Together they constitute ninety-five percent of the earth’s living organisms. They’re everywhere. We can’t live without some and others we can’t live with at all. I mean bugs. On the Shore we have all kinds.
Bacteria are often referred to as bugs – they’re not – but if I did include them as bugs and stacked up both bacteria and other bugs like pennies, they would extend a trillion light-years into space. Homo sapiens, on the other hand, are but a tiny minority on this planet. Considering we’re just a handful of residents, we’ve way overestimated our importance while dismissing most bugs as nuisances.
And regarding our inflated self-importance, from Biblical times humankind, now some seven billion of us, considers itself – and particularly its males – as the glory of God’s creation. We’re made a little lower than the angels, but above women and well above bugs. I think the possession of certain body parts has given males it’s sense of entitlement but I question the assumption. God did not impart thumbs, consciousness and select body parts to us for status. They’re assigned for function. I think men and women are wired to be co-creators with God. Whether by what we create through manual dexterity, our creative imaginations or by giving birth we are practicing our divine attributes.
With our self-reflexive abilities we have the capacity to wonder at nature’s majesty, to be artists, poets and scientists, to weep at sunsets, to be awe stricken by its storms. We can also feel compassion for others. I do not believe that bugs can do this but time may tell us otherwise.
I think we’ve used our divine attributes poorly.
Almost worldwide and for eons,women have been regarded as a minority, not because of numbers, but for the access to opportunities men have denied them. African-Americans have been a numerical minority here but like women, have had opportunities denied them by a majority. It’s really a guy thing that blacks and women have been second-class citizens for so long. Possessing status and power as men have for so long is like having a drug habit; you can never have enough and you’ll do anything to get more.
Majorities and minorities are especially hot topics today. In the year 2043, Asians and Hispanics are predicted to exceed America’s white population. Some whites are nervous about this since they know how they once treated minorities.
Minorities, however, may act as oppressively as majorities. Scientists believe that our human activity is responsible for the ongoing extinction of many of our earth’s species, including bugs that are exponentially more numerous that we are. Even in politics our federal government was partially shut down for seventeen days by a small minority called the Tea Party. In a rare moment of bi-partisan solidarity, the stunt they pulled bugged almost as many Republicans as it did Democrats.
A close look at bugs, particularly ants and bees is instructive. Groups like these act wisely. They work for the good of all. Yes, a queen bee enjoys exclusive power and status, but to my knowledge there is no evidence of sexism among bees. However, I wonder if having a woman in charge may account for why bees act more cooperatively and efficiently than we do in our own institutions. Even today, many Americans will still get bees in their bonnets when they think we might elect a woman as their president.
Consider ants and bees: their intelligence actually grows as their numbers increase. One or two ants or a couple of bees can do almost nothing on their own and soon perish. In great numbers, they not only survive but also accomplish extraordinary things working together. Ants can build bridges, carry several times their weight, and dig tunnels from two different points and meet in the middle at just the right spot. Without iPhones they can communicate over great distances. They’re prescient at times; wherever we may choose to picnic, they’ll find the sandwiches.
On the other hand, we human beings as individuals are generously gifted with a variety of marvelous skills and tools of our own, including the greatest gift of all, language. I think we waste our gifts. Put us on a committee or elect us to congress and it seems to me that unlike insects who get smarter in larger numbers, we just become more argumentative, sling more dirt than mud wasps, and bug each other over every little detail.
Best we learn from bugs, not from the ones making spectacular demonstrations by their sheer numbers, like swarms of locusts that waste everything in their wake. They’re too much like we are. Instead, take note of those bugs like bees that hum along in quiet cooperation, the way the world’s peacemaker’s do. They work night and day, seeking cooperative solutions. It’s sad that, like so many bees, we rarely see them at work. We just take whatever honey they produce.
MARY WOOD says
Both amusing and wise. Thanks George Merrill