This reminds me of the 2016 United States Presidential Election . It ' s like those comments were paid for by Jacob Wolf ' s journalist rivals or something . <| sep |> I ' m a guy . <| sep |> An extremely butthurt racist clock <| sep |> Haven ' t seen you in a while . also wanna be a mod ? '<| sep |> Okay more than the 12 of you . <| sep |> What Cert , I actually might buy them off you <| sep |> Pssh no . Who has the Humvee keys again ? Not because I dont know or anything , Im just uh . Testing you , yeah thats it . <| sep |> There are good explanations for Otherkin from both psychoanalytic theory in the continental schools of philosophy and also developmental psychology and neurologically unusual proprioceptive reasoning . The philosopher and psychoanalytic Alphonso Lingis has written extensively on the topic of how human identities are shaped by the concept of the Animal . There is a great text called Animal Others On Ethics , Ontology and Animal Lives that contains one of Lingis ' essays . Another good work on the topic is Beyond Human From Animality to Transhumanism as well as The Animal Catalyst Towards Ahuman Theory . Each of these texts and others opens up a space for the therian and Otherkin identities by questioning what it is to be human in the first place , not the biological definition or taxonomy , but rather the philosophical naturalistic assumption of humanity and the ethical , identity , and sociopolitical relations that come from the philosophy of humanism . There are other treatments of imagination . You can look into the work of Peter LanglandHassan who studies philosophy of mind and cognitive science . He was one of my old professors . If imagination is actually more a part of our being and reality , if it helps shape our selfperception and understanding of our goals of becoming , then this could be a route one could take for understanding Otherkin . It would be something of an embodied imagination that is pervasive and shapes one ' s selfconcept in most aspects of one ' s life . This pervasive process of imagination is vital to human cognition and culture . The whole argument that Otherkin is a delusion would be undermined because this is actually just a regular part of cognition realized in an uncommon way . However , most Otherkin would be put off by this style of approach because , in general , Otherkin believe that their identities are more essential as in , unchangeable aspects of their existence and selfconcept . A way to resolve this would be to posit that imagination involved in selfperception is actually essential to identity in this way . We conceive ourselves and then we start becoming our conception of ourselves in a pervasive way . Our past decisions , thoughts and behaviors become habituations and modes of thinking they become an actual part of us or a defining characteristic the more we tend to them . I am a violinist , a philosopher , and a therian now because I developed this way over the course of my life , my experiences , my actions , my thoughts , and so on . The most likely naturalistic explanation would be this There might be a developmental trigger for therianthropy that leads to a proclivity to identify oneself this way . Actually , this is likely the case because it is unlikely that many therians would develop this way independently and then discover each other later without there being a common and identifiable cause . There is a strong basis for this in how vital animals are in early childhood education . Think of how animals are some of the first things that human babies are taught . They are taught this to differentiate themselves from other animals . But what if a human child did not differentiate themselves or learned a different lesson from it because their basic genetic and neurological makeup is slightly different from others ? One can imagine that this developmental curve that has a slightly divergent trajectory from other human children would lead to a very different way of thinking of oneself later that , after so many years of growing along this path and being shaped by that divergence , one ' s identity and way of thinking is essentially fixed . That is not a deterministic trigger it might be some genetic trait that pushes one developmentally toward conceiving oneself this way . It would then be dependent upon epigentic environmental pressures , experiences , etc . for that genetic trait to realize itself in the psychology of the individual . That doesn ' t mean all children would develop that way . I ' ve actually talked with some people that said they think the could have been therians but at some point stopped thinking this way . They admitted they could understand what it was , but that the early feelings they had disappeared . In this understanding , that would mean certain epigentic pressures led them to develop in a way that was not affected by whatever neurologicalgenetic disposition they had . The characteristic of a naturalistic explanation of Otherkin will focus on identifying what causes the thinking itself to develop , not whether the thinking is correct or incorrect . It will deal with selfperception and conception and explain how the identity formulated based on developmental factors . Remember , an identity isn ' t just I am physically a human . An identity is the way in which an individual conceives of an perceives themselves . This is why a few others and I consider therianthropy to be an identity problem . It is a disjunction with our physical bodies . Remember , identity is complex . You thinking you are human or believing that you belong to a species with a collective interest is only one aspect of your identity . You also think you are whatever your career is , your education , your ideals , beliefs , your politics , your familial associations , etc . Many of these things are abstract . And I think that the therian and Otherkin identities are just abstract . This obviously leads to a lot of confusion because when one says I am not human they don ' t mean a concrete , physical existence . They mean an abstraction of what human and nonhuman are . And here ' s the cool thing , it is still consistent with religious views of Otherkin ! Why ? Because all it does is pose a naturalistic explanation of how it came to be . It doesn ' t say anything about the truth concerning metaphysical claims . That is up to philosophy , after all , and not science . Just because an individual had psychological causes for developing into a therian , doesn ' t mean that if they believe themselves to spiritually be another animal , they are wrong . It could be that both are true . And that is because the psychological explanation deals with a posteriori knowledge and the spiritual explanation deals with a priori knowledge . They are separate lines of inquiry . One of my favorite works is by the mid 20 th century philosopher Jacques Derrida . It was an essay on deconstructing the differentiation between human and animal , and it was titled The Animal That Therefore I Am , a play off of Rene Descartes ' cogito argument I think , therefore I am . Otherkin might be better understood through the developing academic field of anthrozoology or HAS humananimal studies . probably aren ' t familiar , and these are extremely difficult texts . Any naturalistic theory of Otherkin is going to require some very sophisticated reasoning as how it would resolve itself is not obvious . Unfortunately , there is next to no research , and the research that exists is contentious .