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My Theory on
19 years ago
General
Wrote this on macrophile.com and just decided to post here too. Inevitably someone asks why the whole "furry" thing and here's my theory. I should probably reread it or something but here ya go :D
The "furry" or more accurately "anthropomorph" is a symbol we construct upon which it is easier to project our fantasies and ideals of perfection.
The anthro to begin with was designed for the purpose of being a symbol. The egyptian gods are frequently referred to as being the first real anthros. However the egyptian gods are built upon earlier symbols. The animals were selected to illustrate aspects of divinity, in other words the things people saw as being part of a perfect being/person.
In early animation the anthro form was taken because it is easier to project upon than a distinct human character. It's personality and design are reflected in its appearance and allows the viewer to fill in any gaps as they themselves see fit.
A "furry" person however is a person that has found a need or found it preferable to project themselves upon the symbol of their choosing. Some people use it as an escape and project a large part of their own ego onto the figure whereas others will take a less extreme approach and apply features that they see as representative of divinity.
Taking it a step further and adressing the sexual aspect; a person can easily project their ego onto a symbol as well as any ideal as I've stated earlier. This applies as well for sexual ideals. The most desirable aspects in terms of sexual gratification are accentuated and most clearly imagined when they are fettered to a less tangible object. The anthropomorph allows us to create the less tangible symbol but allows us to maintain a binding in the familiar. Thus the "sexual furry" is capable of offering a "beacon" in the imagination upon which to build fantasy.
This I feel is actually a more natural state and can be considered more in tune with how our minds work than fantasizing about reality. When you fantasize about reality you are merely "remembering"; your mind does not have an opportunity to create based on what you yourself consider divine aspects. At first glance you would assume the realistic fantasy would provide a more appealing fantasy but that is not actually the case. If the fantasy is too tightly bound to reality then it also cannot escape it as easily.
If for instance you imagine yourself as a furry in your mind you can much more easily connect with it and thus have a more vivid experience lacking in the trappings of reality. But if you take the same fantasy and project yourself as you are you will instead be limited in what you will be capable of experiencing.
In its current form the "furry" is used more as an escape from reality and the disconnected nature of our world.
Hope that answers some of your questions. I developed this theory by tracing my own mind and comparing it to everything I know about psychology and anthropology.
Or you could just say that 6 foot bipedal, female felines with large boobs and human vocabularies are sexy.
The "furry" or more accurately "anthropomorph" is a symbol we construct upon which it is easier to project our fantasies and ideals of perfection.
The anthro to begin with was designed for the purpose of being a symbol. The egyptian gods are frequently referred to as being the first real anthros. However the egyptian gods are built upon earlier symbols. The animals were selected to illustrate aspects of divinity, in other words the things people saw as being part of a perfect being/person.
In early animation the anthro form was taken because it is easier to project upon than a distinct human character. It's personality and design are reflected in its appearance and allows the viewer to fill in any gaps as they themselves see fit.
A "furry" person however is a person that has found a need or found it preferable to project themselves upon the symbol of their choosing. Some people use it as an escape and project a large part of their own ego onto the figure whereas others will take a less extreme approach and apply features that they see as representative of divinity.
Taking it a step further and adressing the sexual aspect; a person can easily project their ego onto a symbol as well as any ideal as I've stated earlier. This applies as well for sexual ideals. The most desirable aspects in terms of sexual gratification are accentuated and most clearly imagined when they are fettered to a less tangible object. The anthropomorph allows us to create the less tangible symbol but allows us to maintain a binding in the familiar. Thus the "sexual furry" is capable of offering a "beacon" in the imagination upon which to build fantasy.
This I feel is actually a more natural state and can be considered more in tune with how our minds work than fantasizing about reality. When you fantasize about reality you are merely "remembering"; your mind does not have an opportunity to create based on what you yourself consider divine aspects. At first glance you would assume the realistic fantasy would provide a more appealing fantasy but that is not actually the case. If the fantasy is too tightly bound to reality then it also cannot escape it as easily.
If for instance you imagine yourself as a furry in your mind you can much more easily connect with it and thus have a more vivid experience lacking in the trappings of reality. But if you take the same fantasy and project yourself as you are you will instead be limited in what you will be capable of experiencing.
In its current form the "furry" is used more as an escape from reality and the disconnected nature of our world.
Hope that answers some of your questions. I developed this theory by tracing my own mind and comparing it to everything I know about psychology and anthropology.
Or you could just say that 6 foot bipedal, female felines with large boobs and human vocabularies are sexy.
well at least its one of the less dangerous ones...
When you fantasize about reality you are merely "remembering"<> your mind does not have an opportunity to create based on what you yourself consider divine aspects.
You should probably insert a semicolon or period into the <> I made above. I'm only being nitpicky because you obviously put some thought into this, so I'd like to see it displayed as well as possible. :)
And here I thought it was because the majority of cartoons when we were all growing up feature anthro characters as heroes. ^^ Nah, truthfully I think it's a mix of both. No one single reason, you know?
