Dirty is Clean

So clean the surface
The bleached white paper pristine.
But the trees would not agree
Dirty is clean

So clean is the plate
The slick, shiny plastic serene
But the ocean would not agree
Dirty is clean.



So, lately I've been killing a lot of ants in my house. This is not my typical reaction to their presence, since most of the time I am entertained by their frantic parades and respect their right to forage for food. Usually, my only pest control strategy is to try not to tempt them with too many jam smears or cookie crumbs. Despite what pest control companies want the public to believe, the ones most likely to infest the kitchen are totally benign. They don't bite, sting or vector disease. If anything, they are helping with the housework.

When I say I am "killing" ants I don't mean using poison; I mean squishing them with my fingers when they wander inadvertently in to what I've told them several times is "my space". This space includes my body and the immediate vicinity around my body: my computer and the arm's reach portion of my kitchen table. I don't know why they've been doing this lately: ignoring my warnings and wandering solo around this territory (too many to be scouts, I would think) and over a surface that is mostly devoid of organic substances. A question for E.O. Wilson, perhaps.

So why am I killing them? I'm killing them because, despite my fascination with them and my high level of respect for their right to exist, these sentiments are transformed into digust when the population reaches what I term the "Infestation Threshold". It is the same threshold I recently reached with my normally beloved drain-flies when their wormy larvae got a little too comfortable wriggling around in a pile at the base of my sink instead of staying out-of-sight inside the drain where they belong. With their fuzzy, adorable adult forms who have long been my shower companions looking on helplessly, I apologized profusely as I exterminated the lot with bleach. Our relationship has not been the same since.

However, though even an insect afficianado like me is not entirely immune to the typical middle-class suburban white American (MiSWA) fear and loathing of our fellow arthropods, my behavior is very far removed from the prevalent collective cultural schema I like to call in a Minskiesque sort of way: "See Insect, Kill Insect". This, an automatic reaction to anything fast, small and with numerous jointed appendages entering the field of view, seems to be programmed into the average MiSWA brain from a very young age. It is an utterly irrational response, with probable evolutionary origins along the same lines as "See Snake, Kill Snake", and I intend to argue, for reasons I will discuss later, that it needs to be eradicated.

I've seen examples of "See Insect, Kill Insect" many times in my life among the MiSWAs. In order to verify my claim, all one has to do is watch commercial television for a while, or hang out in any place with any MiSWA member long enough to experience a chance to witness it directly or hear a story about it. In every case, there is no attempt to classify the insect (except maybe with butterflies or ladybugs that have escaped reproach due to the "cuddliness" factor), or to consider the actual level of danger or the potential for infestation before squashing the innocuous critter into oblivion. I've seen people instantly kill the sacred praying mantis, the wonderful walking-stick, the sultry cicada, the graceful mosquito-devouring lace-wing, the chipper grasshopper, and the sweet, serenading cricket. Never mind its innocence, any insect is on balance beneficial to humans, something that seems to escape the programming of most MiSWAs. A person I work with the other day said "if I see a bee, I kill it", as she was eating an orange.

I have mentioned some of the less "offensive" groups, but even those that are considered to be "pests" for one reason or another deserve a reprieve from the "See Insect, Kill Insect" phenomenon. Some, like termites, bedbugs, wasps and mosquitoes that are actually pests because they do direct damage to person or home and others, like cave-crickets, the majority of spiders (yes, I am aware that spiders aren't insects, but I'm not splitting pili, here), earwigs, ants, houseflies, cockroaches and carpenter bees that are simply perceived as pests because they look menacing, are often more interesting than they are threatening, and can usually be kept at endemic levels below the "infestation" threshold with relatively minor manipulations of the environment.

So, who cares, besides the likes of crazy Lara Samuels and her minority opinion that all living things are endowed with rights? I'll admit that much of my advocacy for living things, my "pro-life" view as I like to call it, is simply that. However, I realize that this particular argument does not work with most humans and that one most resort to more convincing explanations. People want to know: "What am I going to get out of it?".

So, let me put it plainly: When one dumps poison into the environment, there is an inevitable impact on human health, and there is no doubt that MiSWAs love to poison things. To verify my claim, all one has to do is watch commercial television for a little while, or just hang out in any place with any MiSWA member long enough to experience a chance to witness it directly or hear a story about it.

I'll leave listing the evidence revealing the connection between the toxins that we dump into our environment every day and cancer rates to less lazy individuals like Sandra Steingraber and Rachel Carson, but trust me, the research has been done. This is either a direct effect because all living things are basically composed of the same shit: proteins, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, and fats, and poisons are toxic to humans as they are also toxic to other living things, or indirectly because killing a mosquito means killing a bee and killing a bee means killing an orange tree and killing an orange tree means starving to death. Or, less dramatically, you could use a similar line of argument leading to the manifestation of annoying allergies.

The answer is more dirt, not less.

Despite some progress at the industry level to turn to other forms of pest control besides toxins, on the home-front poison is still king. MiSWAs want their homes "sterile", but "sterile", except in certain places like operating tables, is not good. It means that there is no life. Where there is no life, there is no health. Don't dive into a lake if the water is clear and you don't see anything growing or moving around in it. It is likely to eat through your skin.

The only way to return America back to a state of health is to persuade the consumption crazed MiSWA's and their imitators, that clean is, in fact, dirty. And, of course, one can only reach this conclusion if one has been programmed at a very early age to associate the presence of nature with a clean, safe environment. In other words, nature could use some marketing. Given adequate effort in this regard, MiSWAs could be convinced that the presence of life, in most of its forms, is the definition of clean. Furthermore, nature offers other rewards. It is magical, beautiful and interesting not creepy, gross, and scary.

As my recent ant and drain-fly murdering rampage proves, I am not totally resistant to my own evolutionary programming. However, my brain, at least until the Infestation Threshold has been reached, mostly suspends "See Insect, Kill Insect" and replaces it with "See Insect, Observe Insect". How did this happen? Is it innate?

NO! It happened because of marketing, of course. The marketing of biophilia by my mother. Besides also instilling in me a life-long beneficial appreciation for healthy foods, it was about the only good thing she ever gave me.

My mother loved nature, and by capturing, studying, and releasing almost everything living thing we found, by only mowing part of the yard and leaving the rest to grow wild, by taking frequent walks in the forest and pointing out the differences among species of plants and animals, by turning over rocks and observing the ecosystems that thrive there, etc., the development of an appreciation for nature's beauty and magic was inevitable.

So, MiSWAs of all ages, I implore you: throw on your pink tee-shirt, head out to the walk for breast cancer, and on your way, pause to let the little ground beetle pass. Let the ants parade through your kitchen and the carpenter bees drill a few holes in your house. Show the kids. Make a deal with the cockroaches: "stay out of sight most of the time and I won't mess with you". If you see an earwig, which you probably won't, check it out. It's really quite cool. Like a transformer, only real. Forget the trip to Disney World: there is magic all around you. An antlion looks a lot like tinkerbell, but she's a hell of a lot more interesting and she doesn't charge admission. Spare the broom on a few spider webs and let them work for you. They are quite adept at killing flies, by the way, which are, admittedly, annoying. They'll do it without harming you or your children. That fly spray? I'm not so sure I could say the same. The mantra is true for most living things: they won't bother you. If they have the potential to bother you, they won't bother you if you don't bother them.

Do it for the children. The environment is not just some abstract thing that stuck-up purist environmentalists want to save. It's our life support system, guys. Please get a clue about it.


Coming up (when my stupid working-class life allows me some time to actually do what I love): Animal Rights is the Next Human Rights