TheBanyanTree: Sting

[Spoonoid at cs.com]

Spoonoids:

Last weekend, while peacefully mowing the grass in my backyard, I was 
attacked by a swarm of angry wasps. What first brought this situation to my attention 
was a sharp pain on my left wrist as one of their team stung me, while the 
rest of his hive-mates did their best to drive me away from the nest. I can't 
imagine why they were so upset. I didn't mean to disturb them. All I did was 
push the lawn mower over their hideyhole. Maybe it was the roaring noise of the 
machine operating at full throttle, or perhaps the great wind generated by the 
whirling blade.
Any observer watching from a safe distance would have seen the comedy routine 
of a frantic gardener waving his arms, running away from his lawnmower across 
the yard, yelling, cursing, and slapping at the numerous bees crawling all 
over his jeans and t-shirt. The victim's wife got into the act, too, with a 
hastily retrieved can of bug spray from the garage. 
Once the attacking hoard had been dispersed from my personal space, I looked 
across the yard to see the lawnmower sitting where I had left it, still 
roaring away, over the hornet's nest. Some three dozen, highly-upset yellow jackets 
were buzzing around the machine, but they were having no success in driving it 
away. Rather than just letting it run out of gas, I got a broom handle, 
trotted past the machine and swatted the throttle lever, shutting it off. 
This episode discouraged me from any further gardening activity in the yard 
for that afternoon, and besides, I needed to visit the store to buy a can of 
wasp poison. 
That evening I pushed the silent lawnmower away from the hole in the dirt 
where the bees made their home, and expended the entire canister of insecticide 
into the nest, thus putting an end to the problem. 
But is that the end of the story? Is there an ethical dimension to this event 
that needs to be considered? Did the human need to destroy the whole colony, 
or was there an alternative to allow this small batch of god's creatures to 
continue to exist in nature's harmony? Why bother even thinking about it? The 
pests moved-in uninvited, and got exterminated.
If you're feeling philosophical, you might look at the situation from a 
dispassionate perspective, and decide the whole episode was unnecessary. The bugs 
did not need to attack the human. They could have allowed him to cut the grass 
unmolested. Their hive might have suffered the loss of a few individuals to 
the blades of the lawnmower, but if they had left the human alone, he would have 
finished cutting the grass, and would not even know they were there. If they 
had not attacked, their community would still exist in peace.
But the hive does not have the intelligence to understand this bigger 
picture. So the individual insects attacked the human invader in self-defense, which 
is the natural right of any self-respecting creature or community. The human, 
being attacked in his own home territory, responded to the threat, also in 
self-defense, eliminating the whole hive, feeling there was no reasonable 
alternative.
One would like to think he can get along in his complex world environment, 
respecting the diversity of his fellow creatures who strive to exist in whatever 
niche they can carve out in the ecology.
But life is an unending competition for resources and territory, and some 
life-forms make bad decisions. The struggle continues.

Later, John.