Looks like you’re crossposting this from your blog elsewhere.
Not obviously not Language Model.
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Introduction
In an act of idle curiosity, I played god to a wasp—and it died for it. Who decides what matters?
I was sitting in the verandah when I noticed a wasp flying from leave to leave of a huge tree that hosted an ant colony as well as many bird nests. The swarm of ants were going up and down in trails on the tree. I wondered as to what will happen if I put an insect in the middle of the swarm of ants. How will they react and how quickly?
I grabbed a newspaper and rolled it. As soon as the wasp came down flying, I smacked it with all my might making it fall on the ground. It was still able to get back on its feet and fly a little so I had to crush it as well as its hope for survival again. The wasp was crushed, unable to fly but still moving its legs in distress lying on its back. I picked it up with the newspaper and put it in between the trail of ants at the bottom of that tree.
Just as I put it, ants noticed and a lot of them rushed to pile up on the wasp. They attempted to carry it in their little castle but it proved to be challenging since it was still alive and was moving its legs aggressively. Some of the ants successfully amputated it. Its legs were gone and so did its last hope for survival and now it was easier to be carried away and in it was taken by the army of ants. It was done when the wasp was still alive and sentient.
The Power that Strips Empathy off of Gods
I did not strip a wasp off its luxury of life out of malice but simply because I could. I did it because the spirit of inquiry of a conscious human being was worth way more than the life of a wasp. That wasp wasn’t of any value to me. Another reason to justify the killing was that my actions had negligible impact on the ecosystem because even after the death of one wasp, the wasp colony could function well without any hindrances, the ecosystem wouldn’t be disrupted in any way and I didn’t fear retaliation since I far outmatched what the wasp was capable of. My actions, on the other hand, were good from the ants’ perspective. They got food served to them. Killing a wasp wasn’t in any way an easy task for the ants and they got a live wasp served to them wasn’t short of a boon.
I was no less than a God in that ecosystem, I could conveniently wield the life and death of any insect, and I could destroy the ant colony in favor of the wasps and vice versa. I wielded such immense power there that the lives of such small crawling creatures didn’t necessarily matter if it came to my curiosity or entertainment. I could entertain myself by manipulating that ecosystem in accordance to my will.
Instrumentalism and the Wasp’s worth
The life of a wasp seems insignificant also when we look at it from the larger interests of ants. The death of a single wasp could potentially be of a great advantage to the ants in this particular context. The existence of that wasp was also not of much value to its own colony since there were tens of them if not hundreds. Their sustenance lies in the collective labor they engaged in and the individual effort was almost negligible. As long as the colony still enjoyed the membership of tens of other wasps, one wasp going missing was the least of a concern. The wasps obviously do not possess the consciousness to evaluate the contribution of individual or collective efforts. It is from our evaluations that we were able to draw the conclusion that the weight of the effort of a single wasp is nothing compared to the potential that wasps had collectively.
From a Utilitarian lens, the killing appears justified. The wasp I killed was a yellow paper wasp which is an invasive species which severely disrupts the local ecosystems because it has no natural predators to keep their population in check and it feeds on other insects. The killing of one wasp didn’t do much to protect the local ecosystem but it didn’t inflict any harm on it either. The ants were fed and they might’ve needed that wasp to sustain their livelihood.
The Illusion of Moral Justification
I could’ve have easily moved on from the incident but after it all unfolded so brutally for the wasp, I was bombarded by questions that I had no answers to. I was certainly trying to use all the above logic in order to escape the moral guilt I was getting crushed under. Even after much rational consideration to justify my actions, the image of that little wasp peacefully flying until I gave it a horrifying death kept paralyzing my cognitive ability.
All the rational arguments I presented above in favor of killing of that wasp was an attempt to make sense of the brutality I committed against it. None of the reasons I offered for the wasp’s death—its being invasive, its insignificance, the benefit to the ants—were present in my mind when I struck it. These were not motives, but defenses. They were crafted after the act, not before it. They were merely a failed attempt to escape the moral responsibility I had towards another species. Even after all this rationalization, one question kept haunting me; Are all these reasons the cause of my actions or was it just curiosity?
