:privTri: Volpeon Extra (@areon)

Not a comic post, for once, but rather one about my desire to be an animal and the implications on sapience, sense of self etc. Originally posted on a forum. (Edited to add my first post and improve the second one)

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I think the topic of non-sapience is quite complex and I don't have a clear answer on what is "right" myself.

If I think about an existence as animal, I do lean more on the side of non-sapience, or species-appropriate sapience. I'd imagine life as an animal with a human mind would suck because there's just so much I wouldn't be able to do anymore. There wouldn't be any intellectual stimulation; no reading or writing, peers who aren't on the same level of intelligence. I wouldn't be able to create art anymore. I would have to hunt, kill and eat raw meat. Even if I had my ideal body, all of this strikes me as unpleasant and I'd rather be a member of the same species in mind, too.

But also, I fully agree that non-sapience essentially means death, and I find the way some people idealize it disturbing. If I became an animal and stopped being myself, then what would even be the point? Perhaps the ideal solution would be "something in-between", and that leads to interesting questions about how the nature of someone's mind changing influences our perception of whether they "died", even if the final result is the same. An example I like to bring up is this: Let's say I turned into a fox and my mind was instantly changed as well -- am I still me? What if my mind changed, but I still recognized family and friends and places? What if I turned into a fox and kept my human mind? What if my mind slowly adapted over months or years because my brain, like everything else about my body, had been transformed? If I "died", at what point did it happen? How is it different from the changes we are experiencing throughout our lives?

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I reflected on this topic some more and "I have longed for a fully animalistic existence for pretty much my whole life" [note: I left that out here because the post didn't say anything new] wasn't the best way to express how I feel. To be clear, I'm not saying this because I find myself in a minority here, but because it's just such a contradictory subject that it's hard to find the right words. Let me try again.

A "fully animalistic experience" to me means obviously the body, and also the way an animal perceives and experiences the world, how it thinks etc. Being an animal with a human mind and instincts tacked on isn't a real substitute because such an existence doesn't actually mean "being an animal" but rather "being a humanized version of an animal". It would be fundamentally different. We all agree that this boils down to "death with extra steps" when you think about it, but death is absolutely not what I seek. I'm happy with my life, overall, and prefer to make the best of it rather than mulling over what could've been and spiraling into despair.

However, to me this subject isn't a matter of carefully weighing the pros against the cons and rationally choosing the optimal outcome to actualize myself. It's the whole core of me being a therian, a deep longing I've felt my whole life. I can remind myself that existence as a wild animal means fighting for survival and usually an early, miserable death. I can sit down and create a perfect amalgamation of animal and human, a vessel to reflect my truest self who would be an upgrade to the current state of things in every way. None of it can change the fact that my true desire lies elsewhere. Rationality is meaningless in the face of this.

The beautiful thing about fantasies is that anything is possible if you decide it is. Some choose to believe that life as an animal with a human mind would be fine, while to me it seems like a proper nightmare. And in my case, losing myself isn't an intrinsic part of becoming an animal, so it would be perfectly possible to experience the world just like one and still retain who I am. It's not surprising that I get excited at the fact that our understanding of a continuous consciousness and self is actually quite fuzzy; it plays right into this fantasy, a glimmer of hope to an irrational part of me that hopes it might be possible after all.

So at least for me, this isn't about giving in to death at all, but rather being able to experience something that's entirely out of reach, even more so than the conventional fantasies therians have.

#volpeonWrites