Ive been around online for quite some time. Not just here, but many corners of the internet. And among my journey I have ventured into unusual territories and have come across interesting users. Particularly those who seem to believe that they are in some way non-human. Weve all met them, weve all seen them. You may recognize it as fluff. While they are entitled to their beliefs, I cant help but notice some common logical fallacies when it comes to their arguments of why their beliefs are valid.
Now let me start by saying , I am in no way trying to degrade or offend anyone and their beliefs in any way, shape or form. You are entitled to whatever belief you may have in your own regard. But if youre going to claim certain things, you have got to have a pretty solid basis for that claim. What Im talking about specifically is the concept of shifting. Whether It be physical shifting, mental shifting, spiritual shifting, etc. Guys, we have got to talk about this. And I know this subject has been pretty much beaten to death, but Id like to get on my soap box and say my peace.
I also want to mention that this more focuses on the idea of shifting into an animal, not a fictional or mythical creature, though the same principles do apply.
Physical Shifting:
Its pretty much common knowledge that physically altering the appearance of your body without external stimulants, whether that be medication, hormones, cosmetics, or surgery, is impossible. Hands down. The most common argument I see against this is: Well my eyes change color when Im [insert emotion here] , so thats a sign of P-shifting. Well, not exactly. It has more to do with genetics and your environment.
Your eye color is determined genetics, 50% of genetic information, or DNA, passed from the mother, and the other 50% passed down from the father. These genes can be mixed and matched to create a unique code that determines everything about you, including your hair color, personality, and eye color. The interesting thing about genetics is that while both parents may have brown eyes, for example, depending on what makes up their individual genetic coding, there is slight chance that you could end up with blue eyes if any genetic ancestor had blue eyes, making that gene recessive, or dormant, in either one of your parents. So technically, your eye color isnt decided by simply throwing your parents eye color into a bowl and mixing those colors together, or getting your dads eye color by a flip of the coin. There are multiple possibilities of eye color, some are just more likely than others. (Though the specifics of genetics and eye color arent fully understood at this time.)
The colored part of your eye is called the iris, which holds pigmentation called melanin. Overtime, this melanin may develop which causes darker features like skin tone and eye color. This is why an infants eyes may be temporarily blue at birth and then slowly turn darker as they get older. Same thing with children who were born with blonde hair and grew up to have brown/black hair.
The iris is a muscle that expands and contracts to control the size of the pupil. The pupil is the black part that lies right in the center of the eye. The pupil may dilate in in dimmer lighting (say in a room with a single lamp lit), and contract in brighter light (during the day at noon). The pupil can also change size due to different emotions like anger, fear, anxiety, happiness, and so forth. This expanding and constricting causes the pigments in the iris to compress and spread apart (think of squishing playdough or sparkly slime), causing a slight change in color. This small change can be noticed in those with blue, green, hazel, or grey eyes, though this difference is very slight.
So ultimately, your change of eye color has more to do with light and genetics than any kind of supernatural shifting. Sorry to say.
Mental Shifting:
I hear these arguments time and time again. I can change to the mindset of [insert creature here] , thats why I [insert non-conforming behavior here] or I always do [this] , and [creature] s do that, therefore I am [creature] . While this might make sense to who genuinely believes in this sort of thing, I have a hard time making sense of it. Mostly for the fact that we honestly have very little information on how an animal mind works. We only understand what an animal may be feeling due to certain behaviors that are displayed, for example: tail wagging from a dog might mean happiness or excitement, while tail wagging for a cat could be a warning that shes going to bite. Pawing or whimpering in dogs may be a sign of hunger or a need to go outside to relieve themselves. Birds may say funny things theyve heard as a sign of distress. Behaviors like this have been clearly measured through CT scans and MRIs performed on dogs. One exception that Im familiar with are chimpanzees, as they seem to have similar mental capabilities of humans, including empathy, short term memory, and deception.
Humans are essentially, as Charles Darwin put it, big brained apes. And this was widely agreed until the 90s when it was found in microscopic studies of the brain that human and ape brains were different in organization with tissues and nerve cells. Essentially, this discovery showed that there are certain similarities and dissimilarities between human and animal intelligence.
While the evolution of humanity, and the entirety of Human History remains unclear, we can safely assume that humans were once, in their primal state, on par with the rest of the animal kingdom. This was up until 10 million years ago when Earth climate began to cool leading to the Quaternary glaciation, approximately 2.6 million years ago, resulting in the retreat of the north African tropical forest, ultimately creating open grasslands which would later turn into the Sahara Desert. This led to many primates from living primarily in the trees to adopting life partially or fully on the ground, leaving them vulnerable to predators. This is where we start to see the of adoption of bipedalism, or walking on two legs, to get a better perceptual point of impending danger. This then leads to better eyesight, the ability to use the hands more efficiently for gathering food, collecting items to create weapons to cut and hunt. Essentially, these primates developed the use of primitive technology. And from 5 million years ago, this primate brain began to develop rapidly in size and differentiation of function.
It truly is astonishing that our genus Homo was one of the only species of the planet able to develop such evolutionary success. Call it what you may, but it truly is an interesting subject. But what does this have to do with mental shifting?
Its simple. Those who claim to mental shift are doing nothing more than reverting to a primitive state of mind based solely on the behaviors explored and studied by scientific research of the animals of their choosing. It has nothing to do with being an animal trapped in a human body. It has everything to do with preferring to use instinct and primal behavior to react over logic and reasoning.
Spiritual/Astral Shifting:
Here is where were going to get a little tricky, because everyone has a different belief of what a soul, spirit, life force, (whatever you want to call it), is. According to Google, a soul is the spiritual or immaterial part of a human being or animal, regarded as immortal. A soul can also be the essence or embodiment of a specified quality.
If the soul or spirit is something immaterial, meaning it is without form, that would mean it could never take on a definitive form or shape. The soul is not made of matter. The soul is an astral body that cannot be definitively studied. Therefore, if said soul was to reincarnate from one species to another, it would be highly unlikely for it to maintain the shape of its previous incarnation, as for it to be unlikely for it to carry over vivid memories of its previous life, as weve established earlier that animal brains are structured differently, so long term memory would most likely be disregarded because survival would no longer be a necessity. It is possible for some memories to be carried over, but dont expect any wisdom or useful experience.
It is not certain whether animals have beliefs or not, so to say this is fact would be hypocritical of me. I am speaking from a personal perspective. I believe it is possible to change form in the Dream and Astral Realms if you so choose, though I am a little iffy on the whole phantom limb theory. But I suppose if the soul was truly comfortable in its previous life, its possible it would be likely to imitate a tail or wings, though no tail or wing physically exists. But I digress.
Down below are a list of references for your reading pleasure, as for citing my sources.
Thank you for reading, let me know what you all think! Feel free to add to the discussion below!
