What Do You See?

When I was a child of maybe about eight, an uncle bought a whole bunch of durians for us to eat. Not everyone appreciates this rather strong-smelling fruit, but I love it, and would use to gorge on it as a child, before my IBS got too severe.

So my cousins and I, we were all tucking into the sweet, creamy flesh as my uncle persevered to pry open all eight of the durians he'd purchased in a show of adult manliness (heh heh), when he made a rather stomach-turning discovery.

He'd found an unusually large specimen of a variety of worm that infests the thorny fruits in one of the larger durians. It was the the size of my finger, and a very robust and lively little critter at that, frantically wriggling across the concrete floor, as if to escape our horrified stares.

Here's a few links to some pictures of those horrible, horrible things you find in the king of fruits when you're not too lucky, because I refuse to post and credit images that make me feel a little bit ill every time I clap eyes on them:

• 5xmom's very detailed close-up of one of those buggers (you can actually see the false eyes!)
• Francis Ho's proof that the durians he had were organic (and apparently them grubs are edible)

Going back to the story - my uncle picked up the unfortunate fellow trying to make a getaway, found a pin, and impaled it on the soil in a flower-pot nearby. Not being a weak, easily-killed homo sapiens, the grub didn't die from that treatment, and continued squirming energetically in a bid to escape its predicament.

Me and my cousins were both repulsed yet strangely fascinated. We decided to conduct what in our childish minds, some sadistic form of experimentation on the bug. First we drenched it in water, curious to see if it would drown.

It didn't.

Still morbidly drawn by its suffering, we found more pins... and stuck them into the grub along its entire length, at regular intervals, so it was literally staked down with four steel pins right through it.

The thing proved to be quite the fighter, and survived that treatment.

After staring at it for a while more, and determining that it would not die from the damage we'd inflicted on it, we got bored, and ran off to find more interesting pursuits to occupy us.

Then the ants found it.

When we decided to check on it the next day to see if it was still alive, we found it covered with ants which were slowly but surely removing tiny pieces of worm-flesh off it, presumably to carry back to their nest as food.

And the poor fucking grub was still alive, wriggling a lot less energetically as it did the day before, but definitely still very much alive.

Slightly sickened, but mesmerized by the sight, we didn't do anything to ease the plight of that hapless creature. Instead, we left it alone, interested to see how long it would last the onslaught of those ants feeding on it.

It took more than three days for it to die, from the day we first discovered it nestled among the creamy flesh of what was supposed to be an afternoon treat.

It took a little longer for the ants to completely finish off every single scrap of it. Almost a week, if my memory serves me correctly.

And all the time it was still alive, growing weaker and weaker in its struggles to free itself, we did nothing but add to its torment. We dripped honey on it, to attract more ants, and we watched its suffering, indifferent to its pain.

The point of this story is, people all have capacity for cruelty in them. One might argue that this inhumanity was committed by children who didn't know better... but then again, children are the most honest expression of human nature, having not learnt empathy or sympathy or the need to confirm to social acceptability. Adults are more restrained in their actions of brutality, of course, but there's not very much separating the "civilized" person from the sadistic animal that exists in each and every one of us.

Granted, the worm was a pest, and not a very welcome thing to find in something you want to eat, but it probably had enough awareness to experience some form of pain, and maybe even a horror at its impending slow death.

That blatant indifference to suffering, that enjoyment of inflicting pain... suppress it, repress it, but tell me... You, reading this: can you sincerely deny that at some point of your life, the thought of inflicting an atrocity on another living thing, or even another person has never once crossed your mind, be it justified or not?

Mull upon that.

We are nothing more than savage beasts wearing the facade of civility and morality.