After encountering a louse in my dormitory and instinctively using insecticide to kill it, I begin to ponder the roots of my aversion to bugs. By questioning whether it is an instinct imprinted in our genes or an emotion learned through education, I explore the complexity of human emotions and their origins.
A few days ago, I was surfing the web on my laptop to kill time in my dorm room. I actually had an assignment due the day after tomorrow, but I pushed it to the back of my mind and found myself clenching my jaw and refreshing Facebook in a moment of boredom. These moments of seemingly uselessness, of doing nothing but pretending to be busy with something, sometimes weren’t so bad. As I was lethargically going through the motions of a meaningless day, scrolling through someone’s random photos or trending videos, I was suddenly struck by an uncomfortable feeling of being alone in the room. Even though no one was around, I felt like something was staring at me.
I slowly lifted my head and saw a grotesque black creature on the wall. The creature, waving its long antennae, was a lobster! Suddenly stiffened by the unexpected appearance of the creature, I stared at it for a moment, unable to look away. It didn’t seem to mind my presence, just stuck to the wall, sticking to its long-established way of survival.
Instead of screaming or panicking, I began to think about what to do with the creature. Calmly, I grabbed my roommate’s insecticide and sprayed it without mercy. In that brief moment, many thoughts ran through my head. For a moment, I thought about how humans have such an intense instinctive reaction whenever they encounter these tiny creatures, and why so many people have an aversion to bugs. But then, as I watched the creature’s legs quiver and wriggle, I found myself shutting off my rational mind and reacting sensually. No matter how hard he fought for his life, he could not overcome the victory of human civilization.
Writhing in pain, it tried to escape by cutting off its legs, but its survival instinct was worthless against the killing power of the pesticide, which was a combination of many chemicals. Soon the writhing creature ceased to move, no longer a living thing but a chemical-soaked mass of organic matter, and I carefully placed its body in a dustpan and placed it on the dirt outside the dormitory.
I went through the motions almost mechanically, but a strong sense of skepticism swept over me afterward. I had always prided myself on being quite fond of bugs. I remember being in the countryside, and when a colorful moth landed on my hand, I would stare and wait for it to fly away on its own. I also have proud memories of carefully picking up a spider that was spinning a web under my desk and releasing it out the window. I felt a sense of incongruity in my actions because I would not normally harm a living thing unless it was a pest that directly harmed me, such as a mosquito.
Furthermore, this experience made me rethink what it means to be human. Humans are contradictory beings who are compassionate to some creatures, but instinctively hostile to others who are momentarily inconvenienced. If it is the nature of humans to pride themselves on being civilized, but to overreact in unnecessary situations, then I was confronted with human nature again through the humpback.
A few years ago, there was a boom in the internet. At the time, they were known as demonic insects that were incredibly prolific and wouldn’t die unless you burned them with fire, and even then, they would leave behind new enemies in the form of lacewings. However, being a bug-loving person, I researched whether this was true and found out that the above facts were just rumors spread by elementary school students on Naver Edu, and that the hornworm is a harmless insect that rarely harms humans. However, regardless of this rationalization, I felt an obligatory urge to kill the louse the moment I saw it, and I acted on it. Rationally, there was no reason for me to kill the bug right away. This irrational impulse must have stemmed from a “disgust” for the bug. There is no doubt that humans have a universal aversion to bugs. Even I, a self-proclaimed bug lover, have been driven to murder by this aversion. But where does this ‘disgust’ come from?
Is our aversion to bugs a product of education or an instinct imprinted in our genes? You can think of it as one of two things. At first, I thought it was hardwired into our genes. Obviously, some bugs are pests that harm humans, and individuals who dislike them would have an advantage in survival and reproduction, so natural selection would have passed down the gene for disliking bugs. If we dislike bugs that aren’t pests, it’s because our evolution isn’t sophisticated enough to distinguish between them.
However, if human disgust is based solely on instinct, then the emotion of “disgust” shouldn’t play a large role in modern societies, where many civilizations have developed. On the contrary, in the modern era, bug disgust seems to have become more widespread through media and social transmission of information. Perhaps we are reacting to the social image of bugs as “dirty,” “pests,” and “dangerous” rather than the bugs themselves.
These initial thoughts soon collapsed on themselves. If we argue that our disgust stems from instinct, then non-human animals must also dislike bugs for the same reason. However, if we think of a puppy running around excitedly and playing fetch with a bug, it is unlikely that non-human animals are averse to bugs. There is no reason to treat humans differently from other animals at the genetic level. So my initial hypothesis is naturally rejected, and my conclusion leans towards the idea that disgust is a product of education.
There are a few more reasons to think this way. In our immediate lives, a child raised in the countryside is obviously less disgusted by bugs than a child raised in the city, and we can only assume that this difference arises from differences in environment.
Also, in our society, women generally have a much stronger aversion to bugs than men. Again, it’s hard to see why this would be an innate difference. I believe that these differences are due to the environment, especially cultural demands. This is because our society’s frame of femininity is geared towards such behavior. These cultural pressures shape our behavior.
In other words, we are constantly balancing between the natural and the artificial, and our aversion to bugs may be a hybrid of both. It’s a complex emotion that recognizes the existence of bugs as a part of nature, but also wants to reject them, due to the demands of education and society.
In the end, I concluded that human aversion to bugs is a product of education. More specifically, this aversion is ingrained in us through the process of imitating the behavior of our parents and surroundings and conforming to social and cultural demands and moods. People like me, who have a weak sense of disgust, probably have a weaker education and socialization, or rational thinking is more behavior-based. However, when I think back to today, when I finally killed the scorpionfish out of disgust, I realize that my previous self was just a mere pretense of strength.
You might think that I eat meat every day without thinking about it, and that I’m in trouble for killing one. However, this small but interesting reflection provided me with a justification for seeing and killing a lobster contrary to my usual beliefs, and it was an enjoyable experience in itself, even if I didn’t find any use for it.
So my attempt to kill time by simply surfing the web ended up with a reflection that was by no means useful. However, rather than spending time on the web in vain, I can consider myself lucky to have found a small amount of happiness on this podium, albeit a rather cruel happiness built on the carcass of a goby, and I end this article by expressing my profound gratitude to the goby for giving me such a fresh experience.
