We live on a half acre, none of it regular lawn, so I do a lot of weeding. On portions of it I’ve achieved a rough balance between civilization and jungle; other parts are still subject to “survival of the fittest.” I enjoy being out there, even if only for half an hour a day. Better than trying to put my desk in order.
I’ve joked that I’m really engaged in Ethnic Cleansing — weed the clover out of the moss bank, restrain the creeping Jenny, pluck out the migratory colonies of baby’s tears, and utterly destroy all burr clover, sticky-weed, stinky-weed — stuff that I don’t even know what it’s called but I know I don’t like it. And keep pushing back the tall grass to let the asters have room.
But I’m a bit disturbed at how apt my jocular metaphor seems. It’s not a question of the ethics of animal slaughter or whether broccoli feels pain — that’s another debate. I’m simply musing on the psychology of purification. Obviously, there’s great difference, at least to this human, between weeding out weeds and weeding out human beings. But I’m thinking about the similarity.
Certainly, one motive force in genocide is hatred, another may be material advantage, another the adrenalin rush of killing. Those are forces that foment mob violence, but you can’t run a concentration camp or a gulag on adrenalin. That requires routine, the same rituals day after day. I can’t imagine that technicians sitting in front of video screens, tapping in missile strikes from drones are screaming, “Kill! Kill!” They’re just doing their job. It’s only when you can reduce the act of hacking or shooting or gassing people to the emotional neutrality of pulling up weeds that you can keep things running smoothly.
Nor do I curse the stinky-weed. But there’s a great, compelling urge to control the aesthetics, to clear up the disorder, to correct Nature’s grammatical mistakes. That satisfaction of completion, cleansing, purification, imposing your smooth-shaven jaw on the world at large — how satisfying, how potentially deadly.
I won’t be letting the weeds — the bio-organisms I designate as weeds —grow or prosper any time soon. But the metaphor echoes.
- Conrad, from DamnedFool.com