my mom hates empiricism too! And she keeps trying to sell me essential oils she says I should ingest, which will literally destroy the lining of my intestines. Supposedly they "purify the light" in my cells. You know what? I think I'll ditch the whole idea and purchase a batch, maybe even pour a bottle straight into my mouth like I saw her do one time. /s
Back when I was still living with her, her naturopath "doctor" diagnosed me with a "mold" infection after hitting me with an Activator Adjusting Instrument a few times. What kind of mold? Who the hell knows. I actually had stomach ulcers and I suffered for years because I didn't know any better and they wouldn't actually do a proper test. After I finally worked up the courage to go to a real doctor after I escaped, I got an endoscopy - and they found 7 of those bad boys in there. That level of suffering is the kind of thing empiricism was designed to avoid.
Advocating for the scientific method does not mean that I am condoning all of the horrible things Western societies have done. In fact I am very much against many of their ideologies. The idea of creating a hypothesis, testing it, and withholding belief until those tests are conclusive, is one of the reasons why we know which plants are poisonous, and it's the reason why the majority of children no longer die before the age of 5. You might not even be alive without it. Just because some people have have abused this tool doesn't mean it's inherently evil. A tool is just a tool. People like yourself will preach to the mountains how horrible empiricism is until they need a lifesaving medicine designed and tested by scientists.
The funny thing about all of this is that if you were to analyze your own beliefs through the lens of the thought experiment I described in my post, and your beliefs managed to survive it, they would be unshakeable to everything - except maybe experience. I've been through it all and I still came out therian.
I'm not going to try and speak for Sundragon himself, because he can jump in and do that if he wishes, but I am responding to this because I reblogged his comments in agreement. I'm simply addressing the content of the ask, not Baumarius' response, at this moment.
I believe that there may be some misinterpretation of the reblog in question. Knowing that Sundragon is a person of color and being generally familiar with the tone of his posts, I did not interpet his comments the same way.
As a fellow person of color, I read that reblog as expressing a frustration with a dichotomy of critical thinking being on one side (the European side) and a sort of anything-goes mindset on the other (the rest of the world's cultures). This was equated to promoting the noble savage trope, which if you aren't familiar, involves white people treating indigenous people as lacking complex moral and philosphical ability, amongst other things.
There is a bigger conversation to be had about this dichotomy, but I simply wanted to address what I feel is a miscommunication.
To add onto the irony, I'm always surprised by the default assumption from others being that everyone is white until stated otherwise, even though it happens to me. :D I also just, really dislike waving around bits of my identity where they typically don't matter, because it feels like clout chasing, but if it matters here: I'm Korean and Irish! Safe to say my family tree has a long history with colonization and being thought of as savages. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
And yes, just in case anyone else is allergic to Knowing Things, the noble savage trope is exactly that! My ancestors weren't somehow better or more enlightened because they practiced shamanism or didn't know what bacteria were. They weren't stupid, they just didn't know certain things that we do now. But on the same track their lack of understanding shouldn't be glorified, which is a thing that happens. I don't want my autoimmune disorder to be "treated" by a mudang, I want a doctor.
The sheer, desperate acrobatics you all are doing to avoid accountability is honestly wild. Pulling out your identity as a shield to claim a person of color can’t replicate colonial logic is a textbook deflection. Having colonized ancestors doesn’t make you magically immune to absorbing and weaponizing a Eurocentric worldview.
Your entire defense is a massive, embarrassing strawman. Absolutely nobody argued that anyone should swap modern medicine for an autoimmune disorder, or replace an endoscopy with essential oils. You are intentionally flattening a critique of systemic philosophical bias into a fake debate about 'medical science vs. primitive vibes' because your ego cannot handle being corrected.
To imply that the only alternative to a rigid, post-Enlightenment Western taxonomy is 'glorifying ignorance' or 'not knowing what bacteria are' is the ultimate self-report. That is the colonial mindset. Global, non-Western, and Indigenous traditions have deeply complex, rigorous, and logically sophisticated frameworks for understanding consciousness and the non-human. They aren't just flat, generic placeholders that existed before 'real science' arrived, and pointing out that Baumarius's framework completely ignores that isn't demanding 'mysticism'—it's pointing out his glaring cultural bias.
But go off and keep high-fiving each other in your little echo chamber. Keep cheering for a guy who literally spent his July 4th edit-warring on a public wiki to rewrite a community's definitions to fit his own rules, and then trauma-dumped about his mom’s essential oils the second he faced academic pushback. You aren’t the 'only critical thinkers' on the dashboard; you’re just a couple of pseudointellectuals hiding behind blocks and strawmen because you got completely cornered by the receipts.
Literally all your responses have been written by AI, so I can't take any of it seriously. It's so obvious - the em-dashes, the "it's not this, it's that!" Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out lol
"Hey ChatGPT, tell this person I disagree with them! Think for me, I don't have any original thoughts!"
Hey, I’ve read your posts about zoesthesia and empiricism, and they intrigued me a lot.
I would like to ask you about your takes on therians whose theriantropy is derived from their experiences of past lives and reincarnation (which is my case), and on physical therians. This is not meant to be hating or accusing in any way, the only reason I’m here is for a better understanding of your takes.
From what I understood (but I might be wrong) you deem the “spirit”, as well as “memories” not believable, because they’re not senses or thoughts in the present moment, but concepts some decided to deem real, and make them their belief. You said as well the past may not even be real. Yet you still put among the experiences of zoesthesia’s definition “memories”. Isn’t that contradictory?
Also, it seems you’re skeptical about physical/biological therians. Your definition of zoesthesia definitely excludes them when you affirmed that those who experience it are still aware of their human body and biology. I personally agree with it (and this is why I’m anon, since it is a controversial take). I accept physical therians as they are completely harmless, and even though I don’t understand them I won’t exclude them from the community because everyone is allowed to live and label their experiences as they wish. Nevertheless, if you’re labeling yourself as, for example, a physical wolf therian, you’re contradicting yourself. If you actually were a physical wolf, you wouldn’t need to call yourself a therian, hell, you wouldn’t even be able to understand the concept or make a Tumblr account. However, I am aware in most cases physical theriantropy is derived from delusions and policing them with logic is illogical in itself. I think people still deserve a place in the community, even if their alterhumanity stems from delusion. Many times it was formed due to neurodivergency or trauma, so what if their alterhumanity is illogical? Also, if the physical sensations and thoughts they experience are physical in nature, wouldn’t they be considered valid by empiricism?
Just some thoughts.
This is the kind of response I was looking for. Thank you.
I'm unblocking everyone so they can read this too. I'm learning too and I apologize for removing your voices from this dialogue. Please keep replies civil and on topic. Repeated personal attacks will see you blocked again, as they are not constructive to this topic.
Newcomers: This reply is in reference to my recent blog post about zoesthesia, which has since been modified with feedback to be less pushy. I may need to modify it further with the details in this reply.
Now, anon - since you asked, I highly recommend that you read this response to the end because it gave me a rather severe existential crisis years ago.
"From what I understood (but I might be wrong) you deem the “spirit”, as well as “memories” not believable, because they’re not senses or thoughts in the present moment, but concepts some decided to deem real, and make them their belief. You said as well the past may not even be real. Yet you still put among the experiences of zoesthesia’s definition “memories”. Isn’t that contradictory?"
There are plenty of studies that suggest that you can convince people of memories that never happened. Every time you recall a memory, the brain is not actually replaying it - it is reconstructing a new instance of that memory each time it's recalled, sometimes adding or removing details. Each time you do so, you make a copy of a copy, which can cause that memory to become more and more distanced from what actually happened.
Because of this, memory is not as reliable as most people would like to believe (not sure how eidetic memory works, but it's been suggested that it doesn't exist past childhood, and photographic memory hasn't been confirmed to exist either). According to Wikipedia (there are multiple sources for this point), "Memory is not a perfect processor and is affected by many factors. The ways by which information is encoded, stored, and retrieved can all be corrupted."
Memory is as believable as you feel it to be. For you, it may feel very believable - you've mentioned that you have past life memories and that they influence or are otherwise a part of your identity. It is perfectly acceptable to say "I feel like I had a past life as an animal because of these things that feel like memories." When you say that you have had a past life as that animal, usually this is shorthand for "I feel like" / "I believe" / "These things I interpret as memories and not just dreams or imagination make me believe that..." Shorthand is important - I'll get back to it.
I may be unconvinced that I have past life memories myself, even if I have explored things that could be seen as such. Everything that has been discovered about how memory works doesn't necessarily need to hold any bearing on what you believe. If you are convinced of your own past life memories, nobody else can assert that they are "real" or "imagined." If others assert that they are real, what they're typically saying is that they trust your judgement. And it is not constructive to assert that someone's past life memories are "fake" - trying to prove them right or wrong is a fool's errand.
