"Insect's Rights"

[decadence]

First, this is just some of my thoughts. I would appreciate people posting their own on the same kinds of things, AFTER reading it. Thanks.

It can be said that some people are FOR humanity (humanists), that we have an almost divine right to run the cosmic order when we are advanced enough to tame it all. It can also be said that mankind is collectively insane, and deserves mass extinction just like those climate-sensitive dinosaurs.

I give you then, Exhibit A for that second line of thinking:

http://www.throughwire.net/IRA/

The following link was added several years ago, after the original owner of the website proper was charged with accepting non-profit donations from several American charity fund groups (fraud)...Therefore, my rant stands on it's own...
http://www.throughwire.net/IRA/disclaimer.htm

We live on a world that is constantly affected by nature, whether we like it, hate it, or are killed by it. We also affect many of these changes, whether nature likes us enough to keep up the game, or shakes her back and sends us spiraling into irrelevant demise.

For me, when I stumble across a website like the one I linked to above, I have to question the validity of our species. Now, granted, that might sound like my usual brand of making a joke about something I find stupid, but no, think deeper for a moment.

An insect, taken at base view, let's say a wasp for my use here, has one purpose to its existence: Maintain the hive at all costs. This means foraging upon supposed chemical summons sent by the different castes of the hive; defending the queen, feeding the bastard kids, and so on. There is no other purpose to the existence of a wasp. Ecologically speaking? Some people argue that they cause X effect to whatever, such as homeless people who sleep in abandoned buildings and are stung to death (this happens here in Texas all through the summer but people keep doing it, ergo my point to this whole post). However, the point to this segment of the post is, these creatures have endured Ice Ages, cosmic bombardment, desserts, and the like, to a degree we call "superhuman" in a comic book setting. Were they our own size, they would be nigh unstoppable by most means. That says something. And in one way above all else, they outsize us in one regard: Sheer Numbers. For every living thing on this planet, there are more wasps per creature, alone. They still outlast, outnumber, and in some ways, outclass us.

My point? Wasps or anything not us (pick one) have one set of drives: survive, sustain the line, keep the race always marching on. They are not possessed of self-consciousness as we put it, nor are they mired in greed (what purpose is greed served when your sole thought process is "survive"?)

So what, some say. Well, to that I say, that's what our problem is.

Out of all the species of life on this planet, that terribly rich and breathing biodiversity we call "life", Human beings have done more to change it than anything else that lives. Bacteria, for all of their mutations, and affectations on the natural order and ecosystems of our planet, are still confined to invasion of another host body to function and spread (most of the time).

We, as reasoning creatures (lightly stated for some) have created whole new paradigms of existence for ourselves, while they, the microbes, have refused, and some would say gone militia, to fight for what they have always had: Eternity (as we know it). Some LIVING microbes are older than mankind as a race (this is scientific fact).

Because of this, we often have this Hollywood-laced view that mankind was "meant for the stars". That we are somehow "destined" for greatness beyond our current trappings.

Exhibit B:

http://www.throughwire.net/IRA/atrocities.htm

Atrocities, as humans define them, are acts of horrendous violence and mayhem against fellow homo sapiens. A flea circus causing THIS level of concern scares me more by the fact that there are people spending what little time on this planet they have, actually worrying about the emotional distress of a FLEA, which has no emotional depth as far as can be measured. It sucks blood. It fucks. It lays eggs. That's about it.

I wonder, if the people who finance and push things like "insects' rights" (parody or fraudulant travesty) have ever actually sat down and tried to fathom what happens to a planet like ours over the course of 14 million years, and then asked themselves:

"Do I even matter?"