We also dont replace any flaws with anything else. We just project what we see as perfection on them, this is purely psychological.
Anthro characters who didn't fit the typical 'animal/personality association' stereotypes... for instance, the Biker Mice from Mars. They were mice, but not meek, weak, or timid.. they were just anthro for the sake of being anthro.
And, most furres DO see flaws in the human form.. otherwise, what reason would we have to replace them with animal traits? There's no sense there.. I mean, if I thought skin was as good as fur, then my fursona wouldn't have a reason to have fur, would it?
You talked a lot about some connection between animals and divinity, but.. I don't quite think I follow. I certainly don't make such connections, personally.
However I make no emphasis beyond that point that there is any necessary connection with an animal and a trait.
Specifically I'm talking about anthro for anthro's sake.
I don't believe that furries have weirder fetishes than anyone else, they just tend to incorporate fantasy elements more easily.
It seems to be that fetishes are also often a form of abstract symbolism, referring to some sensual trait the individual finds especially desireable in a sexual partner, and I imagine that was the case amongst primitive people. Afterall, sex is a serious business when you live in a small community, beset on all sides by people who'd take everything you have if only they could overpower you. Of course, you can't do anything about it beyond screwing, so you create a god of potence with a ten foot wang, or a goddess of fertility with six breasts, and you dress up, perform your weird rituals, and sleep soundly at night, knowing the matter is in the hands of a higher power.
I think I'm wandering off the point here a bit, so I'll wrap it up. I think there's something more to fetishes than formative experiences. Something a lot more fundamental about the way people are wired.
Fantasizing about hyper or markedly abnormal dimensions on an anthro character is possibly associating traits a particular individual feels are attractive: Myself for example - I find heavier set females to be attactive, especially so when they have well defined assets. Why? Well, life revolves around sex, the need to procreate, and I appearantly am tuned towards these features that I feel are more advantageous than being, say, hermaphroditic, or annorexic.
Long story short, we fantasize about what we think is reproductively successful...most of the time.
Take note, I'll add, that the majority of 'furs' appear upon the internet- which is another escape to turn to. Your own realm of control, and such.
I find this journal to be insightful,. and quite interesting. >:3 A good read!
I'd also be interested to find out where eight foot tall shit eating dragons come into play.. but that's a study for another day! :x
Grace.
Vocabulary.
Female?
VERY SEXY!
Well i'm not, I just like looking at em :)
During a meeting with a pagan group on my university campus years ago we had done the "Golden gown" meditation. Walked down the steps to one's soul mirror and in that mirror I had seen my avatar/furry self. First thing I said after that meditation was over was "I have cat ears."
Seems like anyone would regret that :D
The next question to ask would be: Why animals? I mean, yes, the Egyptians made gods with animal heads because they were easier to visualize and worship than someone with human traits. But this has become untrue in recent times: survey anyone on the street on what they think God looks like, and more often than not they'll say that He's a big caucasian guy with a white beard and a flowing robe. And everyone knows what Jesus looked like, right? Pale skin, straight brown hair and a little goatee. Never mind the fact that he was living in the Middle East, and that he'd probably look more like the guys you see in "war-torn wreckage" footage on CNN than that oil painting of him hanging outside your pastor's office. (Also the Buddha is worth including here. He wasn't fat. He sure wasn't Chinese. But many of us think of him that way...) Despite their inaccuracies, these religious figures gained a collective physical appearance in our minds without having to give them crocodiles or ibises for heads. So why are we hanging on to this outdated concept of animals acting like humans?
My theory is two fold: Firstly, "symbols" aside, we humans project ourselves onto everything. This is mostly because we are astoundingly vain creatures. (How else could you explain how an otherwise ordinary cliff face in New Hampshire is interesting enough to merit being put on the state's official quarter design?) But we project ourselves onto animals-- more so than we do onto, say, plants, or rocks, or clouds, or staple guns, or maps of Indonesia-- because they're living, breathing things who have lives in their own right. If a dog lives with your family, you treat it almost as you would a family member (you talk to it, you tell it how to act, you use it for a sense of friendship), just as the dog is treating you as if you were one of its pack (zoomorphism, the assigning of animal traits to humans-- possibly the reverse of what we're doing here on FA). We see animals as we would see us, as complex beings of emotion, when in reality they're more like living machines, with a set of operating conditions and a directive. Animals provide the life and movement, but we're writing our own meanings for their actions.
Secondly, this ability to identify with animals has made them oh-so-easy to use for metaphorical storytelling purposes (whether the subject is how the world came to be or which brand of battery lasts the longest). Talking animals might have been something some of us might have figured out on our own, but it is the world around us-- TV, books, movies, etc.-- that have really pushed the concept to its limit. (Why do you think that every CGI movie made these days is about anthropomorphic animals? Besides the fact that humans look kind of creepy as 3-D animations, of course.) The Internet, I think, was the greatest boon to the creation of a "furry fandom" because it didn't just give people a character to escape to-- which didn't necessarily have to even be a talking animal-- but a whole world of others who shared the concept. What you guys are doing here is creating a single complex story that isn't quite a reality (there are many things that are usually glossed over, like "So how did these animals actually start walking on two legs, anyways?" and "Do these anthropomorphs have governments? Laws? Politics? What's their healthcare system like?"), but is still just interesting enough to escape from daily life without being alone. It's sort of a mental virus kind of thing, I suppose.
