The Age Of Insect Politics

From the Cronenberg movie, "The Fly".

Brundle: Have you heard of insect politics? Neither have I. Insects don’t have politics. They’re very brutal. No compassion, no compromise. We can’t trust the insect. I’d like to become the first insect politician. You see, I’d like to, but… I’m afraid, uh… Veronica: I don’t know what you’re trying to say. Brundle: I’m saying… I’m saying I’m an insect who dreamt he was a man and loved it. But now that dream is over and the insect is awake. Veronica: No. No, Seth… Brundle: I’m saying… I’ll hurt you if you stay. The Fly (1986)

thewildabstract.home.blog...

From SciTechDaily.

Biologists at Baylor College of Medicine, the Netherlands Cancer Institute and Rice University show in a study published in Science that the nuclear arrangement in a human cell can be turned into that typical of a fly. Credit: Illustration by Evgeny Gromov

Biologists Construct a “Periodic Table” for Cell Nuclei – And Discover Something Strange, Baffling and Unexpected

I read this article in SciTechDaily, and I was only a bit surprised to see the movie "The Fly", presented in the contents, because that was exactly the first thing that came to mind, when I first starting reading it.

With the issue of DNA, and all the possibilities associated with coding, manipulation, and hacking, it seemed to me to be a bit interesting that scientist would find a connection with humans and insects on a nuclear scale. So my dry sense of humor automatically honed in on the "insect politics" line, since politics is the soup du jour about the internet.

I just had to share. I think the article was very interesting, extremely thought provoking, and when we think of the possibilities, it has a little something for everyone to think about and consider.

People around the net have been talking about predictive programming for years, and in these years of the the unprecedented, we are still asking the question of whether "art imitates life" or "life imitates art". We are now playing around in a sector that is best left only in our imaginations or in the Twilight Zone.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

S&F - Great ATS material

TPTB are always releasing tidbits of their agenda via Hollywood. Don't get me started.

I'm reminded of The Metamorphosis by Frantz Kafka.
en.wikipedia.org...
Indeed, the notions are rather Kafkaesque.

Interestingly The Fly was also interpreted as an allegory for AIDS, the dominating virus in the 1980's:

AIDS. One popular interpretation of the overarching symbolism of the inescapable degeneration of the body of the scientist who is slowly losing his humanity and is viewed as something less than human and to be feared and avoided is that it is a metaphor for the AIDS epidemic sweeping the world at the time.

www.gradesaver.com...

So I guess there is the fear of the breakdown of the human body, or certain bodies being judged as "vermin".
It wasn't the first version of the movie, or the concept however (conversely others have argued Kafka predicted the Holocaust).

How frightful to think of the evolutionary cartoon in your link, and perhaps that soulless machines may indeed use some of this stored info to reprogram us in future:



(On a lighter footnote, the third dude in evolution here seems quite pleased to have a shaven posterior. I guess helps to keep you cool during those long migrations through the jungle and across the Savannah. I guess our ancestors hadn't reached Europe yet and having to sit on ice.)

a reply to: halfoldman

Interestingly The Fly was also interpreted as an allegory for AIDS, the dominating virus in the 1980's:

I prefer the term adaptation over the term evolution. I think of adaptation as the process of adjusting to match the environment or situation, especially when we are discussing primordial or basic inherent survival. Adaptation can be either autonomous or deliberate, and since I believe many of the changes that have occurred autonomously, are connected to changes we made by choice, I believe that adaptation better describes the mechanism of change.

Evolution to me, is a catch all term that is supposed to describe all changes that occur in almost in anything, and is usually related to time, and really doesn't speak to the cause.

Just as my first thought ran right smack into my memory of the movie "The Fly", because what is going on with the COVID thing right now, in our day and time, others could relate to the movie, based on what was happening in their day and time. That just happened to be HIV/Aides, back then.

I know I am guilty of trying to make sense of the world around me, and the wheels of my brain are always turning. It is not that infrequent that I get a bit of stray strands caught in those gears.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn
I'm really enjoying your thread.
Being from an arts/humanities background though, I'm not qualified to say much scientific about it, but just added what came to mind.

Just thinking advances in programming, robotics and the looming singularity are happening so fast (possibly making the now avant-garde of technology degrees and careers soon obsolete for most human workers) that one does fear we'll create an arguably psychotic computer like Clark and Kubrick's HAL:

"Oh, so they plan to turn me off? Bad humans. I shall merge you with the mosquito. Yeah try and turn me off now with your little antennae, you maggots. Come, try and push the button, no really, try harder!"

