Rose's Theory of Therianthropy

I haven't dwelt much on the "why" of therianthropy, but generally as a scientist I ascribe to the more physical/molecular theories of therianthropy.

My stance is that essentially, enough of the same atoms that once made up someone's theriotype form have come back together within a new form that the theriotype feels familiar. I guess one could call it atomic memory? This also fits with the general therian community tending toward apex predators, since the remains of such an animal are more likely to decay in one area versus being scavenged/spread out extensively like a prey animal's remains might be. It may even explain why theriotypes tend to be animals present in the fossil record or otherwise preserved (amber, ice, resin, etc), since those molecules would be more "intact" than something such as a jellyfish which only fossilizes under specific and rare circumstances, if at all.

Additionally, everything boils down to energy, even (and especially) our thoughts. Therefore to me it makes sense that past life experiences happen, since they'd be our current form picking up on experiential energy remnants left behind - whether you term that as something spiritual or scientific is up to you. Maybe we're simply more attuned to pick up on such things, given my theory that we're already registering the physical energies leftover from past forms? Of course, past life experiences aren't required to be a therian, but I recognize they are fairly common within the community.

Fictionkin and theriomythics aren't left out here either, but I think their existence is better explained by the "everything is energy" tenet of my ideas: the collective energy of a culture's thoughts and beliefs about a mythical creature is still something that is passed down and hangs around, so to speak. I'm not super sure how or why this would come to be embodied in one form (i.e. as someone's kintype), but that's not to say it can't/doesn't happen as I know it does occur. This would mean fictionkin and theriomythics experience what they do more as a result of experiential and cultural energies than the physical energy of a past form since that may or may not exist.

I'm interested to hear what others think and I'd love to discuss more about my thoughts!

I think the energy idea you have there is interesting, and sounds quite plausible!
Everything has energy. I was just talking to a coworker about something similar, anything that lives (animals, insects, plants, etc) has an electrical charge that could be observed as a pulse or heartbeat.
The idea of residual energy gathering and coming together in the atoms also sounds fairly solid.

(2023-03-15 4:27)TherianRose Wrote:  My stance is that essentially, enough of the same atoms that once made up someone's theriotype form have come back together within a new form that the theriotype feels familiar. I guess one could call it atomic memory?

I don't mean to be overly critical, but this is a topic I've given a lot of thought, when considering our mortality. There is a theory going around about quantum consciousness, which is flawed but offers a good basis for thoughts on this topic.

I don't know if I can compress too much information on quantum phenomena into a short post very well (without going way off topic anyway), but essentially at the subatomic level, things behave randomly. Computer hardware, for instance, is susceptible to this randomness, as well as many other machines. Usually we develop special solutions to ensure that electronics does not behave randomly, but rather does what it's supposed to do. Because this is a result of the nature of the universe itself, it's a very widespread problem and almost everything we know about electronics is designed to counter these effects. But it is not something that common people realise when we think about machines, we think that they do what they were designed to do, rather than each making their own decisions. This effect is only apparent however, thanks to all the aforementioned random-cancelling design and engineering.

So you could say, that everything in our universe is going to have a mind of it's own, unless it's specifically designed to cancel these effects out. Obviously it doesn't only apply to machines, but also to living things. You could reasonably argue, that perhaps the reason we all seem to have that "soul" that "inner perspective", that allows us to have our own free will, are these quantum randomness effects.

However one should not dismiss the abilities that are given to us by our biology. If anyone reading this has ever experienced migraines, you know that the aura takes away your abilities. This would not be the case, had these abilities been a part of your "soul" or an inherent trait of the universe. Indeed it is our biology that enables us to experience almost everything that we do. And when we die, that biology breaks down and disappears, thus even if whatever enables our own free will continues to exist, everything that made us who we were is gone.

Try to remember that we don't only swap out our atoms when we die, we do it all the time when we breathe, when we eat food. When we do our biological functions. And we base the idea that we continue to exist, based on the memories we have.

A few years back, I was hospitalised and sent into an artificial comma. Because of the drugs administered here, I do not remember anything that happened before. Therefore, was it still me? I find this more difficult to answer than I expected. I assume I am me today, because I remember being me before, but I have no way to know if these memories are real. If our atoms leave behind, the biological structures that enable us to experience memories, when they leave our bodies, do they know they used to be us?

All of these are aspects that cannot simply be ignored. However, they do not mean that you are wrong. They simply provide further insight.

(2023-03-15 4:27)TherianRose Wrote:  Additionally, everything boils down to energy, even (and especially) our thoughts. Therefore to me it makes sense that past life experiences happen, since they'd be our current form picking up on experiential energy remnants left behind - whether you term that as something spiritual or scientific is up to you. Maybe we're simply more attuned to pick up on such things, given my theory that we're already registering the physical energies leftover from past forms? Of course, past life experiences aren't required to be a therian, but I recognize they are fairly common within the community.

These "energies" are patterns that appear and re-appear in our environment. There is a concept that describes this, it's called convergent evolution. It's when random events lead a system to adopt a similar solution to a problem, as a different and unrelated system, which is facing the same problem.

I'm not as sure about what causes the experience of therianthropy, to me it seems to be both nature and nurture. And I don't believe in magical forces to lead us to experience what we do. I think as conscious beings, we face the same kinds of challenges in life as our theriotypes do, and I think random events in both our genetic history and our time on this world, lead us to adopt the same kinds of solutions, as our wild counterparts. This is why we act like wolves, even though our biology is human.

I explain this theory in more detail in my own theory thread:
https://forums.therian-guide.com/Thread-Therianthropy-as-a-connection#content

LP,
Dusty