I hate flies.
Why do I hate flies?
Because they are dirty.
I also hate flies because they buzz around my room and nestle in my lamp, the only source of illumination down here. They sound like little German Fokker biplanes that are being piloted by large-lunged vuvuzela players. They are also quite large.
When I finally swat these flies with a rolled up copy of Nintendo Power, I have found, to my disgust/may, that many of them are pregnant. Their twitching bodies release a slowly growing pool of tiny, near-microscopic maggots, which crawl around blindly searching for some corpse to inhabit.
It's gross.
Then I got to thinking about animals people are afraid of, and how they all go under that finger retracting heading of "Dirty." Flies, cockroaches, rats, and vermin of all shapes and sizes; people are afraid of them, and they are all known as being filthy, filthy creatures.
Where did this come from? Is this a Western fear that we have? I'm not implying that in the East people are loving on cockroaches and sharing bags of Doritos with them, that's just absurd(of course that doesn't happen, Doritos are hard to come by in Asia). Since when have we all become Purell-grabbing germaphobes?
I think about how when I see pictures of Africa there are kids squatting on the ground, flies on their faces, just chillin'. This is an awkward example to use, because it's highly likely that they were too weak to swat them away, so let me move on- How about markets in the Philippines, where everything is in the open air, and animals are cut up in front of you and blood and other liquids flow down little drains all around you? Is that any less hygienic than the food you eat now (unless you're in the Philippines, in which case this obviously doesn't apply to you)?
I guess the bottom of line of what I'm saying here is that we (yes, I suppose I count as well) Westerners are terrified of things that are "dirty," and maybe we don't even know why. Or maybe we do know why, but we are being directed by the hype of the media and all that. Just something to think about, y'know?
Notes:
- One night in Thailand I woke up and there was a cockroach on my hand. It was one of the worst nights of my life. I spent the rest of the night in the living room.
- There was a lot of unintentional product placement in this post. I'm really sorry for that, it was completely unintentional and I have no idea how it happened.
- If you go to urbandictionary.com, the second entry for germaphobe has a second definition that is as follows:
I don't think that any of my posts thus far have shared tags. You can check if you want, but I think you'll find that I am correct.
ReplyDeleteIf you check you will also find that I lied.
ReplyDeleteI didn't check. I believed you. Thank you for letting me know that you lied, though.
ReplyDeleteI think being repulsed by dirty things is to some extent an evolutionary advantage. Flies, cockroaches, and rats are the most likely creatures to hang around dead and/or decaying things, and most likely to spread whatever diseases those dead things had. A person who is repulsed by feces and rats and flies would probably live longer and reproduce more than a person who enjoyed eating/handling those things.
But then it can be overdone - it's one thing to generally avoid dead, rotting, smelly animals; it's another to shut one's self in with sealed windows and a bottle of Windex. I think the West especially has gone a little overboard with the whole "GERMS ARE BAD OMG" mindset; maybe because the population there (here) generally has the money to shut all dirt and grime out with expensive, hermetically sealed houses.
Also, the US, Canada, and most of Europe (ie, "the West") are a lot colder and/or dryer than average (Spain and Italy kind of mess it up - but I'm talking about the lack of rainforests, monsoon seasons, and equatorial coastland throughout the West), which tends towards more tightly sealed houses (AND less giant icky bugs - they thrive less well when it's fricking cold half of the year).
My mom has told me the story of when she and my dad were first married and could afford only very cheap housing. Once in the kitchen, my mother exclaimed, "What a huge beetle!" in an impressed way. My dad, knowing it was a cockroach, laughed weakly and (presumably) disposed of the cockroach.
ReplyDeletePerhaps it's a fear that Westerners have cultivated, but I think it's a deserved one. Elisa is right - the knowledge that these "dirty" things are generally bad is helpful for us. Think of the bubonic plague.
Maybe a better description of these creatures (specifically rats) would be "potentially dangerous" rather than "dirty."