Sapience & Nonhumanity
(reposted from tumblr)
I view my level of sapience as something completely inhuman, rather than something inherently human, unlike the majority of orthohumans. But my focus on sapience makes me not feel like a therian at all, even if I have some feline instincts from who knows where, and despite my nonhuman phantom limbs of having digitigrade, clawed limbs.
And the older I get, the more focused I am on gaining back the knowledge I believe I forgot, through memories and noemata. So, being knowledgeable and having a lot of memories of things to fall back on gives me some species euphoria. Especially since I feel like I lost some of my intelligence being here. And the thought of losing even more knowledge and intelligence scares me.
(As a disclaimer, I know that intelligence is a very hard thing to measure and that there are different types of intelligence, but please bear with me. I am aware it's not a black and white sort of thing, where either something has intelligence or it does not.) Even though there are some things I intuitively understand as a concept, there are still things my brain has trouble understanding, primarily with things involving numbers. And it makes me feel dysphoric.
I feel feral sometimes, but after thinking more about it, I now believe it's in more of an intelligent non-'animal' nonhuman, way. I suppose "alien" would fit the word well for others to understand what I mean. I think this is the major reason that I just don't feel like a therian anymore. I don't vibe with having unrestrained instincts, especially with instincts that do not include having a high level of sapience.
There's also the fact that animality is a social construct. Humans are objectively animals and fall under the kingdom animalia, but in society, they don't think of themselves as animals, and being called an animal often implies thoughtlessness and sheer instinct.
Coming from a species of arrogant aliens, I am trying really hard not to fall under that stereotype and am checking each sentence twice to make sure that it doesn't come across as rude or arrogant, because that is never my intention, especially when I'm talking about my own personal experiences that have solely to do with me and my existence in this place. I'd argue that even my species physically count as animals too, in the same way a sapient creature with certain traits that would fall under 'animal.' An autotrophic animal, but still an animal, even though different planets have different evolutionary pathways. I do sometimes joke around and call them plants, but nah, we aren't, really.