The human mind despises guilt. We are storytellers by nature, and when an action leaves a moral residue we cannot bear, we reframe it. I elevated curiosity into scientific inquiry. I recast cruelty as ecological utility. I hid behind outcomes to avoid confronting intent.
“It was invasive.” True. But I did not act to protect the ecosystem. I didn’t even know it was invasive until after the act.
“It fed the ants.” But I wasn’t feeding the ants. I was feeding my curiosity. Their gain was incidental.
“It was insignificant.” Insignificance is not a license to kill. If it were, the lives of the unnoticed and unloved would carry no ethical weight.
This is the danger that lurks behind human rationalizations—It can be weaponized against moral guilt. We tend to hide unjust raw actions under the veil of noble intent and in the process evade the very confrontation that might have changed us.
The Gift of Life
We know that there exist trillions of planets in the entire universe yet we have never been able to find even one other than our own beautiful planet that hosts life. The universe might be vast, so much so that it exceeds what we can possibly fathom, but it still is a void. For sure, the universe is beautiful—the nebulas, the stars, the galaxies, the super clusters, etc. But we wouldn’t be able to experience it due to the extreme hostility space holds towards life. The fact that earth was able to give rise to living organisms is no short of a miracle. All the species on our planet have one common ancestral root; the unicellular organisms that emerged within the oceans, and then they evolved over the span of billions of years to become complex biological beings. From gigantic dinosaurs to small microorganisms, conscious human beings to brainless jellyfish and starfish, those flying in the sky to those crawling on land, those living underwater to those living on land, hostile to friendly, those moving animals to those still trees, beautiful peacocks to ugly naked mole rats, all existed solely on our beautiful planet. The planet itself is quite fascinating and not just those living on it. Our planet has beautiful mountains, grasslands, savannahs, forests, jungles, coasts, diverse vegetation alongside hostile deserts, vast oceans, barren Arctic and Antarctic circles. With all this beauty, I can say with full confidence that a minute spent on earth, to be a momentary witness of its beauty and diverse flora and fauna, to just breathe in its fresh atmosphere is worth immeasurably more than years spent in the large void of space.
We get to be born just once, and this is true across all the species. We get one life on this beautiful planet before our existence goes silent forever as it was before we were born. Life, a little spark in the void of cosmic indifference is a privilege I cherish — yet I extinguished another’s without pause. I’m the sole reason the wasp died and it shall never fly without restraint ever again. Its brief flicker of sentience vanished into the eternal quiet of death, unacknowledged, unmourned.
Insignificance: An Arbitrary Human Concept
Many would argue here that there isn’t much to worry about the death of a wasp because of its insignificance. Indeed, I believed this too prior to the incident. But I realized that the entire notion of insignificance is a human construct. We arbitrarily assign significance to things we adore and discard those that aren’t significant from “our perspective”.
However, from the perspective of all the other species that barely manage to survive alongside humans, we are the most destructive and harmful species that could’ve have ever evolved. We have disrupted countless ecosystems, caused numerous species to go extinct and pushed many to the verge of extinction, we have polluted the atmosphere and are continuously destroying the planet from inside out like a parasite. Indeed, humans are the least important part of the planet.
Since most of us never come to acknowledge the biasness in our methodology of categorizing other species as insignificant, we stay uninformed about their suffering caused by us. A small insect is insignificant to an average human because it doesn’t serve a purpose but the same humans advocate for the care of the elderly, mentally disabled and the other animals they adore. They would advocate for the killing of a chicken but protection of a pet hamster with great cost. In their eyes, the wasp or the chicken is “insignificant”. We arbitrarily decide who lives and dies. We evaluate the worth of lives of other species on the parameters developed by us.
The wasps lack consciousness, self-awareness and cognitive abilities. They are unable to experience the beauty our planet holds. This observation is often presented to suggest that death holds little consequence for them, given their presumed lack of understanding regarding life and mortality. But Is worth defined only by consciousness? Should we only protect those who are self-aware and self-conscious? The answer will be No from most humans because they can’t afford to lose their dogs, cats, hamsters and the family members who are severely mentally disabled.