The point of zoesthesia was to separate raw experience from interpretation. I put "memories" under the "experiences" category in the definition of zoesthesia - not because they are firsthand experiences, but because you may believe them to be memories of experiences. I remember that yesterday I was feeling very shifty, but today I am not. The discontinuance of those shifts does not make me feel that I need to completely reconsider my beliefs about my nonhuman identity, as I remember other times in which my shiftedness varied.
At the end of the day, whatever you use as a reason to believe that your inner experiences are nonhuman is up to you. Experiences are what most of us want to share anyway.
"Also, it seems you’re skeptical about physical/biological therians."
Yes and no (more below).
"...everyone is allowed to live and label their experiences as they wish."
Agreed. That doesn't mean that others are required to participate, though it is often respectful to do so when those beliefs do not affect others in a serious way. Certain religious beliefs, e.g. those that say all non-believers will spend and eternity in hell, do demand others' participation by default and should not be respected.
Nevertheless, if you’re labeling yourself as, for example, a physical wolf therian, you’re contradicting yourself. If you actually were a physical wolf, you wouldn’t need to call yourself a therian, hell, you wouldn’t even be able to understand the concept or make a Tumblr account. However, I am aware in most cases physical theriantropy is derived from delusions and policing them with logic is illogical in itself. I think people still deserve a place in the community, even if their alterhumanity stems from delusion. Many times it was formed due to neurodivergency or trauma, so what if their alterhumanity is illogical? Also, if the physical sensations and thoughts they experience are physical in nature, wouldn’t they be considered valid by empiricism?
I don't believe that these identities are inherently harmful, but I do feel that the way people with these identities talk about their experiences comes off as manipulative.
What they believe is what they believe, and that may as well be valid - to them. No one is under any obligation to respect that belief. Within the alterhuman community, even I have told people "I'm a wolf" - but I only do so there because people usually know what I mean by that, and it feels species-affirming to speak that way. For me specifically, it's incredibly reductive shorthand for: "I have these experiences that tell me I should have a wolf's body, my mind feels like it operates like a wolf's would, and my identity feels 'wolf', but I recognize that I have a physically human body and can't see inside another wolf's head to know for certain that these experiences are actually related." These kinds of things are usually implied.
Some physical nonhumans have said that they feel dysphoric when they look out and see human features instead of nonhuman ones (this does not fall within what modern psychiatry would consider a delusion). But when some of them speak about their experiences and say something like "I'm a coyote" - in the case of holotheres, I've been informed by those privy to the original discussions that this used to be shorthand for "Because this body belongs to an individual who identifies as a coyote, it is the body of a coyote." Which sounds like a technicality, but sure. Perhaps for purposes of "psyching" themselves up, this shorthand appears to have been morphed into "I have the physical body of a coyote, DNA and all, and the only way you can respect that belief is by believing it too! Respect me or else you're a bad person!"
I do not have an issue believing that someone is relatively grounded if their beliefs do not effect me. Calling someone their preferred pronouns (even if that's just "bird") takes 2 seconds to integrate. But this is a belief that demands something of me. It demands that I dismiss evidence that has been previously verified through peer-reviewed research - for example, the fact that if cells with such nonhuman DNA were to enter a human body, they would be immediately attacked by white blood cells. We haven't yet determined if there are genetic differences between physical nonhumans and humans. There are some of who think that would be a very bad idea to research, too, as they do not want our rights taken away. That is a valid concern. This leaves me with limited choices:
Participate respectfully, with skepticism I don't make known.
Participate and deny my "knowledge" of science.
Participate and acknowledge that I don't know everything.
Don't participate, but tell them they can believe however they want.
Don't participate, and tell them they're invalid.
These are the options most people see. But there is a hidden 6th option. Most often, I say, "That is what you say you believe and I am willing to operate under the idea that that is what you believe, call you your desired pronouns, and treat you like an *insert animal/gender/etc. here* would prefer to be treated." This does not require belief, justification, or skepticism at all. This is what someone who processes reality through the lens of methodological solipsism does. Through this lens, it seems as if the general public's understanding of empiricism itself is inherently flawed. Empiricism holds that knowledge is anything derived from sensory experience and direct observation, though most forget that even your mind's eye (and perhaps inner monologue) is a kind of "sensation" in and of itself, and there are many types of knowledge.
Infinitism, which is a key view that methodological solipsism takes into account, sees all knowledge as being made up of infinitely chainable beliefs (or justifications). In this view, "true" knowledge cannot be attained and belief always requires justification - "just because" isn't sufficient. One alternative (coherentism) suggests that there is some knowledge that is self-justifying, which in infinitism will always fall upon itself as circular reasoning.
Infinitism has two principles, whose definitions are rather algebraic. In plain terms, the Principle of Avoiding Circularity means: if the sun is hot, and it feels hot outside because of it, the fact that it is hot outside cannot be why the sun is hot. And in this context, the Principle of Avoiding Arbitrariness means: If it feels hot outside to you, that must be because of the current atmospheric conditions, which may be influenced by humanity's continued use of fossil fuels, which may be a product of their race for better technology, which may be influenced by their drive to survive…and these justifications can go on infinitely.
There is one more part to it, which is much more lengthy: the Availability of Reasons. For a reason to be objectively available, both it and its relation to other reasons must meet at least one of the following conditions:
It's probable
An impartial, informed observer could accept it
It could be accepted by a defined set of people
Reason x makes reason y evident for you
That reason does not defy your own grasp of logic
It meets appropriate conversational presuppositions
An "intellectually virtuous" person would advance this reason
Again, only one of these needs to be true. I'm not a fan of the way #7 is worded.
Subjectively available reasons only need to coincide with personally held beliefs (therianthropy would probably be considered subjective at this time).
Only reasons that are both subjective and objective in this context are seen as candidates for justification. But through the lens of methodological solipsism, there is no truly verifiable difference between subjective and objective.
Methodological solipsism is a process that analyzes your senses, experiences, memories, and everything else currently happening in your consciousness. This is a reductive process finds that "true" knowledge, as in infinitism, cannot be attained. There is only experience (what you are feeling and thinking right now), and belief. In this view, your instinct and your own internal experience of your consciousness is the only thing that doesn't require justification. It just feels like it's happening. And in this view, even things that happen to you "externally" may just be recreations of them by your brain/soul/etc, as you only know these things because they are being received through your senses, which your brain is generating. Whether your experiences are "real," "imagined," or "simulated" is not knowable. You can believe such things about any experience, but that belief will never be "true" knowledge. This completely obliterates any necessity to empirically differentiate the brain from the body from the soul, reality from illusion, or valid from invalid. You can try...if you'd like to experience an existential crisis. If you're not already. If this isn't entirely confusing. Sorry lol
This is why I take issue with certain websites' definitions of things like therianthropy. To say that it is simply "the experience of being nonhuman" is to violate so much of this logic. Zoesthesia avoids this blunder by separating experience from interpretation, which may create an environment in which one does not need to "prove" their experiences.
TLDR - All of this is to say:
Do and believe whatever the hell you want, but follow your instinct and respect things that feel like concrete realities (like the laws of your country) (or don't - I'm not your mom).
Fight the seemingly concrete realities you don't want (responsibly).
Right and wrong is in the eye of the beholder. Nothing matters except everything that does (see: relativism).
Whatever you come to believe about yourself is what you believe. That isn't valid or invalid - it just is. The same goes for other people. Go wild with it if you want to but remember that it's reasonable to expect repercussions from certain folks if you use language that makes it sound like you're trying to manipulate them into dismissing their own senses. Clarifying that you are not doing this may show people that you're not and may make them more amenable to going along. Jumping to defensiveness, ad hominem attacks, and logical fallacies may make others wonder if you are.
Whether you see other people as "real" or "NPC's in the simulation" is up to you, but I've found that life generally feels better when it's assumed that others are real flesh and blood.
Be open to new data that may challenge your beliefs, since it is impossible to get through life without believing, and sometimes believing a certain way can put you in danger.
If you can turn off abstract thought entirely for a while (thoughts of the past and future, hypothetical situations, most complex chains of beliefs, etc.), it's a LOT easier to shift, as your mental load becomes negligible. This may also make my thought experiments and reasons for separating experience from interpretation through zoesthesia easier to understand. You can feel like a nonhuman animal and not even believe that you are. You can just be. Having a mental shift outside like this can be a lot of fun, especially if you do it while you're camping. As always, be responsible and exercise good judgement. And vocalize if you want to - what other people think does not usually matter.
Good luck out there!
A friend of mine summarized this perfectly: "It matters not whether my beliefs can be proven or disproven, what matters is how they guide my life."
