Florgnats

So, imagine you are an alien visiting Earth. Better yet, imagine you are yourself visiting another alien planet. You know nothing about the life on this planet except that they appear to be intelligent and have a complex social structure. For now, we'll call them the Florgnats.

The Florgnats are odd looking creatures, resembling a cross between a large octopus and a tropical bird. They each have brightly colored feathers, three large eyes and tentacle-like appendages which they use to move about through the sand and perform tasks under their perpetually dusky, purple sky. There is other life on this planet too, however it's not at all like the Florgnats. The others seem more environmental and driven by instinct rather than morality or goals, something like Earth animals. There's even one particular creature that reminds you of a giant millipede that some of the Florgnats like to keep as pets.


As you study them, you observe that not only are the Florgnats intelligent and social, but also seem to have a sense of their own mortality and even a duty to protect each other from harm. Eventually, you begin to pick up some of the words and grammar in their hissing-sounding language -- enough to understand simple phrases and ask basic questions. And one of the first things you learn is that not all Florgnat are created equal. Some Florgnats have six tentacles, while others have seven. Some of them have feathers that are decidedly a deep purple color, while others tend to hue toward a lighter blue. And rarely are each of their three eyes the same color. While this might not seem like much of a difference to you, to the Florgnats these differences are not only obvious, but part of their complex social structure.

You begin to notice that the bluish-feathered Florgnats are reacted to slightly different than the purple-feathered ones. The six-tentacled, purple Florgnats are almost always the ones who are in charge of building their simple, igloo-like houses, while the seven-tentacled purple Florgnats seem to be expected to wander off over the sand dunes and bring back a certain leafy shrub which will later be eaten. You note that these behaviors don't seem to be rules or laws, but social cues. You once observed a six-tentacled, purple Florgnat wandering off to gather Poodoocucucu (the Florgnats' favorite plant) instead of building a house. No one stopped it from doing this, but all the other Florgnats avoided the mismatched individual and seemed to harass and make fun of it.

But this is just the beginning of the fascinating things you witness! If a purple Florgnat insults any other Florgnat, they will usually fight! However, if a blue Florgnat does the same thing, it tends to be forgiven. Furthermore, the seven-tentacled blue Florgnats seem to keep more D'ak-bok around -- those millipede things -- while the six-tentacled blue Florgnat don't seem to be expected to do much at all, unless their eyes are colored red, white and yellow from left to right, in which case they will usually crawl on top of the highest Florgnat structure they can find and sit there in a trance-like state, sometimes for weeks, until another Florgnat hands them a balloon-like vehicle which they grab onto and float up into the cloudy atmosphere, repeating what sounds like "Nuu-Waaaaaaaa!", until they float out of sight, never to be seen again.

You conclude that the Florgnat certainly do have very complex social and cultural development. Like on Earth, no Florgnat is perfect. They sometimes make mistakes. Some of them break rules and are punished. Some of them get sick and are taken away to a particular place where other Florgnats try to make them healthy again.

But by far, one of the most puzzling things you observe is a particular inconsistency in Florgnat society. Once in a while, you see a Florgnat try to cause harm, not to another Florgnat, but to itself! When this happens, other Florgnat actually step in to prevent the self-injury and then take it to a particular place, not unlike others who become sick from a disease. Only this place appears to be for healing confusion.

If a Florgnat tries to stab one of its own eyes out or have one of its tentacles chewed off by the vicious Oooboos in the cavern of Ul, other Florgnat will save it and direct it to this special place of healing. Even if a six-tentacled purple Florgnat claims to be a seven-tentacled blue Florgnat, it will be sent for a visit to this place. Sometimes you see the confused Florgnat wander out of this place later appearing to have regained its bearings. Other times, you never see them come out again at all. All in all, it seems like a good thing the Florgnat are trying to do.

One day, you witness a Florgnat dangling one of its tentacles over the edge of B'am^rhiaf$dfa chasm where the snapping jaws of the Parana-like "Glubtu" will certainly chomp it right off. Looking around, you see that no other Florgnat are stopping this one from hurting itself! And having developed a fondness for these creatures, you decide to help. You move in to prevent the Florgnat from having its tentacle chewed off and, as you'd observed others do before, you begin to direct it to the healing place. However, this time, you're in for a surprise!

Before you know it, you are surrounded by Florgnat of all different kinds, and they're angry! You hear them, in their language, hissing words at you like, "Insensitive!" "Bigot!" "Evil!" One of them even calls your mother a S'pung-bat! In your best Florgnatese, you ask them why. Why are the other Florgnat who try to hurt themselves taken to a hospital or place of healing, but this one was left to injure itself?

Well, your Florgnatese is rather spotty. All you could manage to pick up was that while Florgnat who hurt themselves or have delusions that they are a different creature belong in a hospital, the best way to help a Florgnat who is trying to sever its seventh tentacle because it believes it is a six-tentacled blue Florgnat is to let them do it. Though, you may have gotten a few of the details wrong between all the Florgnat cursing and accusations of racism.

In short, the Florgnat pretty much shout you back to your rocket ship where you take off and fly back to Earth, never to return. And now that we're back on Earth, and with this story in mind, I'd like to ask a question... But it may not be the one you think.

Earth has living on it human beings who believe they are Napoleon, aliens from other planets, different races than they actually are and even animals. It also has people who have a brain that screams at them night and day to hack off their legs, arms, fingers or ears. What does society think of these people? What would our society think of a person who believed he was possessed by a fish and proceeded to try and cut his own legs off so his body would more closely resemble his "real" form? Obviously, this person would be sent away to be given proper treatment and, with any hope, cured from this harmful and delusional state.

Why then, when a man believes he is corporeally possessed by a woman and has a continual permeating drive to sever his own penis off, is this person denied proper care for this condition? Why is the "proper treatment" for this particular variation of delusion considered to be allowing the person to go ahead and injure themselves, where ANY other form of similar mental/emotional illness is tended to with the goal of actually helping the person to realize the reality of their identity and to prevent them from hurting themselves?

Why, in fact, is every other delusion-driven self-harmful mental state considered a "problem" where as the latter mentioned not only isn't considered a problem or delusional at all, but even supported and thought of as perfectly healthy?

There are a lot of questions here. But the one I truly wish to ask is this: Why am I, the person who asks this honest and obvious question, nearly always demonized and labeled a bigot for the simple act of asking it?

I think I'll take the next rocket ship to the Florgnats.