Q: How can I fear insects less? How did you learn to fear them less?
A: Exposure, knowledge, and understanding that insects are tiny animals with a light on inside. You can see that they are thinking and considering their options if you watch them. They do things for a reason (to live, to avoid pain, to eat, etc.) and many have no interest in antagonizing you. It also makes sense for you to recoil if a separate, unknown being suddenly touches or motions toward you. Even after paying attention to and studying insects for a couple years, I still do not want to touch them or have them touch me.
It helps to have a basic idea of how to identify what order an insect belongs to and what species can be found in your area (filter for insects when searching your geographical area on iNaturalist). That way, you can have a general idea/good guess for what they eat, what they need to live, what defense mechanisms they may have, etc.
Some insects are parasitic, carnivorous, disease-carrying, or have defense mechanisms that can genuinely hurt us. It's good to know, then, what kinds of insects are genuinely *harmless*. Knowing realistic risks that an insect poses can reign in your initial fear/shock reaction.
Q: What do you do with insects that encroach on your space?
A: in principle, do the same as you would with any other animal. Use the least amount of force to prevent them from accessing you. However consider what's going on for the insect. Understand what kind of insect they are and the reasons they are acting. Are they just investigating you? Are they defending against a perceived threat? Are you encroaching on *their* space?
The situation is different if someone is deliberately trying to take something from you (a bloodmeal, warm flesh in which to lay an egg). Then you may consider whether you can truly co-exist. You are not obligated to support someone else's life at the cost of your health and life. You also may have the ability to leave a situation or alter your environment before resorting to killing individuals or categorical extermination.
My wish is that you will honor the insect's life and self-determination such that killing is an absolute last resort, when it really is either you or them.
A: Firstly, the fact that you cannot know whether insects suffer is a good enough reason to abstain from causing suffering unless it really is a matter of your survival versus theirs.
Secondly, I would like you to notice how reflexively, thoughtlessly, and automatically you rejected the notion that insects are worthy of any consideration that could justify altering your behaviour to accommodate them. I would like you to notice the strength of revulsion you feel in your body when I suggest that insects have interiority and decision-making capacity and inherent value.
I've never lived in an insect body so my claim is subject to bias as much as yours, but you should notice that rigid denial of insect emotions/pain/sentience is not agnosticism either. You have no way of knowing with certainty, just as I do not. I only make my guess based on observation. Looking closely and watching over time.
Firmly insisting that insects are nothing but biological automatons seems more like a self-soothing gesture to benefit oneself. This is not a rigorously tested hypothesis. It is devoid of genuine curiosity or desire to understand the world.
Q: But if insects are tiny animals who think and feel, then the way we grind and trample them for fun/profit/convenience/overblown fear responses is unconscionable!
A: Pretty much yes. Private property, nationstates, and business as usual all depend on ideological refusal to cherish insects and basically any "lesser" animal that the economy depends upon. If humans do not act upon these animals as expendables and renewable resource, there are no grocery stores or gas stations.
As humans we have immense power over insects particularly because they are so small and reviled. We can justify doing nearly anything to them and they cannot stop us.
How are you exercising power over those who have less than you? Do you double down on deserving that power, because of who you are? Do you insist that anyone in a position of weakness deserves what's coming to them or their adverse outcomes are of no consequence, because of who they are? It says a lot about you if you do. It says a lot about you if you don't.
