I squashed an earwig the other day. Upon doing so, I had the most peculiar thought: What right had I? Is it because I’m bigger? Because I’m smarter? Because I’m able to convince myself that I am the more important organism? That this small, insignificant insect should die, rather than pester me?

I assume a common perception for many people, is: “There are so many. What harm does killing one do? It’s just a bug.”

That is true. The loss of a few earwigs here and there won’t impact anyone or anything, but consider this: there are 6,600,000,000 people in the world, give or take. And each one of us is “just a human.” And the only organisms that hold that fact to any esteem, are other humans. Imagine putting something like, “I’m fantastic!” on your résumé. Would anyone hire you? Will every single one of us turn out a Nobel Prize winner? How many will cure cancer? Will more than a handful do anything worthwhile? Which again brings us back to my original query. What right do we as homo-sapiens have in matters like that? Should one of us die, should thousands of us die, should millions upon millions of human lives be extinguished, nothing would change. Humans dying in droves won’t affect anything, but we’d make a big fuss about it since that’s what humans do when other humans die. Nothing will shift ecologically, nothing in the world will be affected except… us. The world would likely even fare better if lots of humans just up and died. Do we kill these smaller beings without regard, because we know they’re incapable of holding the same value for life as we do? Even so, I can’t see how that begins to justify it. What makes man so worthy that he wantonly ends life at no benefit to himself? Hunting and killing in order to acquire sustenance is rationalized as survival, but try as I might, I haven’t any valid reasoning at the purposeless killing of an insect. I ponder and I deduce, but the more I dwell on the subject, the more I don’t understand.

I try and reason. The bug was in my home, a tiny scourge from the outside come to get into, and spoil our food. “But wait,” thought I. My home is within his home, and he can’t differentiate between the two because he’s just a bug, right? How can you point your finger, draw a line, and make the proclamation: “That’s mine,” because I didn’t know nature recognized property lines. The bug was doing what he had to in order to keep alive. But did I pick him up and relocate him to whence he came, and allow him to go about his business as he was intending to do when he stumbled in beneath the door? No. I killed him. Sure, one might say it saves you the trouble of relocating him all the way to your backyard, the door to which is a staggering fifteen feet away. But now consider, with the dead insect smeared on the table, or the chair, or the floor, you have to clean up what’s left of him. So in essence, that reasoning, however vapid, fails as well, because should I have just gotten my lazy ass up and moved the bug back to his home, I’d have spent less time devoted to some aspect of dealing with him. And even if it did save you that entire dozen or so seconds, seriously ask yourself this: “Does the time you saved validate death?”