Why have we come to fear and loathe small, helpless insects, and why has this fear intensified in modern society?

Drawing on his own experience of being afraid of insects as a child, this book explores why humans have come to perceive insects as objects of fear and loathing, analyzing the reasons for the negative image of insects and why this perception is reinforced in modern society.

 

Ever since I was a kid, I hated insects, and while other kids my age could easily catch a dragonfly, I couldn’t. It was always my parents’ responsibility to assign me a vacation project to collect insects, but nowadays it’s rare to find an elementary school that assigns insect collecting as a vacation project. Maybe it’s because it’s hard to find insects around us, or maybe it’s because children are afraid of them. Franz Kafka’s novel The Metamorphosis tells the story of a man who is ostracized by his family after he turns into a bug one day. While reading this novel, I suddenly thought to myself. If the main character had transformed into a cute puppy, would he have been so rejected by his family?
After reading this book, I wondered, “Why are humans afraid of insects?” Or, more precisely, why are modern, city-dwelling humans afraid of insects? It’s actually quite ironic that humans are afraid of insects. Humans are currently the most powerful predators on the planet. We’re the ones who can easily take down even the sharpest teeth and claws, and we’re afraid of insects that are only a centimeter or two in size. Think about it. If you think about it, which predator would freak out and run away at the sight of a bug? There must be a reason why humans are afraid of insects.
The first reason is that insects look very different from humans. This is quite understandable and empathetic. We don’t have a fear of mammals that look similar to us, like dogs, cats, or monkeys. However, we do have a significant fear of creatures that look different, such as frogs, salamanders, snakes, and earthworms. We look at insects and say they’re gross, and we’re scared of them because of their appearance. However, appearance alone doesn’t fully explain why we are afraid of insects. If we’re afraid of insects because of their appearance, we should be afraid of all non-mammalian creatures for the same reason: octopuses, crabs, fish, chickens, etc. Also, just because something looks different from us doesn’t mean it’s gross. In the first place, the concept of “gross” is subjective, and it’s hard to define what is gross and what isn’t. That’s another reason why humans are afraid of insects.
One of the reasons humans are afraid of insects is that they have a dirty image. In fact, when an insect touches my body, I feel like something dirty has touched my body, and I am immediately overcome with an intense desire to wash the area. This is despite the fact that there is no evidence that insects carry germs and no reason to think of them as dirty. So why do we perceive insects as dirty?
The dirty image of insects is largely due to the impact of pests. If we trace the history of pests, we can go back to the Middle Ages. In medieval European cities, there was no proper separation between water supply and sewage, so garbage and domestic sewage flowed directly into rivers. This led to poor sanitation and a rat epidemic. Rats carried a variety of diseases that caused great harm to humans, most notably the plague, or Black Death. The plague wiped out one-third of Europe’s population, and rats were feared even more than wild beasts. If rats were feared in the Middle Ages, mosquitoes are the modern equivalent. The malaria mosquito kills around two million people every year, and the damage caused by mosquito-borne diseases such as Japanese encephalitis and dengue fever is still ongoing. Other pests such as killer ticks, cockroaches, flies, and many more threaten human life and are often perceived as dirty and need to be eliminated.
So how did the dirty image of pests get transferred to insects as a whole? I believe that pesticides are the main culprit for the dirty image of insects. After 1939, with the advent of DDT and other pesticides as science advanced, the war between humans and pests was effectively won by humans. But these new chemicals didn’t discriminate between pests and non-pests, they simply killed all insects. Because of this indiscriminate use of pesticides, insects were now seen as unwanted and unnecessary in human homes. As a result, even non-pest insects were perceived by humans as dirty, no different from pests. Eventually, pesticides, which were designed to eliminate pests, turned innocent insects into pests.
But it won’t be easy to exonerate these innocent insects in the future. The land is increasingly covered with asphalt, and concrete buildings are replacing trees. The number of customers for exterminators is growing every year, and more and more powerful pesticides are being produced. Children are taught about insects only on monitors, and now even parents are afraid of them. But insects are not dirty. And there’s no need to be afraid of them. On the contrary, I’ve heard reports that the indiscriminate use of pesticides has reduced the population of insects that feed on pests, leading to an increase in mosquitoes, flies, and other insects. If we try to drive insects away, we may end up driving humans off the planet. It’s time to start living side by side with insects, and I look forward to seeing my son or daughter collecting insects for a vacation project in a few decades.