There may be a lot of cases where these thought experiments aren't entirely helpful to consider in their entirety - you can "thought experiment" your way into anything, for better or for worse. At least for the purposes of personal beliefs, it is my personal opinion that this line of thinking may be sound, but it is usually more constructive to simply talk about what we feel and keep it in the background. When I'm feeling particularly shifted, I don't think about this at all. And as always, you're under no obligation to use these ideas.
hey idk how to tell you this other than to outright say it but agreeing with Sundragon in that reblog after Sundragon said some super racist/anti-indigenous shit makes you look REALLY BAD and makes you come off as racist and deeply anti-indigenous; your response to a lot of the criticism is just continuing to make you look like a very unsafe person to be around for a large portion of the community
i dont know if it was intended or if you just magically overlooked the issues in Sundragon’s response because he was agreeing with you- but it appears as if you are okay with referring to indigenous people as stupid & are willingly overlooking users using slurs/harmful stereotypes when referring to certain groups
I think indigenous cultures are really cool! Learning about their beliefs and practices is always fascinating. Calling them savages is most certainly disrespectful; that didn't click at the time, since it seemed they were making a different point entirely: dismissing an idea as *insert blanket statement here* is not a valid counterpoint. Besides, many of the injustices that occurred at the hands of Westerners were not because of the idea of empiricism, but because of all the crap they believed about God and manifest destiny and etc.
You know, my mom hates empiricism too! And she keeps trying to sell me essential oils she says I should ingest, which will literally destroy the lining of my intestines. Supposedly they "purify the light" in my cells. You know what? I think I'll ditch the whole idea and purchase a batch, maybe even pour a bottle straight into my mouth like I saw her do one time. /s
Back when I was still living with her, her naturopath "doctor" diagnosed me with a "mold" infection after hitting me with an Activator Adjusting Instrument a few times. What kind of mold? Who the hell knows. I actually had stomach ulcers and I suffered for years because I didn't know any better and they wouldn't actually do a proper test. After I finally worked up the courage to go to a real doctor after I escaped, I got an endoscopy - and they found 7 of those bad boys in there. That level of suffering is the kind of thing empiricism was designed to avoid.
Advocating for the scientific method does not mean that I am condoning all of the horrible things Western societies have done. In fact I am very much against many of their ideologies. The idea of creating a hypothesis, testing it, and withholding belief until those tests are conclusive, is one of the reasons why we know which plants are poisonous, and it's the reason why the majority of children no longer die before the age of 5. You might not even be alive without it. Just because some people have have abused this tool doesn't mean it's inherently evil. A tool is just a tool. People like yourself will preach to the mountains how horrible empiricism is until they need a lifesaving medicine designed and tested by scientists.
The funny thing about all of this is that if you were to analyze your own beliefs through the lens of the thought experiment I described in my post, and your beliefs managed to survive it, they would be unshakeable to everything - except maybe experience. I've been through it all and I still came out therian.
”People like yourself will preach to the mountains how horrible empiricism is until they need a lifesaving medicine designed and tested by scientists”
dude I’m trying to tell you that it’s bad that you said “agreed” to someone saying grossly anti-indigenous shit instead of ignoring them or shutting down that behavior & that because you didn’t ignore it or shut it down it makes you look like a racist
and that maybe you need to take a step back from debating abt empiricism & your framework because aside from looking racist you’re beginning to look like someone who’d be willing to lock away your peers for being “too crazy” abt therianthropy (not specifically in this reply, but in regards to sanism lining certain points of your framework)
Like I have not now or at any point denied the abuse of ppl through non-scientific thinking, I don’t disagree with advocating for the scientific method on a lot of shit. I live in the Bible Belt- let’s use our thinking caps about how I probably feel about that subject.
I think you need to take a break. I think you need to get off the internet for a bit & stew in your feelings.
I need you to understand- You’re responding to me pointing out a problem I’ve found with something you said- by providing personal experience for something other than the problem itself. I do not need to know why you were agreeing to the guy who was being super anti-indigenous rn, I can pretty easily infer that it was because he was agreeing with you on things you wanted to talk abt.
When ppl point out problems like that they aren’t generally looking for why you did it, they’re looking for how you’ll improve upon it.
@sundragon was referring to this in his response, seemingly to imply that y'all are saying that "primitive" culture is better therefore empiricism bad
I recognize that language such as "primitive" and "savage" is disparaging of indigenous and ancient cultures. I can't speak for them, but I don't think them bringing up that trope was anti-indigenous in context.
Hi there! You have written about applying empiricism to understanding your experience and identity and it helping strengthen your resolve and understanding. I am curious how you applied this to your identity as a telepathic wolf phoenix, and your process and techniques, as I would like to understand how to apply it to my own identity and experience. I am always curious to learn more!
On anon because you are being a bit harrassed right now and I do not want them to bother me.
Hi! Baumarius is technically an OC of mine. He's telepathic by means of his tendrils and I use him to theme my music. He will appear in a video game I'm making, which aims to blur the lines of reality and touch at the heart of some of my most profound experiences and epiphanies about life, death, wonder, spirituality, and more. I intend to intentionally blur those lines wherever I can. As I get closer to the release of my game, it may feel as if this character is speaking to you directly, for effect. They are me and they are not. I anticipate that this may give many people an existential crisis. Play at your own risk.
Regarding my therian/otherkin experiences, sometimes I feel like a wolf and sometimes I feel like a phoenix. The latter is informed by a kind of synesthesia I experience in which it feels as if I am physically on fire, among other things. Though I have felt both related sensations at once before, I typically interpret them as separate things. I do a fair bit of meditation on my experiences and often find myself out in the woods where the ceaseless chatter of society is non-existent. Music helps too, but it can only help so much. The closer you can bring your attention to the present moment and express yourself in that moment, the better. It is much easier to do this if you can temporarily eliminate the constructs of the past and future in your head, as they are often little more than abstractions keeping you feeling disconnected from yourself. Whatever you end up feeling is what you feel - you don't even need resolve for that. How you interpret that is up to you and you alone.
The telepathy is currently just a bit, but I am very interested in the idea, as I have no way to show anyone my true self in a way that can bridge the gap between our qualia in real-time. Words simply cannot do it justice. Each of us holds a great secret within our hearts and it seems as if none of us can truly touch another's. I can tell you how I feel but I can only believe that you know how I feel, if you tell me that you do. I can't know if your red is my blue, you know? This is one of the reasons why I feel those thought experiments are important.
I intend to return to college in a few years to finish my neuroscience degree so that I can research brain-computer interface technology and potentially make this real someday. Some alumni of colleges I'm interested in have told me that they're looking for people specifically like me, so I think I have a good chance even if I'll be in my late 30's by then. I'm also a fan of the idea of consciousness transfer, for obvious reasons. I'll probably be working on that until I die. If I do, I'll die without regret. It's worth that much to me.
If you have any more questions, please feel free to ask.
hey idk how to tell you this other than to outright say it but agreeing with Sundragon in that reblog after Sundragon said some super racist/anti-indigenous shit makes you look REALLY BAD and makes you come off as racist and deeply anti-indigenous; your response to a lot of the criticism is just continuing to make you look like a very unsafe person to be around for a large portion of the community
i dont know if it was intended or if you just magically overlooked the issues in Sundragon’s response because he was agreeing with you- but it appears as if you are okay with referring to indigenous people as stupid & are willingly overlooking users using slurs/harmful stereotypes when referring to certain groups
I think indigenous cultures are really cool! Learning about their beliefs and practices is always fascinating. Calling them savages is most certainly disrespectful; that didn't click at the time, since it seemed they were making a different point entirely: dismissing an idea as *insert blanket statement here* is not a valid counterpoint. Besides, many of the injustices that occurred at the hands of Westerners were not because of the idea of empiricism, but because of all the crap they believed about God and manifest destiny and etc.
You know, my mom hates empiricism too! And she keeps trying to sell me essential oils she says I should ingest, which will literally destroy the lining of my intestines. Supposedly they "purify the light" in my cells. You know what? I think I'll ditch the whole idea and purchase a batch, maybe even pour a bottle straight into my mouth like I saw her do one time. /s
Back when I was still living with her, her naturopath "doctor" diagnosed me with a "mold" infection after hitting me with an Activator Adjusting Instrument a few times. What kind of mold? Who the hell knows. I actually had stomach ulcers and I suffered for years because I didn't know any better and they wouldn't actually do a proper test. After I finally worked up the courage to go to a real doctor after I escaped, I got an endoscopy - and they found 7 of those bad boys in there. That level of suffering is the kind of thing empiricism was designed to avoid.
