Otherkin Self Moderation (2015)

(By Jafira Dragon)

The Importance of self moderation for Otherkin

A faith or belief such as otherkinism needs to be reigned in at times. Otherkinism by its nature is a belief that has few doctrinal borders so it is up to the collective community as individuals to agree upon and set some form of guidelines to keep things from getting out of control and being flooded with incoherence, delusions or purely emotional rationalizations. The otherkin community is also prime bait for people just seeking attention alongside of the truly confused or delusional who may be seeking an escape from this life or special treatment and attention.

Most of societies traditional beliefs tend to have internal doctrinal boundaries or a general understanding of their tenants and beliefs to ensure that their adherents do not commonly need as much oversight or policing by the overall community. Considering however the individualistic nature of otherkin it is unlikely that some great otherkin equivalent of the Council of Nicaea will ever agree to banish fictionkin as heretics or determine that someone cannot be galaxykin therefore we will never have a bible or book of law as our beliefs are by nature subjective faith.

However, I can propose one true mandate, Introspect yourself and others. Individual otherkin must be prudent to always in all circumstances question the understandings and perceptions of both themselves and others. The fluid and liberal understanding of personal and spiritual identity allowed by the concept of otherkinism must always be approached and handled responsibly and introspectively with adherents commonly questioning, searching and meditating on their own personal beliefs and understandings.

Otherkin to me is the belief in reincarnation and perhaps a multiverse, I am a pantheist and the otherkin concept fits easily into my personal worldview. However, I can see that otherkinism as a general philosophy is very fluid and flexible, it is easily susceptible to delusional ideas and prior to the arrival of social media most otherkin kept to various closed communities for that reason. In the past we were careful about who we would come out to, it was a need to know basis, being kept secret helped to moderate a lot of the attention seekers, escapists and special snowflakes who would later come to taint our beliefs today.

We still had a large degree of fluff in the kin communities back then (I mean come on, I somehow weaseled in) but the troubles were not as out of control as they are today. One reason for the stability in years passed was because of the guidelines we set forth as a community. Common sense tenets like this belief is personal or spiritual to our members and important. That it takes meditation and spiritual growth, its not something that is just decided or a game. That we are always learning and seeking, that we are not trying to override this life, but that knowing ourselves is meant to teach us lessons to make us better people and to help work towards our personal spiritual growth. Today, with the rise of social media we must learn to police ourselves individually. So again, be introspective and always in a state of learning, be rational, seek understanding and never give way to simple assumption.