A Fly in the Ointment: Biology gets Scary

You know those rite of passage things they have in America? (If you are, in fact, from America, which you probably are given my one regular reader is, then of course you'll know far more about it than me, and proceed to beat me over the head for the ensuing ignorance, with a giant Internet-stick). They take young Freshers, then they tie them up, attach them to the bottom of an Iceberg, and tamper with an Oil Tanker so spectacular ice-ravaged chaos ensues, and give the Students that are still alive at the end of it some sort of homoerotic club membership. As is my understanding. Anyway, I'm going through that, sort-of-but-not-really, on a massively reduced scale, living in Britain and all. I have to kill flies on Friday. And God, but I don't want to do that.

I know, before you say anything. I think its mildly ridiculous as well. In a World where ten year olds go to war and flee their burning homes, something like a quarter of the human population is suffering a ridiculous volume of disaster punctuated with incompetance, and, according to LiveJournal, some kid's Mom has grounded him on the day of the fukin' important game, WTF, having to kill flies loses some of its Epic qualities. But I'll try to explain, anyway. Scoff if you will.

I wasn't always this hideously wussy. Back when I was about five, I would tear the legs off Mayflies to see what happened (not very much, because it didn't have any legs, and couldn't move. A four year old could have figured that one out), and jump on slaters to observe the small puddle they left on the ground. Not anymore. As I matured, I began to see the error of my ways. The legless ghosts of mayflies and the everythingless ghosts of slaters would haunt my childish dreams, which being childish dreams were frankly terrifying enough already. By the time I was ten, I was a changed boy. I went round outdoor Swimming Pools heroicly, saving flies that were drowning therein. And it felt good, by damnit. I had attoned for my sins. And as far as I can remember I haven't purposely killed anything since, although given I'm clumsy I've accidently killed about ten billion things, and given I live in the Western World the hideous volume of woe and suffering my existance has caused is quite possibly too great to comprehend. Principles, though. You have to have principles.

I think individual life becomes more important to an Atheist, not less. When something only gets one bite out of the proverbial cheesecake, you want to make sure it savours it as much as possible. Killing flies seems to violate that some way. It's maybe not the killing that frightens me so much as people's reactions to it-which, more often than not, involve high degrees of uncontrolled glee, and uneasy jokes. I have a suspicion most of the great evils in the World were caused to some degree by the making of uneasy jokes. We're being taught genetics, but we're also being taught to accept the morality we're handed down, and bugger the consequences. Scientists shouldn't have to do that. Especialy not Biologists, given the somewhat dizzying power we seem to be able to wield. I feel I should at least take notice.

And I'm scared of myself, as well. Scared because I know I'll be in there on Friday sorting and dumping them, examining them then discarding them (Discarding. It says that, in the course guide. That scares me too), and more probably than not making uneasy jokes, which may or may not involve uncontrolled glee. Scared because it may be just flies, but given a rat, a pig, a person, so many of us would still be in there, because at the end of the day to cow against conformity is more terrifying than to go against what and who you are. Scientists are supposed to be objective. But we can't be objective if we don't think, because then what we hold up as objectivity is nothing more than a poorly formulated opinion, and so the most subjective thing of all. We should be breaking that down, not building it up.

That was a terribly formulated and poorly expressed argument. I'm sorry about that. Maybe it'll be great, the killing flies. But I don't know, and the not knowing is scary. It's hard to grope in the dark with a candle, but even more so when you're burning and charring the living World around you, searching for something that you know must be there, and which everything desperately needs, but which never emerges from the sometimes-lightened gloom.