Advocating for the scientific method does not mean that I am condoning all of the horrible things Western societies have done. In fact I am very much against many of their ideologies. The idea of creating a hypothesis, testing it, and withholding belief until those tests are conclusive, is one of the reasons why we know which plants are poisonous, and it's the reason why the majority of children no longer die before the age of 5. You might not even be alive without it. Just because some people have have abused this tool doesn't mean it's inherently evil. A tool is just a tool. People like yourself will preach to the mountains how horrible empiricism is until they need a lifesaving medicine designed and tested by scientists.
The funny thing about all of this is that if you were to analyze your own beliefs through the lens of the thought experiment I described in my post, and your beliefs managed to survive it, they would be unshakeable to everything - except maybe experience. I've been through it all and I still came out therian.
why did you edit the lgbtqia's "Xenogender" entry to say "a gender that is outside the gender binary." to try and win an argument? That is not good practice in academia or otherwise.
That wasn't worded well to begin with and I should've just made my case, as I did in the comments on that entry. But if there wasn't a problem with the current definition of xenogender, why was that edit reverted to something entirely different from what it used to say?
Y'all keep trying to say I'm "anti-xenogender" (this is both an ad hominem & straw man attack). I myself may fall within the definition of xenogender because of my nonhuman identity. My only problem was the fact that saying "outside the human concept of gender" - from a purely linguistic standpoint - can be ambiguously interpreted to imply that concepts have a species. But a concept is a concept regardless of what species it originated in. Having nonhuman aspects of your gender does not mean that the concept of your gender is outside the "human concept" of gender, which is pretty nebulous to begin with. What the definition was reverted to does this slightly better and I'm happy with that.
If you'd like to talk about good practices in academia, why is the source for the "official definition" of xenogender a Tumblr post?
On Therianthropy, Otherkin, Zoesthesia, and My Perspective on Subjectivity
This post might make your brain hurt, so take your time with it. As someone who was raised in a cult, escaped, and was forced to deconstruct the origins of belief in order to stay sane and retrieve control over my life, this topic is very important to me. Some of the thought experiments I put forth were originally defense mechanisms against others trying to rewrite my own beliefs with theirs. You may or may not agree and I don't necessarily posit that I am "correct" in my analysis; I don't really expect anything one way or the other, but I am curious what will come of it. I want to emphasize now that I do not necessarily think that anyone else needs to adopt this perspective, only that it is useful to me.
Yesterday I met face-to-face with a researcher to discuss the "zoesthesia" term I proposed a few months ago as a potential precursor or stand-in for terms such as therianthropy and otherkin. They brought up a number of good points. It was a delight to hear the insight of someone both educated in psychology and external to the community, and about some of the future studies they're still formulating (I can't discuss that at this time, but they are entirely unrelated to this topic).
It became clear that adoption of this term may be unlikely to aid many of the major social issues plaguing the community both here and abroad. Although it sounds like "synesthesia" - a phenomenon rarely, if ever, targeted by bad actors, zoesthesia may still be a hot topic for those who take offense to the non-conforming simply because of its nature. They did find it interesting that zoesthesia prioritizes experience over identity. Whether zoesthesia is actually adopted, improved upon, or thrown out, I have no preference.
What I proposed during that meeting was a slightly more refined version of the previously proposed definition, which does not necessarily try to include every form of alterhumanity, some forms of which I've learned may be entirely unrelated. After more discussion and thought, I refined the idea further. This is what I arrived upon:
Zoesthesia
Zoesthesia ('zo-esthesia') is the experience of sensations, perceptions, and behaviors subjectively interpreted as belonging to something incongruent to one's own biology. Interpretations and identities arising from these experiences are personal and diverse; zoesthesia can be present without interpretation, especially at early ages, but is often experienced as an embodied identity.
Individuals who experience zoesthesia have a wide spectrum of experiences, often leading to unique endeavors and forms of expression in social, artistic, literary, and professional contexts.
The experience of zoesthesia involves:
Experiences (e.g. sensations, perceptions, memories, behaviors, desires, social cues, states of consciousness, and/or involuntary urges) that are often subjectively interpreted as belonging to something other than one's own biological species,
Experiences that may vary in form and intensity, remain at a stable baseline, or become triggered by internal or external stimuli,
2. And may include any number of the following:
An identity or overarching sensation that embodies these experiences,
An understanding that one still has a human body,
Dysphoria regarding the incongruence between one's physical body and perceived embodied experience,
Dreams or trance-like states that are experienced through the lens of something incongruent to one's biology,
A strengthening or increased frequency of experiences after one becomes conscious of them,
And/or a personal interpretation of these experiences as non-human through psychological or spiritual means.
"Zoesthesia" is derived from "zoe" and "aisthesis" - Greek, literally "life perception" or "animal perception."
So why did I create this?
Obviously, this could technically be considered as a refined definition of therianthropy and/or otherkin. It does not deny the existence of spiritual experience or belief, but doesn't assert that anything we feel (whether interpreted as psychological or spiritual) is objectively "real" or "unreal." This avoids language that reifies belief as fact, since it is impossible to measure how objectively "real" something is in the first place. It also avoids the linguistic ambiguity present when someone says something like "I'm a nonhuman animal," which is typically inferred to be about one's subjective interpretation of reality, but can - from a purely linguistic standpoint, be confused with an assertion of objective reality. That kind of ambiguity has resulted in some individuals claiming that certain identities under the alterhuman umbrella are inherently delusional.
If I'd like you to have a clear picture of why this proposal exists so that we can have constructive discussions, I must assume that you're entirely unfamiliar with my worldview and deconstruct its basis for you. Before we continue, I would like you to consider the following terms and thought experiments and how I use them. I ask that you try to understand my perspective on these ideas. As I've said previously, some of these things are thought experiments informed by my upbringing and experiences. I cannot assert that they are objectively true.
If you would like to skip this, go to the "Current Definitions" section.
1 . Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is the view that all knowledge and belief is derived from firsthand experience, e.g. through the senses. This philosophy is the basis for the scientific method and the following thought experiment:
Consider that you may have already taken for granted the belief that a real person wrote this post and not just a collection of subatomic particles resembling a person. I believe it to be a fact that I wrote this because doing so is now within my memory and I believe that my memories were not placed there last Thursday. I might tell you that this is a "fact," but then you have to believe that I am a reasonably trustworthy person and that a "reasonably trustworthy person" is an inherently "real" fixture in your reality.
You also may believe or take for granted that the conversion of the letters you're reading on your device into concepts in your consciousness isn't just zeroes and ones but a complex process derived from quantum mechanics, psychology, or the amorphous idea of "the soul" that none of us can put a definitive finger on.
These beliefs are not empirically verifiable or unverifiable because we cannot physically sense the world on this scale (as far as is generally understood). Even if you use tools to measure the world on that scale, you then have to believe in the accuracy of your tools.
With this in mind, you may need to be wary of what you assert as "truth." The only thing you may truly be able to know without the need for reason is what you are currently feeling and thinking in this ever-present moment. Everything else in your head that you "know" (e.g. your memories) is made up with varying measures of belief. It is entirely possible that the past may not exist. Attempting to make judgements on that information can result in some pretty funky paradoxes, but there are ways to talk about experience without invoking belief. This is why I have structured the refined definition of zoesthesia to emphasize interpretation.
This thought experiment is a robust methodology known as methodological solipsism. If you still don't believe that any of this is valid or useful because you believe in another kind of philosophy, religion, or dogma...can you see where this is going? I cannot emphasize how important it feels to be precise in the language that we use so that we might avoid creating and promoting dogma while just trying to discuss and share our experiences.
Growing up in religion we are often taught that belief is virtue and that you must believe in one way or another. After all, taking the stance of "not believing" something is the belief that something is not. It seems like a circular dilemma on the surface and cults will often try to manipulate that intuition. I've since found that the responsible thing to do is to simply observe the moment and decline to believe in the first place. There are plenty of beliefs you can function without. The state I get into when I'm feeling particularly mental-shifted is a state in which belief and language is largely reduced or implicit, my inner dialogue is non-existent, and if I do think it tends to be in pictures. If one can exist and thrive in such a state, why don't so many of us ever leave that monologue?
2. Spirit
Often thought of as a force, being, consciousness, or presence
For the purpose of sticking to the concept of empiricism and the previous thought experiment, I would suggest that a spirit is no different from any concept that you can interact with in your head that is based in something you have observed externally or internally. It may also include any actual object or being in the external world (some would call beliefs related to this animism or panpsychism).
It is not possible to verify the "being-ness" of any particular object or animal, whether it is conscious or just a bunch of atoms playing the part. Just watch Vsauce deconstruct a chair's existence. You are free to believe that it is more than that, but that will dive us into spirituality, dogma, and paradox. I see "spirit" and "object" as synonymous with "concept."
3. Spirituality
A preoccupation with or capacity for understanding moral, existential, or metaphysical questions without the dictation of dogma.
