Animal Thesis

The Animal Thesis is the name given to the hypothesis that human beings are merely "evolved animals" and that no part of their makeup comes from other than animal sources.

This thesis is naturally derived from the popular understanding of the Darwinist theory of evolution, although it is by no means necessarily implied by it.

It does form an important strand of the pseudomythos or new story-picture understanding of the world initiated by the popular acceptance of Darwinism in the late 19th century. Because myths are central to the human understanding of the world, the pseudomythos initiated a new "psychic economy" in the west and made it possible for substantialism to move from being a mere intellectual theory to becoming fully active in the human psyche, replacing traditional and spiritually valid mythos.



One prominent effect of the Animal Thesis was to elevate the procreative instinct (designated from the 1920s onwards by the newly coined - in this sense - term "sex") to an explanation of the human affections which had formerly been seen as spiritual in their origin and true orientation.

Thus Freudian theory, and all that came after it, has its roots in the popular understanding of Darwinism and is a key element in the Animal Thesis.

It is true that there had been a certain degree of "sexual cynicism" in former times, but now it was given the cachet of being "scientific fact" rather than the (usually self-consciously "bad") prejudices of over-worldly cynics.

Results of this acceptance were a rapid devaluation of friendship and the virtual elimination of the recognition of Amity. The term "love" became almost exclusively reserved for biologically-based bonds and bondings. A striking example of this is the crassly anachronistic tendency of modern biographers to ascribe homosexuality as the motive for any demonstration of profound affection between Tellurians of the same sex in earlier times.

This "demythologisation of love" is responsible for much of the spiritual emptiness and literal "disaffection" of the modern psyche.

Similarly the "Sado-Masochist Industry" (whether commercial or not) demythologises the instinct for discipline, with its spiritual roots, and understands it purely as a literal per-version (turning from its proper course) of the procreative urge.

The not uncommon association of the instinct for certain forms of discipline with sucri (eros), or affectionate bonding (which can be an aspect of discipleship); and the possible association of sucri with the procreative urge can certainly lead to gross results, especially in the case of mascûli. This is indeed a literal per-version of the spiritual nature of discipline and is not an innovation of the Animal Thesis.

But the complete inversion of the entire structure, putting the lowest element at the top and assuming that the entire impulse is, at its best, a sublimation of its grossest perversion, rests on the theoretical basis of the Animal Thesis, which has radically modified - and falsified - the modern psyche.



While the effect - and in many cases the intention - of the popularisation of the theory of evolution was to create a pseudomythos supplanting traditional and metaphysically valid myths, this is not inherent in the theory itself.

The Animal Thesis is not necessarily implied by evolutionism and it is perfectly possible to suppose that Dea used the evolutionary process to create a vehicle for the human soul.

Most Aristasians and Déanists, however, would argue that the scientific acceptance of evolutionism was the result of the need of late West Telluria for a pseudomythos and not vice versâ and that there is no reason to accept a flawed and dubious scientific theory when one has already discarded the pseudomythos that was its raison d'être.

It is argued that acceptance of Darwinistic evolutionism (although Aristasians do use the term evolution for the development of manifestation in other senses), in the absence of the pseudomythos that surrounds it, would be a superstition in the most literal sense of the word: an isolated element "standing over" (superstat), out of context, from another belief-system.

Nonetheless, it is perfectly possible and consistent for a person who finds the need to adhere to biological evolutionism to reject the Animal Thesis.

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