Bug-Free Society

I dream of a society free from bugs. Nothing ruins a fire on a summer night more than a swarm of mosquitoes and blackflies, pricking me, injecting poison, freeing my blood from its rightful domain. Who welcomes the skin-critters prompting you to slap yourself on the face for a modicum of peace? Not me, and I venture, not you, my dear reader! What sins did I commit to warrant the devil’s plague? Put me instead in a white glass box, protected from the bugs, air conditioned, quiet, an entirely civilized and human invention. Surround me with the plush pleasures of dried and moisturized leather, wood cut to reasonable proportions, sturdy steel and a pistachio macaron. That suits me best, to dwell in a place, fed on a feted plate, created by humans, for humans.

So too I like my law free from bugs. Hobbes derived law from the bugs, a state of nature that was solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short. That’s a state of nature best avoided, and I submit wrong in the first place. If life was such, who could live? Instead it must be that law emerges when we agree with each other and make a social contract. Law created by humans, for humans. We need only look to the bugs to see the folly of Hobbes. What need we of empathy, war, and instinct, to survive like bees? I learned on TikTok that when a wasp attacks a bees nest, the bees rescue themselves by flapping their wings, vibrating so frequently so as to heat up both wasp and bees, to the point where the wasp is burned alive! What of the bees, though? They, too, burn alive, the weakest of them. That’s no place for me, I prefer the comfort of fairness and equity, bring up the weakest, I say, in case I am among the weak, as I love to while on my couch and my apps, and let the strong lift me up! But not too much, lest I succeed and become among the strong, then why should I pay for the laziness of others? Every man gets his just deserts, isn’t that what we should agree on?

Professor Dean-Of told me, actually all of us in a class, that the appearance of fairness is what counts the most. I agreed wholeheartedly. After all, there is no advantage in fairness which cannot be seen. Just this morning I saw on my way in my boss present a coffee and a croissant to a ragged woman on the sidewalk. He was a-beaming and others beamed at him, along with me! What a wonderful reward it must have been for him. But imagine if in darkness he handed a cheque for a thousand dollars to her, what good would that do him? He would lose a thousand dollars and gain nothing. So out of range of our sense of equity, that it is a struggle to even picture it! Thus the appearance of fairness pales to actual fairness.

In my youth I spent many long days staring at ants in a mound outside my grandmother’s shed. They would work like heroes, tirelessly dissecting larger creatures and lifting them together to their colony. Never have even Amazon workers collaborated so seamlessly. But these reptilian ladies would turn themselves on the queen when it aged, killing her as she could no longer breed. Such hypocrisy, that they did not kill themselves for their own infertility! And with what ruthlessness. In their world that was the epitome of fairness, what with championing the survival of the colony above all else. In our world we, ever civilized, ever followers of the lodestar of the appearance of fairness, would keep our queen ant alive, however aged and infertile and useless to our survival. Let the principles of humans on the streets and in the castles, not those trail-borne savages, provide the principles of justice for us all. For the appearance of fairness is a human phenomenon. Let the bugs have actual fairness.

And it was just the other day, as I supped in a steakhouse under the dark lights, that I espied in the back booth a judge and a lawyer, together on a trial during the daylight hours, enjoying their repast of beef-on-the-bone and Bourdeaux (now that is an ever-human triumph!). I was absent-mindedly perusing the menu, choosing to escape to escargot or sail the shrimpy seas, when I heard the unmistakable rumbling guffaws of the learned hand (for I had once been on the wrong end of that hand, but never mind). Looking up, there could be no mistaking it, a cavorting most unethical. I thought nothing of it, but that if I were a client I would want that lawyer to appear before that judge, such is the secret I uncovered, and mine alone, and one I would most unabashedly take advantage of when the need arose some years later. So when the trial was over, the lawyer victorious, I read the judgment and was most impressed, for it was a paradigm, nay, a zenith, of legal and philosophical thought, one studied and to be studied for centuries more, the combined effort of Cicero and Solomon, the Platonian ideal of the appearance of fairness to all. The reasoned and enlightened judgment gave every apology to the losing side, indeed even surpassed the argument at trial. But the best judgments raise up the losing arguments best, so as to strike them down. So too here. Oh what a triumph, to wrest fairness for oneself and to appear fair for all else. Squash the bugs of fairness out of you, and let the appearance of fairness win the day!