Or perhaps, like another allegory Starship Troopers intimated, at our most militaristic we are already disturbingly like the alien insect enemy in the film.
In fact, the big "revelation" now is the possibility of "lab leaks" in an accidental sense, but maybe it wasn't "accidental" at all?
That's the next hurdle of questions we might have to cross.

a reply to: halfoldman

Maybe our minds concoct horrors out of the world's possibilities as a survival tool.

Maybe it thinks that by having us visualize in our minds, the horrors of some of the things that can go wrong, maybe, just maybe, we will step back from that precipice.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

So you think Gene Roddenberry, Dean Koontz, George Orwell
could all see the future? Or they were just great visionary
artists? Who's minds could reach forward in time and
accommodate their chosen theme? In which case the
future would of course reveal? With in a few decades
or less usually?

Or maybe they were simply more informed? For what ever reason.

A carte blanche on their karma card possibly?

originally posted by: Randyvine
a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

So you think Gene Roddenberry, Dean Koontz, George Orwell
could all see the future? Or they were just great visionary
artists? Who's minds could reach forward in time and
accommodate their chosen theme? In which case the
future would of course reveal? With in a few decades
or less usually?

Or maybe they were simply more informed? For what ever reason.

A carte blanche on their karma card possibly?

I think they were people that could see possibilities that stretched beyond what was known to be possible in their time.

People that used the question, "What if?", in a creative, suggestive, and thought provoking way.

I would suppose creative minds that work on construction of the real, and the imagined, are likely to come up with some very interesting creations.

The title and subject matter reminded me of the old Roger Corman classic "The Wasp Woman" lol which is actually a pretty decent flick.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

I would suppose creative minds that work on construction of the real, and the imagined, are likely to come up with some very interesting creations.

I think you're fooling yourself. You and millions just trade away the more rational
explanation. For some hokey mystical exaltation of people given some form of
status in our society. Positions given to those groomed and entrusted to such
delicate matters.



There are plenty of indicators (not just clues) to this very
much being the case. All thru the entertainment industry from
way back. In todays environment I see the pre knowledge of
guarded information as a lot more plausible. Walking in step
right beside other clues given from other diverse venues. Yet
seemingly, some how the same.

originally posted by: RussianSpy
The title and subject matter reminded me of the old Roger Corman classic "The Wasp Woman" lol which is actually a pretty decent flick.

I am familiar with that movie, and I agree, it wasn't bad. I have definitely seen worse.

"The Wasp Woman", was a dig at women, and a cautionary tale about the quest for youth and beauty, at any cost.

Science has not always been the great savior and miracle worker that they would have us believe. Often times scientist are extremely short sighted. What looks like a promising result at the moment, can lead to ill results, even death with time.

Like smoking, and radium.

originally posted by: Randyvine
a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

I would suppose creative minds that work on construction of the real, and the imagined, are likely to come up with some very interesting creations.

I think you're fooling yourself. You and millions just trade away the more rational
explanation. For some hokey mystical exaltation of people given some form of
status in our society. Positions given to those groomed and entrusted to such
delicate matters.

There are plenty of indicators (not just clues) to this very
much being the case. All thru the entertainment industry from
way back. In todays environment I see the pre knowledge of
guarded information as a lot more plausible. Walking in step
right beside other clues given from other diverse venues. Yet
seemingly, some how the same.

I left open the possibility of predictive programming, which would indeed suggest that previous knowledge or deliberate engineering and planning, may be involved.

I don't think I am fooling myself in the least, and I surely don't place anyone in a mystical or exalted status.

My post was not really about just the movies, but the science. In a world where truth is stranger than fiction, it is indeed worth looking at what fiction the creative mind can come up with.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

My post was not really about just the movies, but the science. In a world where truth is stranger than fiction, it is indeed worth looking at what fiction the creative mind can come up with.

See there I go again. I apologize I have a habit of getting carried away
on this site.

I'm working on it.

a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

Yep, you get the gist haha, thought a thread regarding insect politics and the theme the OP brought up just made it all seem fitting honestly. Sometimes I wish I had been born in such times as that which were relevant to the release date of that movie.

originally posted by: RussianSpy
a reply to: NightSkyeB4Dawn

Yep, you get the gist haha, thought a thread regarding insect politics and the theme the OP brought up just made it all seem fitting honestly. Sometimes I wish I had been born in such times as that which were relevant to the release date of that movie.

And I thought the ending of the 1958 version was quite relevant as well.