What I’m trying to establish as a fact here is that the opinions of humans don’t matter when it comes to which living organism is worth saving and which one is not because we humans are extremely biased in our rationalization regarding the life and death of other species.
Franz Kafka’s novel Metamorphosis is a great work to mention here. The protagonist, Gregor Samsa, was only valuable to his family as long as he was a human and a breadwinner of the family. However, things took a turn when one day he found himself lying on his back in the form of a huge insect. When his family discovered his new form they were terrified, and he was neglected. Their primary concern wasn’t the well being of Gregor rather the role he ceased to play for the family. They were worried how they were going to survive without someone to earn. He earned their respect when he was still in his human form providing for them but now that he’s not what he used to be, his existence came down to that of a mere insignificant insect . He ultimately faced his death at the hands of his own family not only because he had turned into a huge insect but also because he ceased to be the breadwinner for the family.
The Wasp
“I witnessed a death only to be disturbed by my role in it later.”
In the end, the wasp I killed is dead forever. It was insignificant to me. The wasp’s death mattered little to its colony, and even less to the ecosystem at large. But that doesn’t mean it was meaningless. The flaw lies in the assumption that “significance” must be recognized to be real. Significance demands empathy, not recognition. Just because no one mourns a death doesn’t make it trivial.
Who gave us the right to wield life and death so casually, especially when our metrics for value are self-made and self-serving? We act as gods over smaller lives, not because we earned the right, but because we can.
Why did I privilege my introspection over another being’s experience? Why do we attribute moral worth based on consciousness, utility or resemblance to ourselves? Why is a wasp’s life dispensable but a dog’s life protected?
That day, the ants were dead too…….because they were also insignificant to me. If the value of life depends only on the observer, then all life is at the mercy of whim. Perhaps there is no universal scale of worth—only shifting contexts and fleeting intentions. But if that is true, then who decides what matters? And are we comfortable with the answer being: whoever happens to hold the box? The greatest ethical danger lies in letting the powerful decide who deserves it. Maybe the ethics of insignificance isn't about who matters—but who gets to decide.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”
Introduction
In an act of idle curiosity, I played god to a wasp—and it died for it. Who decides what matters?
I was sitting in the verandah when I noticed a wasp flying from leave to leave of a huge tree that hosted an ant colony as well as many bird nests. The swarm of ants were going up and down in trails on the tree. I wondered as to what will happen if I put an insect in the middle of the swarm of ants. How will they react and how quickly?
I grabbed a newspaper and rolled it. As soon as the wasp came down flying, I smacked it with all my might making it fall on the ground. It was still able to get back on its feet and fly a little so I had to crush it as well as its hope for survival again. The wasp was crushed, unable to fly but still moving its legs in distress lying on its back. I picked it up with the newspaper and put it in between the trail of ants at the bottom of that tree.
Just as I put it, ants noticed and a lot of them rushed to pile up on the wasp. They attempted to carry it in their little castle but it proved to be challenging since it was still alive and was moving its legs aggressively. Some of the ants successfully amputated it. Its legs were gone and so did its last hope for survival and now it was easier to be carried away and in it was taken by the army of ants. It was done when the wasp was still alive and sentient.
The Power that Strips Empathy off of Gods
I did not strip a wasp off its luxury of life out of malice but simply because I could. I did it because the spirit of inquiry of a conscious human being was worth way more than the life of a wasp. That wasp wasn’t of any value to me. Another reason to justify the killing was that my actions had negligible impact on the ecosystem because even after the death of one wasp, the wasp colony could function well without any hindrances, the ecosystem wouldn’t be disrupted in any way and I didn’t fear retaliation since I far outmatched what the wasp was capable of. My actions, on the other hand, were good from the ants’ perspective. They got food served to them. Killing a wasp wasn’t in any way an easy task for the ants and they got a live wasp served to them wasn’t short of a boon.
I was no less than a God in that ecosystem, I could conveniently wield the life and death of any insect, and I could destroy the ant colony in favor of the wasps and vice versa. I wielded such immense power there that the lives of such small crawling creatures didn’t necessarily matter if it came to my curiosity or entertainment. I could entertain myself by manipulating that ecosystem in accordance to my will.
