Not long ago I read an article about how everything, actually is alive. Okay obviously, vegetable entities, as evidenced by the fact that they grow. But even, like Y’know, rocks, water. I ain’t no physicist, to put it very kindly, but I think this has sump’n to do with the fact(.?) if such it be, that, within the solid objects we see or stub our toes on, there is unceasing and frenetic molecular motion.
Back in Anthropology 101, we used to call this belief system “animism”: everything has a spirit which must be placated by humans who seek to exploit the thing.
Fortunately for humans, these spirits are very amenable to flattery and apology. Like, “O great and beautiful tree! We are so sorry that we must cut you down and hollow you out to make a canoe ! Forgive us! and look, we’re doin’ a ritual dance, just for you! We cool? (Okay guys, time for the stone axes—now! )”
What’s prompting this rant is an article on Aeon, the online magazine, Don’t Farm Bugs! Apparently kazillions of “black soldier fly” larvae ( okay , that name has gotta go as soon as we get a chance; it’s racist AND, ah…militarist ) are being savagely and cruelly exploited by humans on their way to grinding them up to make insect protein for us, and possibly even for our food animals like pigs and cows! The poor li’l baby bugs are being baked and boiled alive!
And, as the author points out, they might be sentient, we just don’t know.
“Don’t farm bugs”? It occurs to me that turnabout is fair play: bugs have been bugging farms ever since agriculture was invented. Before we learned to control them, the entire crop of some poor sodbreaker could be destroyed overnight by a ravening horde. And even if he were spared a locust invasion or some similar insect mass event, a very large portion of his crop would be so destroyed. It’s what bugs do.
I am totally down with the injunction in the title of the piece. Not because I’m worried about “hurting” larvae, but because I think bugs taste awful.
Now how do I know this, never having eaten one (at least “not wittingly”, in Clapper’s immortal phrase)? Well, I know how dead bugs smell, because houseflies migrate to the highest , sunniest windows in our house , and die n masse in the window wells between the glass and the screens. We have a tower on our house to which I periodically ascend to change a lightbulb or mount a seasonal decoration, necessarily encountering a few inches of the wretched corses of these insect pilgrims who didn’t make it to the promised land—or maybe they did; houseflies don’t want to go outside, do they? Not the ones I’ve tried to shoo out a door or window…
And I probably, although I have no memory of it, did deliberately smell—or maybe even 🤢 taste) some squashed fly when I was a toddler. I extrapolate this from having watched my daughter at about age 2. There was nothing she wouldn’t put in her mouth. You have NO idea how much excrement, of all intriguing shapes and sizes, there is littering the ground , until you have taken a walk with a toddler. I reckon thats why we call it “soil”. The tidy pellets dropped by the deer were particularly irresistible.
Also, I once cooked and served a wild duck which a neighbor had shot and generously gave us. Wild duck live on bugs. And their flesh tastes like it. I have heard the same from people who tried to serve wild turkey. So actually, if they start feeding insect mash to our pigs and cows, that might very well hasten the cause of universal veganism.
But, if we’re going to eat ONLY vegetables, we’re back to the inescapable fact that we can’t grow very much of the stuff unless we kill the bugs.
Articles like the one on Aeon today are a transparent an attack on humanism itself. The author actually hauls out the old saw about a society being defined by how it treats the most vulnerable amongst it. Whoever wrote that, I’m sure, was thinking of the most vulnerable people. But that’s “speciesism” nowadays…
The fact is, one insect may be “vulnerable”, but en masse they are INvulnerable. Doesnt anybody who has ever gone outside on a summer evening know that?
Insects are our direct competitors. They eat substances we want and need to eat, at every stage of production and storage from the field to the pantry. Shee-uh, they even eat our clothes and our houses! The fact that we’re poised to become so tender about their possible suffering, their survival, can only be further evidence of our recent near-suicidal hatred and disdain for our own species.
ST UnWoked & UnVaxxed! 
“Alive” is subjective. Ever seen Millennial sitting in his Mom’s basement playing fortnight? The very definition of “no life”.
