Full transcript and links:

https://sponge.ithakaonmymind.com/audio/005-between-grotesque-complexity-and-smooth-oneness-we-chew

Everything I do is organized here:

https://ithakaonmymind.com/

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The more complicated an organism’s features, the more repulsive they get for other organisms. That is something I absorbed from the last episode’s musings.

We were talking about teeth and smiles in the last episode. We also talked about the definition of the word grotesque, and how I interpret that word. So, with all that as the background info: teeth are, in many ways, grotesque things.

If you think about human teeth, you might not get that sense very much. That’s because you, the person listening to this podcast, are probably human. But think about little fish teeth. Or big fish teeth, like shark teeth. And then consider how some sharks have multiple layers of teeth. You know, teeth that can shred you into pieces.

Now, imagine how they would see themselves. To them, such teeth are completely normal. Maybe they think our teeth are ugly.

It’s the unknown and unknowable manifoldness. The multi-dimensionality. The processing power it takes for us to digest information that is all those many teeth that aren’t ours. That’s what makes something grotesque to a being, not an absloute property that a structure has.

Here’s another example: the legs of a centipede.

For the centipedes, their legs are a perfectly normal, desirable tool. But urgh. As I typed that word, I shivered. And as I edited the podcast outline, I shivered again. And while I am recording this episode, I am shivering again. I will probably shiver again while I’m editing the audio, and again while I upload it to Anchor and do a final listen-through. That is the kind of impact a centipede’s legs have on me. There are simply too many.

This repulsion, by the way, is totally programmed into me, I think. I don’t think it was nurtured into me. I think I was born this way to be scared and/or repulsed by newness, at least initially, and then, once I realize that the newness is not only new but also just too complicated and complex to very frequently remain repulsed.

There are a bunch of studies saying one way or another. You know, the ones that say that we’re evolutionarily programmed to dislike certain insects because we associate them with diseases. And then there are the ones that say, if we teach children that they don’t need to be scared of and be repulsed by these insects, then they won’t be scared or repulsed.

There was a study… I saw this a long time ago, so I don’t remember which study it was, but there was a study on how to encourage the next generation to consume insects as food. Because, they’re a great source of protein, and there aren’t enough resources to raise all the meat-producing animals in the future.

Insect protein isn’t necessarily unhygienic. These insects would be raised in clean environments, probably much cleaner than the average cage for poultry or mammals, simply because of how much tinier insects are and therefore how little space they take up and how much more affordable it is to raise them.

Some researchers thought that if you expose kids to insect protein from an early age, they won’t dislike it so much. And immediately, I thought of The Lion King. The scene where Simba sees Timon and Pumbaa eat those insects from under the tree trunk and he grimaces at first, but doesn’t anymore, later.

Anyway. Insects. The biggest obstacle to eating them and liking them, in my opinion, is that they have more limbs than us.

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