Instrumentalism and the Wasp’s worth
The life of a wasp seems insignificant also when we look at it from the larger interests of ants. The death of a single wasp could potentially be of a great advantage to the ants in this particular context. The existence of that wasp was also not of much value to its own colony since there were tens of them if not hundreds. Their sustenance lies in the collective labor they engaged in and the individual effort was almost negligible. As long as the colony still enjoyed the membership of tens of other wasps, one wasp going missing was the least of a concern. The wasps obviously do not possess the consciousness to evaluate the contribution of individual or collective efforts. It is from our evaluations that we were able to draw the conclusion that the weight of the effort of a single wasp is nothing compared to the potential that wasps had collectively.
From a Utilitarian lens, the killing appears justified. The wasp I killed was a yellow paper wasp which is an invasive species which severely disrupts the local ecosystems because it has no natural predators to keep their population in check and it feeds on other insects. The killing of one wasp didn’t do much to protect the local ecosystem but it didn’t inflict any harm on it either. The ants were fed and they might’ve needed that wasp to sustain their livelihood.
The Illusion of Moral Justification
I could’ve have easily moved on from the incident but after it all unfolded so brutally for the wasp, I was bombarded by questions that I had no answers to. I was certainly trying to use all the above logic in order to escape the moral guilt I was getting crushed under. Even after much rational consideration to justify my actions, the image of that little wasp peacefully flying until I gave it a horrifying death kept paralyzing my cognitive ability.
All the rational arguments I presented above in favor of killing of that wasp was an attempt to make sense of the brutality I committed against it. None of the reasons I offered for the wasp’s death—its being invasive, its insignificance, the benefit to the ants—were present in my mind when I struck it. These were not motives, but defenses. They were crafted after the act, not before it. They were merely a failed attempt to escape the moral responsibility I had towards another species. Even after all this rationalization, one question kept haunting me; Are all these reasons the cause of my actions or was it just curiosity?
The human mind despises guilt. We are storytellers by nature, and when an action leaves a moral residue we cannot bear, we reframe it. I elevated curiosity into scientific inquiry. I recast cruelty as ecological utility. I hid behind outcomes to avoid confronting intent.
“It was invasive.” True. But I did not act to protect the ecosystem. I didn’t even know it was invasive until after the act.
“It fed the ants.” But I wasn’t feeding the ants. I was feeding my curiosity. Their gain was incidental.
“It was insignificant.” Insignificance is not a license to kill. If it were, the lives of the unnoticed and unloved would carry no ethical weight.
This is the danger that lurks behind human rationalizations—It can be weaponized against moral guilt. We tend to hide unjust raw actions under the veil of noble intent and in the process evade the very confrontation that might have changed us.
The Gift of Life
We know that there exist trillions of planets in the entire universe yet we have never been able to find even one other than our own beautiful planet that hosts life. The universe might be vast, so much so that it exceeds what we can possibly fathom, but it still is a void. For sure, the universe is beautiful—the nebulas, the stars, the galaxies, the super clusters, etc. But we wouldn’t be able to experience it due to the extreme hostility space holds towards life. The fact that earth was able to give rise to living organisms is no short of a miracle. All the species on our planet have one common ancestral root; the unicellular organisms that emerged within the oceans, and then they evolved over the span of billions of years to become complex biological beings. From gigantic dinosaurs to small microorganisms, conscious human beings to brainless jellyfish and starfish, those flying in the sky to those crawling on land, those living underwater to those living on land, hostile to friendly, those moving animals to those still trees, beautiful peacocks to ugly naked mole rats, all existed solely on our beautiful planet. The planet itself is quite fascinating and not just those living on it. Our planet has beautiful mountains, grasslands, savannahs, forests, jungles, coasts, diverse vegetation alongside hostile deserts, vast oceans, barren Arctic and Antarctic circles. With all this beauty, I can say with full confidence that a minute spent on earth, to be a momentary witness of its beauty and diverse flora and fauna, to just breathe in its fresh atmosphere is worth immeasurably more than years spent in the large void of space.
