Bug Illusions

Have you ever watched a wasp or a fly try to get through a win­dow pane? It looks clear, so they should be able to fly right through it. They can­not, so they try again and again. They notice they can walk on it, but they are prob­a­bly not even sure of that. It is tedious. They get frus­trated. They try harder and harder. Even­tu­ally, they give up, or they drop to the lower crack in the screen or door from whence they arrived and thus escape.

I won­der how many sim­i­lar illu­sions I have expe­ri­enced (or am going through now). The trick to any illu­sion is that you really do not know you are in it — except by frus­tra­tion and pain. If an insect can learn patience, glass is the way to go. Some bugs will try for days before they finally find the “hid­den” open­ing that you and I clearly see. It is sort of like hav­ing an angelic view of humans. How patient they must be to watch us keep try­ing things that do not work — espe­cially his­tor­i­cally pop­u­lar illu­sions. Here are a few: a war to end all wars, mak­ing more peo­ple poor in the name of help­ing the poor, think­ing that being in any form of media makes one an expert on any­thing, that some­one else is going to solve our prob­lems, or that we are here on this planet alone as merely some sort of evolved species.

The bug soci­ol­o­gist in me won­ders if more male or female bugs get caught in the win­dow pane illu­sion. My bet is that more males get caught and for the longest peri­ods of time. Argu­ing from my expe­ri­ences as a higher life form, I am con­vinced it is males. They just will not read a map or try alter­na­tives until totally exhausted. Female bugs are prob­a­bly more apt to shop around for a bet­ter way through the glass and con­sider it an adventure.

Illu­sions are exhaust­ing, painful, and with­out pos­i­tive reward. Each trip up the glass becomes a trance that invites another try. Ori­en­tal reli­gions warn of life’s illu­sions. There are many. Some are within and some with­out. Both are pretty mis­er­able. Sal­va­tion is in seek­ing alter­na­tives. One more trip up the glass will not make a bit of dif­fer­ence. You have noth­ing to lose. Try the keyhole.