Whatever you've experienced through your senses is something that you have come to know, and in that sense "spiritual experience" is just another way to describe firsthand experience that falls perfectly under the umbrella of empiricism. If you have the firsthand experience of going into trance and entering [what you believe to be] the astral plane, that is still received through your senses and is a part of your conscious experience. Even your mind's eye could be considered a kind of sensation. Your experiences, no matter how you see or discuss them, are inherently valid because you experienced them.
"Valid" in this context simply means that you experienced what you experienced and we are giving you the benefit of the doubt because we can't see inside your consciousness. To say something is valid is not necessarily to make the impossible assertion that your interpretation of your experiences is based in "reality." Good researchers try their best to maintain this perspective to respect everyone they study. To claim that someone else's experience is invalid is a just another belief that no one can definitively assert as truth.
4. Dogma
In religion, dogma is typically referred to as a collection of deeply held beliefs often passed down through generations. Those beliefs can seem "spiritual" in that they may have once been based in someone's firsthand experience, but this quickly leads people into a trap.
It can also be thought of as the rules, laws, and rituals you believe in. We create new rules all the time as we gain new experiences. If you're open to new experiences, you may find that it is possible to break whatever rules you've previously prescribed to existence. No law can be empirically verified as universal or eternal except maybe entropy - until even that breaks down at the event horizon of a black hole, which typically breaks our understanding of the laws of physics.
Some rituals may be useful to you, especially if they help promote or maintain your well-being. Practicing something like Tai Chi every day is a ritual that can keep your mind and body healthy. Actually practicing it and believing that it helps you (because you have, in fact, found that it does in your own experience) is entirely empirical. Believing that it will make you super lucky and start seeing synchronicities everywhere would be superstitious. Superstition is often based in dogma too.
You create your own miniature personal dogma every moment you look to the past for guidance. Even firsthand/spiritual experience can transform into a kind of dogma the moment it becomes a variable for calculating future actions. In some cases this is necessary for your survival. It can also become overblown and lead to things like depression and anxiety, especially in the form of trauma and limiting beliefs. Trauma can become a form of dogma, too - if it changes the way you live and behave.
Finally, dogma is often the result of:
5. Heuristic Processing
To put it simply, heuristic processing means that your brain makes judgement calls based on limited information. You flop three dates in a row with potential partners you were interested in and your brain wants to jump to generalizations like "Maybe I'm just an unlovable person, I'm ugly, I'll always be lonely, etc." And then bam, 6 months down the line your life is agony and you've done nothing to actually improve your odds of connecting with somebody, reinforcing your confirmation bias (also what I would consider to be an element of dogma) that you're just not cut out for love. And so the downward spiral goes. It is so tempting to do this - heuristic processing is the primary mode of the brain, after all. Years of reinforcement only makes the resulting neural pathways stronger and harder to move on from. This is especially apparent with addictions like alcoholism, which literally alters the structure of the brain over time.
Everyone is guilty of this. It can useful because analyzing every single point of data would be absolutely debilitating, but it is a double-edged sword I believe you should be aware of. Look for it and you will find it everywhere.
These ideas, and perhaps relativism, are some of the pillars of my worldview and understanding of the thing we call reality. It's not an exhaustive list, but was wholly necessary for me to break things down this way so that I could purge myself of the dogma of the cult I was raised in. I'm not necessarily suggesting that you should subscribe to these ideas, but now you should be able to see where I'm coming from.
Now that these things are defined, I can get to the point!
The Problem
I'd like you to take a look at the following definitions and see if you can spot the problems:
If you don't see it, I'll explain in a moment. In response to the initial zoesthesia discussions, TG also published their own "Definitive Stance" in the forums, which suffers from the same problem. The definition above remains on the main site. This is the new one:
Wikipedia's page on "Therian subculture" (there isn't one for therianthropy itself) primarily focuses on identity, but at least mentions "the broader lived experience of therians":
Therianthropy's Fandom wiki page is much closer to emphasizing the experience, if a little term-heavy and requiring the use of "therian" in the main definition:
Pluralpedia's definition...
There are countless others, but I want to focus on the first two for the moment. Both definitions for therianthropy on TG take for granted the interpretation of one's relevant experiences as "non-human" or "animal." By omission, these definitions can ambiguously be taken to assert that we know for a fact that there are individuals out there who are having non-human animal experiences and aren't just delusional or whatever else. But the interpretation of these experiences as non-human is subjective belief, not an empirically tested fact.
Saying that "therianthropy is the internal experience of being a non-human animal" as TG maintains is the equivalent of creating a "true" statement and then forming a hypothesis that might make it seem true. At that point, you may as well be practicing Biblical numerology or quack science. The problem I have with this is, once again, that subjectivity and objectivity are not crystal clear.
Over years of certain members policing labels and experiences, there remains an ache for feelings of legitimacy in the community. Many feel like if they aren't "committed" enough to their identity, their experiences won't be seen as real and they won't get to be a part of the club. Some such people are coming back after being turned away by sites like TG years ago. I'm not active enough in the community to know what it is generally like now, but I would be concerned if these attitudes remain.
Those who put forth the idea that certain sensations, behaviors, or lack thereof are concrete proof that one is or isn't a particular nonhuman animal engage in something known as reification. According to David K. Naugle's Worldview: The history of a concept, "Reification takes place when natural or social processes are misunderstood or simplified; for example, when human creations are described as 'facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will'." Engaging in this itches at the incredibly human fear of social exclusion, especially in kids just trying to make sense of themselves. Some of these definitions keep the existence of this fallacy hidden by not emphasizing the fact that all of this is based on interpretation to begin with. This isn't an exact science and may never be. As much as one may desire for their experiences and identity to be perceived as legitimate by their peers, there is no empirical way to do this except to say that your experiences are valid because they're yours. Gatekeeping legitimacy encourages members to preen their experiences and limit their interpretations of them to a prescribed box.
This will not lead in a positive direction.
According to Therian Guide, we don't just have "therianthropy." We have suntherian, contherian, non-shifting therian, standard therian, polytherian, cladotherian, shifting, aura shifting, bi-location shifting, phantom shifting, dream shifting, astral shifting, and a whole slew of other terms. Point #1.1 in the definition of zoesthesia eliminates the need for this obtuseness entirely, reducing the need to use seemingly woo-woo terms like aura shifting, astral shifting, bi-location shifting, and more. I don't believe that these extra terms need to be publicized as part of an official definition, but instead as a historic note. Obviously I can't advocate for the outright removal of these terms and microlabels from the community's lexicon (this likely isn't even possible), but this all looks wildly disorganized.
Many of the other definitions on other sites (not all can be pictured here) emphasize either identity or a combination of experience and identity. Every site is different and some are better than others. Several have 5+ terms within the first couple paragraphs. For ease of understanding, I wonder if this may need to be refined.
Something I recently realized was that the younger alterhuman community is the only one I can think of that coins new terms every week to describe their own flavor of experiences. I feel that there must be some deeper commonalities that people are trying to get at. I believe that zoesthesia may alleviate some of those efforts, but I can only use it for myself.
I also believe that potential authority figures such as Therian Guide, as well as general members of the community at large, have a responsibility to avoid the promotion of magical thinking. By not educating people about the fact that the "non-human animal experience" is an interpretation of one's experiences as "non-human" rather than objective truth clearly within the definition of terms like therianthropy, magical thinking is encouraged. Anything and everything can start to become cultish when this responsibility is ignored. I'm not a fan of ambiguity. I bring this to everyone's attention out of concern more than anything. I was raised in a cult, which the new owner of TG herself rescued me from and helped me process. I've seen a lot of dangerous patterns that have left me observing from a distance. It is my hope that the future of the community is a positive and healthy one.
It is pretty wild to watch some people lose their minds over a thought experiment that no one is forcing them to entertain. If a thought experiment can dissolve your identity, your identity was not robust in the first place. If a thought experiment that I engage in makes you feel so uncomfortable that you feel the need to police my thoughts, you're not okay. These are my thoughts, not yours. I have made it clear on several occasions that I am not forcing my ideas on anyone, and my issue is most often with linguistics. If you feel like me even talking about my thoughts is forcing them on you, that makes me wonder if every time you talk, you're trying to do that to other people.
That is not healthy behavior. Throwing blanket statements onto a thought experiment about my entire worldview is suspicious. If I make a point that objective reality cannot be precisely known and you don't agree with that idea, it is up to you if you'd like to provide a counterpoint. Simply saying that my ideas are Eurocentric and that I'm being sanist is not a counterpoint. That does not refute the point - it paints it as a bogeyman. This is, by definition, a straw man fallacy.
Saying that I am sanist implies that I have said or implied somewhere in my post or replies that I think neurodivergent individuals are somehow inferior, or worse. If you think that this is implied because I'm "forcing you" to entertain a thought experiment that might make you question your belief structure, and your beliefs are structured that way because of your neurodivergence, you're jumping a few steps to get there.
