We've had a bit of a bug problem (don't tell our summer subletters) in our apartment since shortly after moving in. We are not particularly dirty people. We even starting doing the dishes more often when we noticed that we were feeding a small family of cockroaches in addition to feeding ourselves. However, I never really had the heart to kill off the roaches, so they just kinda grew in number. We figured, even if we did try to kill them off, they would just hide out in one of the other apartments next-door and come back when the fumes were gone. Anyway, we have basically been tolerating the little bugs. I don't even think much about them until someone comes to visit and is repulsed by the sight of one little bug. Anyway...
I started thinking about this really bad metaphor of how bugs are kinda like oppressed peoples (stay with me here). They pretty much have the right to live, and as long as they stay out of sight (or outdoors) they are tolerated. However, if they get in the way of the bigger stronger people, then their lives somehow become less important.
Being a vegetarian, tree-hugger, and eternal pacifist, I can't bring myself to even kill bugs, generally. It just seems wrong to take the life of some little creature that didn't really do anything wrong, aside from live in your cupboard where it's not wanted. I squished one once just to see if I could handle it, but the crunching noise made me kinda sick. Sometimes I would wash them down the sink in the morning if I found them crawling on the dishes. However, I was really only saving myself from the sound of death, when in reality I was subjecting the roaches to a slower, more pitiful death.
Is this going anywhere?
Finally, last night, Gene went out and bought some weapons for battle. A big spray can (which he used up in a couple minutes) and a bunch of roach motels. It wasn't long before the kitchen floor was full of roaches (okay, there are not tons, but...) writhing in pain. This chemical evidentially screws up their nervous system and suffocates them after ten minutes or so (or so it seemed from watching them). In a way I was repulsed at our kitchen full of death. But at the same time, I was glad that the bugs would be gone. I was just glad that the blood was not on my hands.
And suddenly I had a revelation (yes). The pacifists of the world are really just fooling themselves. They walk around in their fantasy world and talk of superior moral standards and whatnot. But the reality is that they benefit (gladly) from the death and destruction others.
Example: Japan, or its inhabitants, have claimed a rather strict pacifism ever since their defeat in WWII. They are against nuclear weapons (Hiroshima/Nagasaki) and forbid the use of their sizable armed forces in overseas conflicts (though the latter rule was imposed by the Allied forces after WWII). At their universities, students complain about the US dominance in the Gulf and other places as being imperialist, violent, and unnecessary. However, they are indirectly benefitting from the brutal barbarism of other nations. Japan needs oil and rubber and world stability as much as anyone.
And so I realized that I am just as pathetic as Japan and other fake pacifists. There is something to be said for the idea of pacifism, but in practice, it doesn't work. Unfortunately, the bugs, weeds, and Iraqs of the world just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. No matter how many pacifists there are in the world, there is always going to be one barbarian to do the dirty work for them. Thanks Gene.