No, Nietzsche Did Not Say That Stupid Thing About Cockroaches and Butterflies

If you crush a cockroach, you’re a hero. If you crush a beautiful butterfly, you’re a villain. Morals have aesthetic criteria."

I saw that quote on Facebook this week, attributed to Friedrich Nietzsche. My response, which took me no time to think about at all, was that butterflies don't infest people's homes, get in their food, or spread diseases. I withheld my further analysis that Nietzsche was a moron and I could scratch looking into his philosophical contributions off my bucket list. In preparing for this post, however, I wasn't very surprised to learn that this quote doesn't come from the famous 19th-century philosopher at all, but rather from some random guy on Twitter in 2012. Classic internet.

The thing is, this guy could have made a valid point if he'd picked an ugly bug that wasn't a cockroach. When I see an earwig in my living space, I kill it on the spot with a feeling of revulsion. When I see a spider, I catch it and put it outside. When I see a box elder bug, I ignore it. The latter, admittedly, hasn't happened since I lived in Logan, where they were so plentiful that I didn't care if they crawled on me, like invasive Japanese ladybugs when I lived in New York. I'll freely admit to being a bug racist. But cockroaches are an extra level of awful, and my own experience with them wasn't even that bad. The most I ever killed in a day was nine. I've heard about people killing hundreds in an hour. A friend told me about living in a place where the floor went from black to white when he turned the light on, and having them swarm his face and stuff. If I'm ever in a situation like that, rest assured that I'll burn the place down with myself inside.

Mind you, I'm talking about my living space. I typically go out of my way not to kill bugs outside, no matter how ugly they are. I've seen several June bugs outside my apartment complex, and I've seen several that have obviously been crushed to death on purpose, and I don't like that. If one ever gets in my apartment, I'll freak the hell out, but until then, I say live and let live. Conversely, if I see ants in here, I'll kill them even though I don't find them particularly ugly because they cause some of the same issues as cockroaches. I try to take a non-malicious approach regardless. Cockroaches are a morally neutral part of nature that evolved to do what they do, and they have as much right to exist as I do - but I'm a part of nature too, and I'm bigger than they are, and I don't want them here. I felt a little bad about them slowly dying of thirst inside my Roach Motels, but that's life.

Thanks to the angels at the Roach Motel company, I haven't seen a live cockroach in months, but I realized that they'd traumatized me when I had a nightmare about them this week - possibly because I read that quote, though I've already forgotten which happened first. I was in a train car talking to some people about stuff, and I asked them to kill the cockroach that flew in. I had some awareness that this was a dream, and I debated whether I should wake up to make sure that, by some unfortunate coincidence, a flying cockroach hadn't actually gotten into my apartment to start a new infestation. I recognized that I was being paranoid, but in the end, I couldn't rest easy until I knew for sure, so I did wake up. What fun.

Today, for the second time, a little brown shield beetle got through my supposedly sealed window. These guys don't look like either of the species of cockroaches I've had, but they're close enough to make me uneasy. The first time, I caught it in a cup, took a picture, and asked Gemini if it was a cockroach. This time, I tried to do the same thing because I'd forgotten exactly what the first one looked like. However, this one was less docile. The first one stayed in the cup without me even having to cover it, and I didn't even realize it could fly until Gemini told me, after I'd carried it outside and shaken it out onto a bush. This one escaped while I was trying to take a picture. Right next to my bed, too. Fortunately, after I got back from the Pride parade, I found it on the frame of the balcony door, and I got a picture and shooed it outside before Gemini reassured me that I hadn't just made a terrible mistake by not killing a cockroach when I had the chance.

Sorry if this isn't interesting. I thought maybe I'd write about Jeff Strong's new book, Torn, that's meant to help LDS Church members understand how many people have left and the real reasons why, or the Bricks and Minifigs / American Fork Police Department scandal that I finally learned about because approximately eight million YouTube channels are covering it, or Pete Kegsbreath's new military chaplaincy classification chart that doesn't classify the LDS Church as a Christian denomination because news flash, Mormons, you're not welcome in the Christian Nationalist club no matter how much you help them take trans people's rights away. I didn't feel motivated enough to force myself to write about those things. What got my fingers moving? Cockroaches. Freaking cockroaches. Well, specifically the fact that someone was ignorant enough to think that crushing cockroaches but not butterflies is solely a matter of aesthetic criteria. I'm glad that someone wasn't Nietzsche. Maybe I'll read some of his stuff someday after all.

And cockroaches still deserve to live more than ICE agents do.