Those trying to refute my ideas because I was raised in a cult are exercising ad hominem circumstance attacks. Those who've stated that I'm engaging in sanism and that they don't like how I put Eurocentrism and sanism in quotation marks are both straw manning me and engaging in ad hominem abusive attacks. These are some of the things I want us to fight in this community. You cannot refute an idea by casting doubt on the person who made that idea. Calling empiricism Eurocentric does not refute empiricism - if you want to do that, present a viable alternative or otherwise show us evidence of what's wrong with empiricism. Just because colonizers have used it doesn't mean that we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The more that individuals in these communities try to throw out critical thinking, the closer these communities come to becoming cult-like. Many people have seen this in the community and left it for these reasons. Stop.
On Therianthropy, Otherkin, Zoesthesia, and My Perspective on Subjectivity
This post might make your brain hurt, so take your time with it. As someone who was raised in a cult, escaped, and was forced to deconstruct the origins of belief in order to stay sane and retrieve control over my life, this topic is very important to me. Some of the thought experiments I put forth were originally defense mechanisms against others trying to rewrite my own beliefs with theirs. You may or may not agree and I don't necessarily posit that I am "correct" in my analysis; I don't really expect anything one way or the other, but I am curious what will come of it. I want to emphasize now that I do not necessarily think that anyone else needs to adopt this perspective, only that it is useful to me.
Yesterday I met face-to-face with a researcher to discuss the "zoesthesia" term I proposed a few months ago as a potential precursor or stand-in for terms such as therianthropy and otherkin. They brought up a number of good points. It was a delight to hear the insight of someone both educated in psychology and external to the community, and about some of the future studies they're still formulating (I can't discuss that at this time, but they are entirely unrelated to this topic).
It became clear that adoption of this term may be unlikely to aid many of the major social issues plaguing the community both here and abroad. Although it sounds like "synesthesia" - a phenomenon rarely, if ever, targeted by bad actors, zoesthesia may still be a hot topic for those who take offense to the non-conforming simply because of its nature. They did find it interesting that zoesthesia prioritizes experience over identity. Whether zoesthesia is actually adopted, improved upon, or thrown out, I have no preference.
What I proposed during that meeting was a slightly more refined version of the previously proposed definition, which does not necessarily try to include every form of alterhumanity, some forms of which I've learned may be entirely unrelated. After more discussion and thought, I refined the idea further. This is what I arrived upon:
Zoesthesia
Zoesthesia ('zo-esthesia') is the experience of sensations, perceptions, and behaviors subjectively interpreted as belonging to something incongruent to one's own biology. Interpretations and identities arising from these experiences are personal and diverse; zoesthesia can be present without interpretation, especially at early ages, but is often experienced as an embodied identity.
Individuals who experience zoesthesia have a wide spectrum of experiences, often leading to unique endeavors and forms of expression in social, artistic, literary, and professional contexts.
The experience of zoesthesia involves:
Experiences (e.g. sensations, perceptions, memories, behaviors, desires, social cues, states of consciousness, and/or involuntary urges) that are often subjectively interpreted as belonging to something other than one's own biological species,
Experiences that may vary in form and intensity, remain at a stable baseline, or become triggered by internal or external stimuli,
2. And may include any number of the following:
An identity or overarching sensation that embodies these experiences,
An understanding that one still has a human body,
Dysphoria regarding the incongruence between one's physical body and perceived embodied experience,
Dreams or trance-like states that are experienced through the lens of something incongruent to one's biology,
A strengthening or increased frequency of experiences after one becomes conscious of them,
And/or a personal interpretation of these experiences as non-human through psychological or spiritual means.
"Zoesthesia" is derived from "zoe" and "aisthesis" - Greek, literally "life perception" or "animal perception."
So why did I create this?
Obviously, this could technically be considered as a refined definition of therianthropy and/or otherkin. It does not deny the existence of spiritual experience or belief, but doesn't assert that anything we feel (whether interpreted as psychological or spiritual) is objectively "real" or "unreal." This avoids language that reifies belief as fact, since it is impossible to measure how objectively "real" something is in the first place. It also avoids the linguistic ambiguity present when someone says something like "I'm a nonhuman animal," which is typically inferred to be about one's subjective interpretation of reality, but can - from a purely linguistic standpoint, be confused with an assertion of objective reality. That kind of ambiguity has resulted in some individuals claiming that certain identities under the alterhuman umbrella are inherently delusional.
If I'd like you to have a clear picture of why this proposal exists so that we can have constructive discussions, I must assume that you're entirely unfamiliar with my worldview and deconstruct its basis for you. Before we continue, I would like you to consider the following terms and thought experiments and how I use them. I ask that you try to understand my perspective on these ideas. As I've said previously, some of these things are thought experiments informed by my upbringing and experiences. I cannot assert that they are objectively true.
If you would like to skip this, go to the "Current Definitions" section.
1 . Empiricism
In philosophy, empiricism is the view that all knowledge and belief is derived from firsthand experience, e.g. through the senses. This philosophy is the basis for the scientific method and the following thought experiment:
Consider that you may have already taken for granted the belief that a real person wrote this post and not just a collection of subatomic particles resembling a person. I believe it to be a fact that I wrote this because doing so is now within my memory and I believe that my memories were not placed there last Thursday. I might tell you that this is a "fact," but then you have to believe that I am a reasonably trustworthy person and that a "reasonably trustworthy person" is an inherently "real" fixture in your reality.
You also may believe or take for granted that the conversion of the letters you're reading on your device into concepts in your consciousness isn't just zeroes and ones but a complex process derived from quantum mechanics, psychology, or the amorphous idea of "the soul" that none of us can put a definitive finger on.
These beliefs are not empirically verifiable or unverifiable because we cannot physically sense the world on this scale (as far as is generally understood). Even if you use tools to measure the world on that scale, you then have to believe in the accuracy of your tools.
With this in mind, you may need to be wary of what you assert as "truth." The only thing you may truly be able to know without the need for reason is what you are currently feeling and thinking in this ever-present moment. Everything else in your head that you "know" (e.g. your memories) is made up with varying measures of belief. It is entirely possible that the past may not exist. Attempting to make judgements on that information can result in some pretty funky paradoxes, but there are ways to talk about experience without invoking belief. This is why I have structured the refined definition of zoesthesia to emphasize interpretation.
This thought experiment is a robust methodology known as methodological solipsism. If you still don't believe that any of this is valid or useful because you believe in another kind of philosophy, religion, or dogma...can you see where this is going? I cannot emphasize how important it feels to be precise in the language that we use so that we might avoid creating and promoting dogma while just trying to discuss and share our experiences.
Growing up in religion we are often taught that belief is virtue and that you must believe in one way or another. After all, taking the stance of "not believing" something is the belief that something is not. It seems like a circular dilemma on the surface and cults will often try to manipulate that intuition. I've since found that the responsible thing to do is to simply observe the moment and decline to believe in the first place. There are plenty of beliefs you can function without. The state I get into when I'm feeling particularly mental-shifted is a state in which belief and language is largely reduced or implicit, my inner dialogue is non-existent, and if I do think it tends to be in pictures. If one can exist and thrive in such a state, why don't so many of us ever leave that monologue?
2. Spirit
Often thought of as a force, being, consciousness, or presence
For the purpose of sticking to the concept of empiricism and the previous thought experiment, I would suggest that a spirit is no different from any concept that you can interact with in your head that is based in something you have observed externally or internally. It may also include any actual object or being in the external world (some would call beliefs related to this animism or panpsychism).
It is not possible to verify the "being-ness" of any particular object or animal, whether it is conscious or just a bunch of atoms playing the part. Just watch Vsauce deconstruct a chair's existence. You are free to believe that it is more than that, but that will dive us into spirituality, dogma, and paradox. I see "spirit" and "object" as synonymous with "concept."
3. Spirituality
A preoccupation with or capacity for understanding moral, existential, or metaphysical questions without the dictation of dogma.
Whatever you've experienced through your senses is something that you have come to know, and in that sense "spiritual experience" is just another way to describe firsthand experience that falls perfectly under the umbrella of empiricism. If you have the firsthand experience of going into trance and entering [what you believe to be] the astral plane, that is still received through your senses and is a part of your conscious experience. Even your mind's eye could be considered a kind of sensation. Your experiences, no matter how you see or discuss them, are inherently valid because you experienced them.
"Valid" in this context simply means that you experienced what you experienced and we are giving you the benefit of the doubt because we can't see inside your consciousness. To say something is valid is not necessarily to make the impossible assertion that your interpretation of your experiences is based in "reality." Good researchers try their best to maintain this perspective to respect everyone they study. To claim that someone else's experience is invalid is a just another belief that no one can definitively assert as truth.