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The Aeon article did admit that decapitated cockroaches ( so I reckon this means that whatever brain they have is located in their heads) can go on performing certain functions, which militates against the theory that they are “sentient”, meaning conscious of pain, as does the fact that mantises go on mating while their love object is eating them alive.
Personally I think this Aeon author just feels guilty about all the insect torture he did when he was a boy. He admits to wielding a magnifying glass to incinerate the poor critters. 🔥 🤨 Y’know, little girls don’t do that kinda thing, which is mebbe why I am seeing this issue from a different perspective.
But CTFO!!! Not only do insects eat our food,,they eat our textiles and our houses! We naked apes NEED clothes and shelter, no way we can survive without our material culture, let alone agri-culture. It’s them or us, people! Or rather, it’s them vs. us, because don’t worry, we’re never going to eradicate them. Another advantage they have is they breed copiously, prolifically and continuously. With our nine- month, single birth reproductive pattern, it’s impossible we could ever overtake them. Okay, then, a worthy adversary—they don’t need our anthropomorphic pity.
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I like your comments; pls stick around here!
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Second that, theearthspins!
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That is my intent!
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What in creation is Aeon, Hyp? Maybe I don’t want to know….
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No, it’s good, kinda. It’s an online magazine. If you enter Aeon in your search box it will come up. I like it because it occasionally has anthropological pieces. It’s interesting although pretty irritatingly Lefty and Prog.
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This shows where the mind can go when an awareness of the immanent replaces the image of the Transcendent; and the conception of oneself as a human being made in the imago Dei, yes?
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In a nutshell, that’s it: when people believed that man alone of all creatures was made in God’s image, it made it easier, nay mperative, for us to make use of all other creatures.
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In fact, we were instructed to “Fill the earth and subdue it.”, weren’t we? 🙂
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I’ll cut to the chase with my friends who are not even vegetarians but vegans.
They’re all overweight and tired because they eat too much pasta and cholesterol. I had one of the most esteemed NYC endocrinologists tell me that vegans are doomed.
“Protein is the singularly most important thing you can eat. I tell patients that if they don’t believe me, take a look at wildlife in Africa and ask a lion if it can survive without antelopes, wildebeests and zebras.”
It’s nature’s way!
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Omnivorous = all things, in moderation, of course. 🙂
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Correct. I wouldn’t eat a Big Mac if you paid me or bacon or roast pork or even (sigh) a filet mignon. I stick strictly to poultry and seafood and am perfectly satisfied. But vegans won’t even eat turkey at Thanksgiving not to mention a good brie!
They’re fine with high carb pastas and the ensuing sugar levels. No lo comprende.
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Vegan = Have unlimited carbs while virtue-signaling for Mother Gaia: Win-win. 🙂
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Oooh, you’re so right about the carbs. Every vegan I know is fat.
But I don’t see how anybody can live without 🥩 red meat. Still Liz, I’ll remember, in case I ever get to entertain you. Do you like duck?
Last year some French friends we hadn’t seen for like 12 years came to visit, and I got a standing rib. Said Mme: ooh non, Je ne mange pas la viande! She had gone vegan and didn’t mention it to me. I mean, nobody wants to put $70 worth of beef on the table and end up having to dig out a veggie burger for a guest. Especially since they were here for the weekend— I could easily have handled it, my daughter is vegan hélas! But since I didn’t know, I really had to scrounge around.
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I luuv duck but the real reason I avoid meat is because I have digestive issues with it. I love a good steak/hamburger as well as anybody but they don’t love me! Doesn’t matter because I’m perfectly happy with flounder and Dover sole and shellfish (even though shrimp is high in cholesterol).
P.S. Hyp, your guest was unbelievably rude. I would have eaten whatever the hostess served.
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“P.S. Hyp, your guest was unbelievably rude. I would have eaten whatever the hostess served.”
Yup…Virtue-signaling at its worst. Grrrr!
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Interesting how society values non-virtues (imho) vs. gracious good manners.
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As Arte Johnson’s “Wolfgang” used to say on Laugh-In: “Verrry Interresting–But shtupid!”
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