Humans are an animal species, we are "bipedal primate mammals", Hominids. Some humans just believe Humans are the dominant animal species on this planet.
Humans being animals is what the lyrics to Panther by Pain of Salvation is mentioning, I would think most people on this forum would have caught on to that meaning of the lyrics at least. How we are all animals, with different perspectives, yet some feel like a Panther living in a Dogs world, feline in a world gone canine.
If you look throughout history, you will find some fascinating stories and information about human animal hybrids typically called, Chimeras. There are stories that say humans experimented before with cross-breeding which gave birth to some of these Mythological Chimeras.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hybrid_creatures_in_folkloreThat's what I am struggling with. It is all over the map. The quote I posted gave no indication it's a situation where someone believes they are an animal. In many instances "Identifying as" doesn't equal "is." And it is becoming hard to know where someone is with their self-identification, and how to accept it.
Rachel Donezal was black, because she said she was, until everyone realized she wasn't, but then race is apparently a "social construct" so she is. She can identify as black (whatever that even means) but the genetics and biology don't make it so any more than Orbert can be that tiger.
But at some point all these machinations are going to fall flat. There's going to be a logical reckoning. It was a great dawning of realization for me, back whenever it was that my gay roommate in college (true story) didn't choose to be gay. He was attracted to men the same way I was attracted to curvy women with pretty faces. We've already sort of glossed over the notion that most pedophiles didn't choose to like little boys and little girls, but we rationalized that by saying "just because you feel it doesn't mean you have to act on it"; basically the "harm" argument. And one of the arguments, at least back in the day, was that African Americans - and any other U.S. minority as compared to "white" - didn't choose to their races, and further, it was something they couldn't really control or mask. You knew straight away 99% of the time whether someone was African American or whatever (how else could you know to cross the street?).
But that was all predicated on "tolerance". You didn't have to LIKE what was going on around you; you COULD secretly think - wrongly, IMO - that homosexuality was a moral problem. You COULD secretly think - wrongly, IMO - that the races weren't entirely equal, but you couldn't ACT on it. And that's the way we conduct most things in life. I don't have to LIKE the structures and strictures of society, but if I want to participate in it, I have to make concessions and/or bear the consequences. We've moved past "tolerance" like a tornado and are in fact even moving past "acceptance". It's not enough now to even "ACCEPT" those around us. We've now got to forget everything we've been told/we have learned about things like choice, free will, etc., and are now subject to the whims and wills of 7.6 billion individuals, whether we agree with them or not. It's not a tenable solution, and it's CERTAINLY not a path to removing the in-groups and out-groups that are definitionally at the heart of our problems of divisiveness and bigotry.
Black and White are just descriptors to describe a persons skin tone. Black people are not just from Africa. Asians are also white, but for some reason they are described as yellow. Indigenous Americans and Arabs of the Middle East are both brown in skin tone, but one is only called Red Skinned. Mexican and Arab men are a bit difficult to tell apart, to quote Ramrod from Super Troopers, "He thinks I'm Mexican."
This is why to me, Race does not exist. If we really want to label people truthfully, we should be labelling them based on place of origin. It's more complicated now since humans have become so mixed within the world. If you come here and see some of the Pueblo Native Americans out in the cities, many would assume and think they're either Pacific Islander, "White", or "Black", but in reality they are Pueblo Native Americans just like me. Blacks from Jamaica or Haiti are not African American, there have always been humans with a dark skin tone residing in those areas.
The issue is, Eurocentric Humans have utilized many forms of Justification to claim that they are the ultimate, number one, chosen dominant race of humanity, that must save all of mankind from destruction. In the early 20th century, they tried to include intelligence in that justification by measuring brain size.
I don't like using Wikipedia as a source, but this is what was on there...
In the 18th century, debates surrounding the institution of slavery in the Americas hinged on the question of whether innate differences in intellectual capacity existed between races, in particular between black people and white people.[8] Some European philosophers and scientists, such as Voltaire, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Carl Linnaeus, either argued or simply presupposed that white people were intellectually superior.[9] Others, such as Henri Gregoire and Constantin de Chasseboeuf, argued that ancient Egypt had been a black civilization, and that it was therefore black people who had "discovered the elements of science and art, at a time when all other men were barbarous."[10] During the French Revolution, Jean-Baptiste Belley, an elected member of the National Convention and the Council of Five Hundred who had been born in Senegal, became a leading proponent of the idea of racial intellectual equality.[11]
In 1785, Thomas Jefferson wrote of his "suspicion" that black people were "inferior to... whites in endowments both of body and mind."[10] However in 1791, after corresponding with the free African-American polymath Benjamin Banneker, Jefferson wrote that he hoped to see such "instances of moral eminence so multiplied as to prove that the want of talents observed in them is merely the effect of their degraded condition, and not proceeding from any difference in the structure of the parts on which intellect depends."[12]
Samuel Morton, an American physician, used the study of human skulls to argue for racial differences in intelligence.
During the 19th and early 20th centuries, the idea that there are differences in the brain structures and brain sizes of different races, and that this implied differences in intelligence, was a popular topic, inspiring numerous typological studies.[13][14][15] Samuel Morton's Crania Americana, published in 1839, was one such study, arguing that intelligence was correlated with brain size and that both of these metrics varied between racial groups.[16]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_race_and_intelligence_controversyI don't have to LIKE the structures and strictures of society, but if I want to participate in it, I have to make concessions and/or bear the consequences.
Here is another issue. There are many humans that had no choice but to adopt that Eurocentric societal structure or become extinct. The consequence for not participating in it was annihilation by genocide, when they couldn't "kill the man", they shifted to destroying the very essence and identity that makes that man, the societal structure in which their lifestyle is based upon. As an example, "kill the Indian, save the man." Also, this was done to animals as that Eurocentric Societal Structure demanded animals to give up their habitats and migrate, some are now endangered and some have gone extinct. Native Americans were not the one's that wiped out the buffalo population...
By that same thought…is this any different from the fanatical sub-culture of Avatar? Anyone remember that? There were people so obsessed with the movie that they didn’t want to leave the fantasy of that world?
I believe, this is due to humans having a desire to escape reality. To escape the reality that the world is not a utopia, or dandelions, sunshine, and rainbows all the time. The weather tells us that the world is not always pleasant, the sun doesn't always shine. All animals/organisms struggle in this reality.
I also feel that with Avatar, humans desire that same connection as those Avatar beings had with the nature and their mother tree. Avatar is a conglomeration of Indigenous cultures throughout the world, to create a utopia like world. This is why the creator meant for it to be visual and for people to experience this "utopia". It's why I also say, that every human has this, but for some reason, some humans forgot or lost it along the path of life.
In regards to people acting out upon their desires to escape reality, such as becoming a Furry. I don't have an issue as long as the understanding of reality is still apparent. But don't expect others to easily tolerate or accept such a desire. That is because their own perspective of reality is highly based on their cultural beliefs. All human perspectives of reality are based upon their cultural beliefs. Which this world is dominated based upon one central belief with a disregard for the other perspectives of reality.
Hence, this is where Stadler is pointing out the Tolerance and Acceptance of those other perspectives of reality that are not chosen, but that a human is born with or into. Just as the Eurocentric humans did not tolerate or accept those perspective and forced them into adopting theirs, so are these groups utilizing the same by forcing others to adopt their perspective of reality.
Topic: Identifying As A Furry? (Read 9005 times)