4. Dogma
In religion, dogma is typically referred to as a collection of deeply held beliefs often passed down through generations. Those beliefs can seem "spiritual" in that they may have once been based in someone's firsthand experience, but this quickly leads people into a trap.
It can also be thought of as the rules, laws, and rituals you believe in. We create new rules all the time as we gain new experiences. If you're open to new experiences, you may find that it is possible to break whatever rules you've previously prescribed to existence. No law can be empirically verified as universal or eternal except maybe entropy - until even that breaks down at the event horizon of a black hole, which typically breaks our understanding of the laws of physics.
Some rituals may be useful to you, especially if they help promote or maintain your well-being. Practicing something like Tai Chi every day is a ritual that can keep your mind and body healthy. Actually practicing it and believing that it helps you (because you have, in fact, found that it does in your own experience) is entirely empirical. Believing that it will make you super lucky and start seeing synchronicities everywhere would be superstitious. Superstition is often based in dogma too.
You create your own miniature personal dogma every moment you look to the past for guidance. Even firsthand/spiritual experience can transform into a kind of dogma the moment it becomes a variable for calculating future actions. In some cases this is necessary for your survival. It can also become overblown and lead to things like depression and anxiety, especially in the form of trauma and limiting beliefs. Trauma can become a form of dogma, too - if it changes the way you live and behave.
Finally, dogma is often the result of:
5. Heuristic Processing
To put it simply, heuristic processing means that your brain makes judgement calls based on limited information. You flop three dates in a row with potential partners you were interested in and your brain wants to jump to generalizations like "Maybe I'm just an unlovable person, I'm ugly, I'll always be lonely, etc." And then bam, 6 months down the line your life is agony and you've done nothing to actually improve your odds of connecting with somebody, reinforcing your confirmation bias (also what I would consider to be an element of dogma) that you're just not cut out for love. And so the downward spiral goes. It is so tempting to do this - heuristic processing is the primary mode of the brain, after all. Years of reinforcement only makes the resulting neural pathways stronger and harder to move on from. This is especially apparent with addictions like alcoholism, which literally alters the structure of the brain over time.
Everyone is guilty of this. It can useful because analyzing every single point of data would be absolutely debilitating, but it is a double-edged sword I believe you should be aware of. Look for it and you will find it everywhere.
These ideas, and perhaps relativism, are some of the pillars of my worldview and understanding of the thing we call reality. It's not an exhaustive list, but was wholly necessary for me to break things down this way so that I could purge myself of the dogma of the cult I was raised in. I'm not necessarily suggesting that you should subscribe to these ideas, but now you should be able to see where I'm coming from.
Now that these things are defined, I can get to the point!
The Problem
I'd like you to take a look at the following definitions and see if you can spot the problems:
If you don't see it, I'll explain in a moment. In response to the initial zoesthesia discussions, TG also published their own "Definitive Stance" in the forums, which suffers from the same problem. The definition above remains on the main site. This is the new one:
Wikipedia's page on "Therian subculture" (there isn't one for therianthropy itself) primarily focuses on identity, but at least mentions "the broader lived experience of therians":
Therianthropy's Fandom wiki page is much closer to emphasizing the experience, if a little term-heavy and requiring the use of "therian" in the main definition:
Pluralpedia's definition...
There are countless others, but I want to focus on the first two for the moment. Both definitions for therianthropy on TG take for granted the interpretation of one's relevant experiences as "non-human" or "animal." By omission, these definitions can ambiguously be taken to assert that we know for a fact that there are individuals out there who are having non-human animal experiences and aren't just delusional or whatever else. But the interpretation of these experiences as non-human is subjective belief, not an empirically tested fact.
Saying that "therianthropy is the internal experience of being a non-human animal" as TG maintains is the equivalent of creating a "true" statement and then forming a hypothesis that might make it seem true. At that point, you may as well be practicing Biblical numerology or quack science. The problem I have with this is, once again, that subjectivity and objectivity are not crystal clear.
Over years of certain members policing labels and experiences, there remains an ache for feelings of legitimacy in the community. Many feel like if they aren't "committed" enough to their identity, their experiences won't be seen as real and they won't get to be a part of the club. Some such people are coming back after being turned away by sites like TG years ago. I'm not active enough in the community to know what it is generally like now, but I would be concerned if these attitudes remain.
Those who put forth the idea that certain sensations, behaviors, or lack thereof are concrete proof that one is or isn't a particular nonhuman animal engage in something known as reification. According to David K. Naugle's Worldview: The history of a concept, "Reification takes place when natural or social processes are misunderstood or simplified; for example, when human creations are described as 'facts of nature, results of cosmic laws, or manifestations of divine will'." Engaging in this itches at the incredibly human fear of social exclusion, especially in kids just trying to make sense of themselves. Some of these definitions keep the existence of this fallacy hidden by not emphasizing the fact that all of this is based on interpretation to begin with. This isn't an exact science and may never be. As much as one may desire for their experiences and identity to be perceived as legitimate by their peers, there is no empirical way to do this except to say that your experiences are valid because they're yours. Gatekeeping legitimacy encourages members to preen their experiences and limit their interpretations of them to a prescribed box.
This will not lead in a positive direction.
According to Therian Guide, we don't just have "therianthropy." We have suntherian, contherian, non-shifting therian, standard therian, polytherian, cladotherian, shifting, aura shifting, bi-location shifting, phantom shifting, dream shifting, astral shifting, and a whole slew of other terms. Point #1.1 in the definition of zoesthesia eliminates the need for this obtuseness entirely, reducing the need to use seemingly woo-woo terms like aura shifting, astral shifting, bi-location shifting, and more. I don't believe that these extra terms need to be publicized as part of an official definition, but instead as a historic note. Obviously I can't advocate for the outright removal of these terms and microlabels from the community's lexicon (this likely isn't even possible), but this all looks wildly disorganized.
Many of the other definitions on other sites (not all can be pictured here) emphasize either identity or a combination of experience and identity. Every site is different and some are better than others. Several have 5+ terms within the first couple paragraphs. For ease of understanding, I wonder if this may need to be refined.
Something I recently realized was that the younger alterhuman community is the only one I can think of that coins new terms every week to describe their own flavor of experiences. I feel that there must be some deeper commonalities that people are trying to get at. I believe that zoesthesia may alleviate some of those efforts, but I can only use it for myself.
I also believe that potential authority figures such as Therian Guide, as well as general members of the community at large, have a responsibility to avoid the promotion of magical thinking. By not educating people about the fact that the "non-human animal experience" is an interpretation of one's experiences as "non-human" rather than objective truth clearly within the definition of terms like therianthropy, magical thinking is encouraged. Anything and everything can start to become cultish when this responsibility is ignored. I'm not a fan of ambiguity. I bring this to everyone's attention out of concern more than anything. I was raised in a cult, which the new owner of TG herself rescued me from and helped me process. I've seen a lot of dangerous patterns that have left me observing from a distance. It is my hope that the future of the community is a positive and healthy one.
I think reading this in good faith is important, even if you come out the other side still disagreeing.
I think a portion of what’s happening in reblogs and comments is defensiveness all around, (OP not excluded). That’s normal, it makes sense, these are people’s identities which are already so vulnerable, medicalized, or torn apart on the regular. Defensiveness about any aspect of identity (alterhumanity, gender, sexuality) comes from a place of fear. The people reacting with anger are reacting because they’re scared that what you’ve posted is meant to invalidate their identity. Even though that’s not the goal, they have reason to believe it due to past experiences. I also think a lot of the genuine criticism of your points is valid, and you don’t have to agree with that. I have my own subjects to learn about and biases to critique thanks to the recommendations of some critics in the comments. Thank you to everyone who recommended specific books or essays so that people can do further research!
Reacting to their responses, as the original poster, is completely understandable as well. You asked for critique, you received some, it’s natural to want to elaborate and clarify and discuss, but you also received some aimless fear-driven defensiveness. I think it’s important as the poster, who asked for critique, to separate these two responses (“well-meaning critique, corrections, or additions to your post” & “I’m scared because I’ve been hurt by rhetoric framed like this before so I’m lashing out at you in hopes that other people help protect me”) and only put effort into responding to the first ones. The defensiveness from the latter group could be accused of being part of “protecting the cult” mentality; but the far more common experience is to want to protect oneself. There doesn’t need to be an overarching oppressive system in place to make you want to defend your beliefs.
