Introspection, cognitive bias and parasyte - what makes us non-parasitic?

Hello everyone. I am writing after quite a long time now. I hope everyone is doing well. Today, I'd like to itch your brain with some thoughts that itched my brain over the past two months. The thoughts still hit me at the most random times. It all started with an anime series that I watched recently. The series is called Parasyte.

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Humans and definition of Parasite - the bias

The anime is filled with thought provoking dialogues. I'd like to present a few of those dialogues here but before that, let's take a look into parasites. Google defines parasite as "an organism which lives in or on another organism (its host) and benefits by deriving nutrients at the other's expense" which is pretty interesting; given the fact that we're cognitively biased towards similar human-actions over other organisms and how we see it to be non-parasitic and perfectly humane.

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Humans as parasites?

The series makes me think how would we actually react if more powerful organisms start eating us; humans. We are mostly likely to come to an agreement on how important "human life" is and how those organisms must be stopped or killed to protect our human lives and the human race in itself. But do we ever realize how we might be knowingly or unknowingly playing the same role as that of the "unkind/monster organism" when it comes to killing the less powerful or less intelligent organisms than humans.

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What's right and what's wrong?

Even if one brings about the argument of a food-chain or balance of ecosystem in the picture, I believe that things would not be seen from the same perspective if humans were treated the same way. So, is it wrong to feed on other organisms when you're an omnivore? I don't know but here's a good dialogue from a different anime that's pretty deep and relatable.

If we follow this school of thought, then there is no right or wrong defined by nature itself. We form notions and ideas of things being right or wrong trying to measure the end result of the act or event in terms of the growth or damage caused by it, totally based on our own understanding of how things work; which is in turn defined by the way we grew up - encapsulating the values, norms and ideas we picked up from our observations consciously or sub consciously in the process of our overall growth. This is probably why we differ in ideas and it is also the same reason why we are most likely to agree on ideas. But, is there a right or wrong defined by nature itself? I don't know and I guess many of us don't know. Nature just follows the laws of physics as we understand it today with a vast ocean of discoveries in the process and vast ocean of discoveries yet to be unfolded. If we think about it, we know a lot - at the same time, we know very little about how much is it that we know; we know very little.

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How would you define a devil by its actions? What's the closest thing to devil we know?

I'd like to present another picture containing the dialogue from the parasite in the show - Migi. If such an organism that fed on humans were to exist today, we'd indeed call it a monster or a devil. But if you pause and rethink, you might find the following text intriguing.

If there's no right or wrong defined by nature, is it all in our DNA and is it all natural selection that tells us what to do? Do we have any directive by default?
In the anime series, the parasite Migi says “Flies know how to fly without being taught. Spiders know how to spin webs without being taught. Why is that? Here’s what I think: Flies and spiders are simply following an order. I believe all lives on Earth have received orders of some kind. Don’t humans have any directive? When I took over this human’s brain, I received a directive. It said, Devour this species.” So, what would our directive be? Do we just eat to survive or survive to eat? It's thought provoking.

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The last dialogue

I'll put a stop to this article with another image that embeds a dialogue from a parasitic character who gives birth to a human baby.

Hopefully it made you think. Have a good day!

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SOURCE:
Slice of asian life
first picture
Second picture
Third picture
Fourth picture
Fifth picture

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