Invasive Insects, Instincts, and Ideologies

July 4th, 2021, marks the United States of America’s 244th birthday (observed), and the air is on fire. After a long, mostly desolate, and very cold winter, which was preceded by a summer and spring of powerful hurricanes,

and uncontrolable wildfires —

insects and dust and smog —

alongside terror and seething anger

over a disease that has killed many already unhealthy people we might actually know —

here in the aftermath of something which has thoroughly shaken civilization

— there onto a summer where our religion of politics and prejudice and hatred combine to form a tidal wave of raging paranoia;

now we stand to celebrate union, of the coming together of small regional tribes, those who are now shouting amongst themselves about how much they don’t believe what other people have to say.

And we take it out on ourselves:

And back and back:

So what did we do in that majority of the time we weren’t outdoors, fighting and revolting? We read comments and quips online, and we argued and watched videos, or live news feeds of the terrifying, rattling collapse of the world. Acid rain and global warming too; anarchy and political absolutism; the swampiness of the air. And then there are the insects intentionally destroying our ability to live on the planet.

The Spotted Lantern Fly —

— this monster is genuinely trying to kill us. By “invasive species” they mean that whatever it is it is attacking. They seek to conquer us and impose their will. They are eating what we breathe.

We are now in a time of diminishing water too,

which will be the final cause of World War III.

Air is diminishing,

And other creatures are invading and adapting and taking over the earth. Bugs, slithering insects, all of these ravenously gobbling whateverthefucks:

These are horrible visions of the future, one where storms rage,

and dry earth shatters;

and the wind kicks up

and levels communities.

We are invaded by famine and disease, terror and outrage combining into a blame game of such virulence that everything becomes the enemy.

If we decide to look hard enough we can spot the inevitable, non-prophetic end to mankind’s reign on earth.

I can see the first monster depicted above using its gigantic brain to take over our minds. As with insects, we will be made useful until we no longer are. Then we will be eaten.

The second one needs only look at you like that. You will do whatever it asks.

Third? Officers? Brains who strategize and implement the revolution.

The final two resemble front line soldiers.

The steady, patient, violent type.

They are there to start the fight.

The first to be killed.

We devise prophylactics.

And we brave the world covered with stickiness, turning bugs away from our fumigated flesh. Of course:

But those bugs will not touch us. We have defeated them by changing the air we breathe ourself. Are we helping the bugs win?

Insects will always return, smarter and stronger, and with a new idea of themselves.

They are visualizing a new way, a new strategy. How they will conquer, how can they make the planet whatever they choose.

They can eat of all the bounty the earth has to offer:

So can we live with this infection that threatens to change the irreversible world? Are we willing to accept the frustrating power we believe our lives had once upon a time?

Now we have convinced ourselves we are defending something we hold dear, defending a way of life. We are saving our lives, and those we love, and who has time for nation or church or society, or a civilization, or sustenance for any sort of future at all?

Someone else can do it, so many say. They do what I like, let ‘um. If they don’t, they better beware. Fixing it is somebody else’s problem. At least I got it right.

Liberals, or something much farther to the right, make hopeful offers for peace. They say “here, take my hand.”

. . .

And so we divide, thinking everyone from any other side is a fool, including our families, and our children, who seem so focused on something that you don’t understand. You tell them to grow up. You teach them to be as miserable as you are. And not to trust. If there’s one lesson that has become more important than any other in this era of adult children rearing children, it is that nothing is as it seems, and everybody is in it for themselves.

Politics works as an infestation similar to the buzzing gnats getting in your ear and burrowing inside to lay eggs in your brain.

There has always been populism, those screaming to attain some fantasy, a reality that ignores the fact that different people believe in and want different things. Populism seeks ideological warfare, and to outlaw the contrary. It speaks to both the very highest and lowest human instincts, to a selfish altruism where you can attain the ideal world for yourself alone.

In times of acute crisis (or in communities where no one has ever done anything other than struggle), some thunder-fisted titan seeks to overtake the throne of the world, leading their warriors on a crusade.

Yes, many are killed,

but it’s all for the higher cause. Those affecting society in ways a certain faction finds offensive must be eliminated decides an even smaller faction within the faction. And then a few outliers, usually misunderstanding their forceful instincts, over-react and create an incident which can only intensify people’s fear and contempt for otherness in the world.

And of course some chirping drone exploits the fear and anger of one side or another.

And the results ruin all hope of being united.

Ideologies overtake everything — how this thing happened and why. So who’s to blame?

Ideology invades and seeks to conquer, buzzing in the air and frightening us — different views, changing trends. Every generation, when parents grow old, watch in horror as the children they raised change everything they hold dear.

And plenty of it really is stupid,

and they make sometimes unforgivable mistakes, and they will suffer as a result well after their parents are gone. And when you tell them what they are thinking is stupid, and they need to give it more thought, you are waved away by a disinterested short-attention span.

And you try to explain:

The young do not take being insulted well at all. Did they used to?

And now today

And such censorious bitterness comes from every direction: cheap, petty outrage; the frustrated huff of assholes not tolerating other people having their way.

Organized thinking — the group mind, certainly regulates life.

It’s just easier in a complicated, predatory world, to dedicate yourself to a singular way of thinking, of never seeing beyond like-minded beliefs. A fundamentalist ideology.

Yet the serenity, the comfort and the laziness required to be consumed by a group mind

creates a suicidal instinct — all for the queen, and nothing at all for the permanence of a free civilization.

(https://www.betterworldbooks.com/search/results?q=liberal%20fascism)

(https://www.betterworldbooks.com/search/results?q=old%20nazis%20the%20new%20right)

The world today is run by instinct, by ideology. By feelings,

as well as the contempt other people feel for the feelings of others.

And of course it’s all nonsense — meaningless hurt feelings about hurt feelings, and the sneering, mocking rage inspired by the helpless frustration felt by the person unloading all of their scorn. Our instincts today have become a defense of our childish fears that not everything will go our way, and that the larger world will embrace offensive things, and that somehow your sense of self-importance will be diminished. People raised in a blind world of constant entertainment resist being “cancelled,”

and they have nothing to do other than rant about it. Publicly.

And our outrage turns into a public shout, an echoing shriek from a silence never imposed.

And so invasive species take over the planet,

They always have and always will.

And we watch the world crumble, awaiting our chance to strike.

A revolution used to be a hopeful thing, all optimism and joy; it was about the dream; the dream of tomorrow. They are now dangerous, mocking games to be played to the death. The world is in a terminal, panicked today. We seem unprepared for the more dire future we have made for ourselves by mindlessly quibbling about finally meaningless things,

and ignoring the larger realities of how quietly civilization might end.

For those doubting or denying such an inevitable outcome, or shrugging and assuming that it isn’t their problem, this will not alleviate the growing and constant agony of generations in the future.

Finally, as we keep consuming everything, as the insects continue taking over the earth,

we keep fighting back.

We will eat anything.

We shit it all out everywhere.

Thinking and impulsively reacting as we do, imposing our instincts and ideologies on a world taking nothing seriously — or everything — we sink into rage,

like flies on shit.

It is the world that we have made for ourselves.