We get to be born just once, and this is true across all the species. We get one life on this beautiful planet before our existence goes silent forever as it was before we were born. Life, a little spark in the void of cosmic indifference is a privilege I cherish — yet I extinguished another’s without pause. I’m the sole reason the wasp died and it shall never fly without restraint ever again. Its brief flicker of sentience vanished into the eternal quiet of death, unacknowledged, unmourned.
Insignificance: An Arbitrary Human Concept
Many would argue here that there isn’t much to worry about the death of a wasp because of its insignificance. Indeed, I believed this too prior to the incident. But I realized that the entire notion of insignificance is a human construct. We arbitrarily assign significance to things we adore and discard those that aren’t significant from “our perspective”.
However, from the perspective of all the other species that barely manage to survive alongside humans, we are the most destructive and harmful species that could’ve have ever evolved. We have disrupted countless ecosystems, caused numerous species to go extinct and pushed many to the verge of extinction, we have polluted the atmosphere and are continuously destroying the planet from inside out like a parasite. Indeed, humans are the least important part of the planet.
Since most of us never come to acknowledge the biasness in our methodology of categorizing other species as insignificant, we stay uninformed about their suffering caused by us. A small insect is insignificant to an average human because it doesn’t serve a purpose but the same humans advocate for the care of the elderly, mentally disabled and the other animals they adore. They would advocate for the killing of a chicken but protection of a pet hamster with great cost. In their eyes, the wasp or the chicken is “insignificant”. We arbitrarily decide who lives and dies. We evaluate the worth of lives of other species on the parameters developed by us.
The wasps lack consciousness, self-awareness and cognitive abilities. They are unable to experience the beauty our planet holds. This observation is often presented to suggest that death holds little consequence for them, given their presumed lack of understanding regarding life and mortality. But Is worth defined only by consciousness? Should we only protect those who are self-aware and self-conscious? The answer will be No from most humans because they can’t afford to lose their dogs, cats, hamsters and the family members who are severely mentally disabled.
What I’m trying to establish as a fact here is that the opinions of humans don’t matter when it comes to which living organism is worth saving and which one is not because we humans are extremely biased in our rationalization regarding the life and death of other species.
Franz Kafka’s novel Metamorphosis is a great work to mention here. The protagonist, Gregor Samsa, was only valuable to his family as long as he was a human and a breadwinner of the family. However, things took a turn when one day he found himself lying on his back in the form of a huge insect. When his family discovered his new form they were terrified, and he was neglected. Their primary concern wasn’t the well being of Gregor rather the role he ceased to play for the family. They were worried how they were going to survive without someone to earn. He earned their respect when he was still in his human form providing for them but now that he’s not what he used to be, his existence came down to that of a mere insignificant insect . He ultimately faced his death at the hands of his own family not only because he had turned into a huge insect but also because he ceased to be the breadwinner for the family.
The Wasp
“I witnessed a death only to be disturbed by my role in it later.”
In the end, the wasp I killed is dead forever. It was insignificant to me. The wasp’s death mattered little to its colony, and even less to the ecosystem at large. But that doesn’t mean it was meaningless. The flaw lies in the assumption that “significance” must be recognized to be real. Significance demands empathy, not recognition. Just because no one mourns a death doesn’t make it trivial.
Who gave us the right to wield life and death so casually, especially when our metrics for value are self-made and self-serving? We act as gods over smaller lives, not because we earned the right, but because we can.
Why did I privilege my introspection over another being’s experience? Why do we attribute moral worth based on consciousness, utility or resemblance to ourselves? Why is a wasp’s life dispensable but a dog’s life protected?
That day, the ants were dead too…….because they were also insignificant to me. If the value of life depends only on the observer, then all life is at the mercy of whim. Perhaps there is no universal scale of worth—only shifting contexts and fleeting intentions. But if that is true, then who decides what matters? And are we comfortable with the answer being: whoever happens to hold the box? The greatest ethical danger lies in letting the powerful decide who deserves it. Maybe the ethics of insignificance isn't about who matters—but who gets to decide.
“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you”