...Dang. That ended up way longer than I expected it to be. But the worst thing to do, I suppose, is keep your ideas from flowing out. Anyways, to sum up:
Q: Why animals?
A: They're the easiest subjects. And we've been conditioned to do so.
BAM! Academia in the heezy fo'sheezy!
The egyptian civilization was built on an even older civilization with far more advanced technology than we have even today. They created those images but seemingly did not have a religion.
If you want to see evidence of the precursor civilization you can try to scrounge up some photos of egypt taken by tourists. There are stone carvings more precise than what we can do even now.
Myself I don't feel escapism is especially the big thing in furry fandom except in that it's the motive behind fantasy art in general. My own opinion is that the anthropomorphic animal or theriomorphic aspects of furries come from deeper down in the collective unconscious. The oldest 'furry' art I'm aware of is the Lowenstein-Stadel 'lion man' figure carved from mammoth ivory. It's in the vicinity of 28,000 years old. There's probably much older stuff undiscovered in some cave somewhere. Similar figures appear in the same period and other anthopomorphic animal figures appear in cave paintings and rock paintings and engravings all over the world. So I think what has been categorized as 'furry' in current culture is the latest expression of something very basic in human nature and probably in the nature of intelligent life in general.
Terms such as shifty eyes, and ratlike were ones of his creation.
I'll also add that he believed people could de-evolve into "lower" animals, and even developed vestigial tails, but this happened before we knew of a genome.
I wrote a thing on the sexual aspect of anthro characters, dissecting the most common anatomy features and essentially coming to the conclusion that ultimately the "animal" accounts for a relatively low proportion of any anthro character and is really more of a symbol of whatever that particular animal represents in our own culture. Even in our language, we use animals to represent character traits and behaviors.
I honestly think "furry" as a culture is a combination of the desire to hide oneself behind another persona, and the natural tendency of humans to group together. Thus, we have a bunch of people who wear masks who feel more comfortable with it knowing that there are others who do it too.
Egyptian Mythology is an interesting perspective. I think it's less a primal aspect, and more a derivative of a several generations raised on anthropomophic cartoon characters. Because we're exposed to them at a young age, they are added to the templates of different kinds of people that exist in the world in our mental maps of it.
Sexually? I think it's also a cartoon derivative. Sex in real life can be complicated, painful, and for most of the internet generation unattainable. In a cartoon world, though, no one ever gets hurt, or at least not for long. Happy endings come in 5-minute intervals and no one really suffers any long-term emotional trauma.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley
And is the principle I go on for why 1. anthro characters in art are cuter, and 2. guys in fursuits scare the living crap out of me.
...Then again, if we were on "Around the Horn", we wouldn't even be talking about art. We'd be talking about whatever Tiger Woods is up to this week. Still, though...
This has been looking into Dusty's head, where it's only 95% hollow
I came up with a lot of the same answers, as far as projecting what we view as perfection, in an easy. non-human symbol, and using that symbol to facilitate our sexual fantasies.
In its current form the "furry" is used more as an escape from reality and the disconnected nature of our world.
Absolutely. I know for myself it is the most potent form of escapism, and I have no qualms accepting the truth of that.
But I must say i do agree with you. I myself, am very aware of the things do, and I can see a lot of congruence between what you're saying and what I can see in myself, and also what I can see in others. I must say again, it's probably the most logical explanation for this "fandom."
On a side note, I too believe the egyptian gods were based on something from an earlier culture that existed before the pharoahs. The Sphinx was built by that culture, and it didn't have a human face until a pharoah decided to put his on it :P I also heard there is something hiding under the Sphinx too.
Over ten years ago, scientist used seismic detection devices (not sure exactly what they were called) to locate a chamber or series of chambers hidden underneath the Sphinx. They refuse to open them, however, claiming they should preserve the chambers "for future generations" (a more PR-friendly way of saying "we have no idea how to dig without damaging the Sphinx or preserve what we may find" ).
I have a strong feeling there might be something incredible hiding under there... like the lost knowledge of the pre-pharoah Egyptians.
Perhaps the "original" Egyptian gods?
They ran water all over egypt and the pyramids were originally full of water as well. Though there may have been a few other chemicals too given the corrosion on the pyramids' electrodes.
If you saw that special where they ran the little robots into the tunnels in the pyramids you would have seen the electrodes. They also broke one of them in order to get their scanner to be flush with the brick.
Um.... what?
A very interesting read, thank you!
I draw anthro though because I find it easier to draw. Although I find that it expresses me better then if I tried drawing me as a person.
Thank you for the awsome read!!
^______^