I Don’t Like Butterflies

 Morals often have aesthetic criteria. Kill a cockroach and most will call you a hero; kill a butterfly and you become a murderer, even a devil. But I don’t like butterflies. So, if I kill one, I am branded a murderer. People will judge me: “It already has a short life; look how beautiful its wings are.” Yet I still don’t like butterflies. Yes, I admit it—I fear them. But are we not often afraid of the things we cannot understand or dare not touch?

What about cockroaches? I kill them too, because they look ugly, and some can even fly. Imagine a flying cockroach, could there be anything more disgusting? Yet in the end, both cockroach and butterfly are insects. One wear alluring colors, the other is dark, six-legged, and unwanted. But strangely, I trust cockroaches more. At least they never change. They remain what they are until the end of their lives.

Butterflies, however, crawl onto a tree as caterpillars, only to emerge as so-called beautiful creatures. It was the tree that made them, feeding them, sheltering them so that they could transform. Cockroaches never had such privilege. They remained crawling beasts, fighting for survival, enduring mass slaughter. Which of the two is more royal, almightier? Society answers: the butterfly. Because its wings conceal the insect beneath. But when the beauty is torn away, what remains is the same fragile form, two antennas, spindly legs reaching anywhere.

The butterfly waits for its beauty to be ruined; the cockroach was always “ugly,” always black, always homeless, feeding off scraps. Yet which is more original? The one who paints your eyes with false beauty, or the one who never hides its ugliness, the creature you never hesitate to kill?

I can treat insects however I like, segregate them, even crush them, and the outcome is always the same. A cockroach is a cockroach; a butterfly is a butterfly. Their identity matters less to me. I am human; I am indifferent. But when it comes to my own species, I behave differently. I am prone to judge, to segregate. Those who do not match my identity  my tribe, my race, my beliefs are treated as if they are lesser, as if they do not deserve the same space, respect, or life. Why should I live alongside what does not reflect me? The question is not one of cruelty toward insects, but of the arbitrary boundaries humans erect among themselves. We exalt some, condemn others, not by truth or virtue, but by likeness, by appearance, by identity.

Aryans were human, just like Jews. Whites were human, just like blacks. Higher castes were human, just like lower castes. And yet, why didn’t they get along? It is easy to judge butterflies and cockroaches, but is it easy to judge humans—your own species? Yes, it was easier to segregate humans than insects. At least insects do not bias themselves against each other based on the ideologies of another group.

For German people, butterflies were Aryans and cockroaches were Jews. Jews were always seen as disgusting crawlers—how could an “almighty” German even tolerate them? “Kill it! How dare it breathe the same air as me!”

And in the United States, what happened between whites and blacks? What was wrong? Weren’t they all human? They were—until someone decided to separate them, to assign fate based on arbitrary distinctions, and make their lives more miserable than any others.

Welcome to India! What happened? Oh yes, some humans were deemed higher than others. What’s wrong with that? That is their destiny. If they were capable of handling all that wealth and power, they were said to be born into a higher caste. They separated roaches and butterflies, deciding which “human” held more value than another, measuring worth not by character or humanity, but by arbitrary labels.

At least insects never forget they were “insects” first, before becoming butterflies, roaches, ants, or anything else. But it seems we forget that we were “humans” first, and instead we kill, segregate, and oppress each other over features beyond our control—race, religion, color. We elevate some and demean others, as if arbitrary differences define our worth. Yet none of these changes our essence: we are human first. Anything else—labels, divisions, hierarchies—is a mask we place over what we already are. And until we remember that fundamental truth, we continue to repeat the same cruelty, the same blindness, over and over again.

From Dio, to who dare to question!