That said! I think using your post as a think piece was very healthy for me. I cannot speak for the therian community in any capacity, because I am not a therian in any capacity, I am a…
Right there, I needed a word to describe me, so I could make you understand in a short amount of time what my relation to the therian community is, if I’m not a therian. I don’t know if what counts as a microlabel is any label that very few people use (in which case, I suppose otherhearted isn’t a microlabel) or any label that isn’t “The” label of the over arching community, which would be Therian, (in which case otherhearted is a microlabel). I don’t believe I’m an animal nor that there is a magical reason for other people who do, but I believe that respecting identities that I don’t experience myself does more good than bad, and my experience is one that lets me empathize and relate to those who do, hence my involvement in their community. Having a label like otherhearted helps people quickly recognize where my experience (and often beliefs) do and don’t differ from their own, even though my full range of feelings are far more complex.
Microlabels, while not being your main point, are an exact example of un-cult like behavior in the Therian community; behavior that encourages self expression instead of the monolith of “singular standard experience”. I am not forced into the “Therian cult ideology” because I’m not one of them, but I’m also not forced into it because the community accepts non-Therian members to exist amongst them, disagreeing with the notion that the Therian community supports a singular identity. If you are being pressured to conform by some members, you still retain the option to leave those members and find community members who prefer authenticity. As you said yourself, these therian microlabels like physical-therian, sun-therian, etc exist, even within the Therian community umbrella, and I believe they are there in service of destroying an establishing of a “therian monolith”. Two therians may think alike; even a hundred therians may think alike; but therians as a whole don’t think alike, and subgroups (represented by microlabels) are the proof of it. If all therians believed in past lives, and reinforced this belief in every member, then that would act as a monolithic community at risk of fully descending into a cult. But that’s not the case, as we have spiritual therians, psychological therians, and even non-therians participating regularly in the therian community. Yes, a monolithic subgroup may form and attempt to establish a norm, and after a few steps later may end up becoming a cult in the process. But the community as a whole is built to resist that, because it’s built around finding, using, or creating words to describe your own experiences, not adopting one word universally to “unite” everyone under the same umbrella and ideals.
Not to say that this invalidates your other claims; there is blatantly cult-like behavior in any community, but especially an ideological, often spiritual, and identity-based community like this one, and these communities are always going to toe the line, hover at the edge of “group belief”. That’s why reading and sharing critical works like what you’ve written is so important, even if I believe multiple of your points were wrong, as they are a great way in self reflecting, in questioning and re-imagining our relationship with a community. Take what’s useful (self reflection) and leave what isn’t (undeniable discrepancies between your vision and my own understanding). It encourages us to look closer at those parts of the community that desire to be the only voice of the community. But often, those parts are individuals who seek grandeur, and pass by the larger community forever unnoticed. I’ve been adjacent to the therian community for years, albeit new to tumblr, and when you mentioned Therian Guide I had no knowledge of them or what ideology they had. If they were trying to establish a monolith across the Therian community, it was not succeeding, and the rest of the community remains as intentionally fractured as it often has been.
Individuals will attempt to stake claim on the whole, and fail, unintentionally creating or growing yet another subgroup of monolithic thinkers. Some will be more pervasive than others, some you’ll agree with and some you won’t. Some will call themselves “true therians” and denounce anyone who doesn’t share their beliefs. Those subgroups may become cruel, take on a sole leader, and attempt “attacks” on other groups in order to establish dominance. There may even be hyper-niche subgroups who truly become cults, discouraging outsider contact and doing shady, dangerous, or illogical real-world actions. But that’s as far as they’ll get. It’s bad, don’t get me wrong, but it won’t take over the community as a whole, because that kind of cult *needs* direction. Cults without leaders exist, called decentralized cults. Every spiritual and ideological community is two steps on the path to becoming one. But they are not one yet, and operationally they need to take a lot more steps to get there. To reject any step towards forming or joining a cult is to reject community as a whole, but to accept cults as inevitable is illogical, harmful, and wrong. It’s not a pleasant answer, but the fact is you need to find balance, something that cannot be done for you by your community. Your proposal of a group rebrand or re-defining the community will be useful to some and not to others. Congrats, you can make a subgroup out of this! Genuinely, that’s what’s healthy about the community, you’re able to take or leave different perspectives. Yes, people will disagree with you, which may feel like the Therian community as a whole is rejecting your new perspective, because the human mind is wired to give more significance to negative data than positive data. But you have people agreeing with you in the comments too, and they are just as real and representative of the Therian community as the critics.
Someone in the therian community could say; “ok, starting tomorrow, no cult stuff. You can’t believe what anyone else believes, you can’t group up with people who you agree with, and you can’t try and explain your thought process to anyone else because then they might agree with you.” Someone else in the therian community could say; “ok, starting tomorrow, in our totally-not-a-cult, everyone must think the same, believe the same, and act accordingly, including converting people who disagree or rejecting them entirely.” In both cases, some people will join them and agree, others will oppose and create a counter-community, splinters and factions will happens, and by the end we will still have many subgroups of various sizes who believe what they want because they have the freedom to do so.
I think my point is that while it will often toe the line, the community as a whole will never fall*. Because we have too many diverse experiences. Cults suffer when their ideology is too complex, and while their beliefs often are contradictory, they cannot afford to admit that they’re contradicting themselves as it weakens the narrative. The therian community is blatantly contradictory. It often revels in contradiction, encouraging opposite or differing experiences, hence its emphasis on “finding the right label to express yourself” instead of “using one right label to be one of us”. I don’t believe in past lives, and yet I am part of community with those who experience past lives. I don’t claim to agree with them, but I readily admit that they had some combination of experiences that leads them to believing that. They are not me, but I care for their well being and want to respect their experiences. They are part of a different subgroup, but we’re all part of the therian community.
*People can fall. I can fall. I could end up in a cult. Anyone is vulnerable. If someone thinks they are “too smart” or “too independent” for a cult, they are doubly vulnerable to indoctrination. We all have to look out for it, or it will happen to us. Right person, wrong time. Critical thinking and critique like what you’ve shared are important tools to stir the pot and get brains thinking. Reflective essays are the drone photos from above, trying to capture the larger image of a community, while undoubtedly losing details or misrepresenting sections from the nature of trying to capture all of it from so far away. But to summarize my thoughts:
The community as a whole is an ecosystem that will adjust itself. Too many people worshipping idols? A subgroup starts that is specifically anti-idol. No room for my experiences in a general label? A microlabel is formed, and a subgroup forms around it. Sometimes there will be overhunting (when the community goes on witch hunts to find anyone “not being a therian in the right way”) and there will be invasive species (unknowingly misinformed individuals arriving in the community and spreading their misinformation). The community may even eat itself, true worst case scenario, destroying any notion of community through proxy wars and witch hunts and legitimate crimes, cults, and corruption, causing the average community member to abandon the general community to avoid getting caught in the crossfire. But even then, it would reinvent itself, because at the end of the day it is about an experience, one that people feel whether they have a name for it, or theories about why it happens, or a community for it, or not. It may restart from a friend group, a singular server, a comment thread. Even if the worst happens and it does eat itself, it won’t fall forever. We must be cautious as individuals, as participants in a community at-risk for these issues, and as leaders or followers in whatever sub-groups we subscribe ourselves to. And it may not be ok in the future, but it won’t stay not ok. Cults hurt people, they can hurt you and me and the community as a whole, subgroups included. But by the nature in how they operate, they will die, and communities will form again. Stay cautious, consider new perspectives, and enjoy the community you have; overarching community, subgroups, and microlabels included.
Of course. I think your perspective on this is spot-on. At this point, I'm either going to revise that post with all of these considerations, or just keep writing my book on dogma & methodological solipsism. That topic, and the other things I outlined in my post, are super important to me and extremely difficult to summarize in just a few paragraphs. The implications run very deep. That book will involve many drafts as well, and I will likely need outside insight to help flesh it out. I could always run it by you if you're interested. It is much easier for me to digest a single person's critiques at a time, than five people trying to tear me a new one with at the same time. These concepts are a lot easier to consider when you don't have an emotional stake in it.
I don't think the existence of microlabels is a bad thing either - you made some good points about that.
Someone suggested that some of the people who critiqued, insulted, and attacked me personally today believe that they can physically transform into nonhuman animals. I don't know if that's true because I don't have the time to dig through all of their posts, but if it is, it would make sense why there is so much pushback against anything relating to empiricism. My framework for understanding reality is my own, yet somehow it seems to threaten them that I would approach the world methodically. So much so that they would accuse me of thinking that people who are neurodivergent are somehow inferior. I can only imagine that they might be projecting their insecurities here, or simply responding to respond because they're triggered now. It is much easier to attack people who have ideas that may invalidate one's beliefs than to grapple with the terror of ego death. It felt pretty bad to wake up to the a response full of swear words directed towards me and my ideas.
I heavily suspect that if I do publish this book, it will make a lot of people angry. And as you said, anger often comes from fear. If I experienced any today, it was because of the sheer volume they were shrieking at. I could do with a little bit more fortitude and insight on how to respond to someone who is trying to avoid an existential crisis.
