Defining Parasites

               One time when I was a kid, I noticed a strange toothy spoon that looked like a kitchen tool by the toilet next the toilet brush and plunger and inquired. As you may guess, it was for poking around in the worms after a parasite flush. We never had a spaghetti spoon in the kitchen, so I didn’t know its intended use, and to this day, those things freak me out. My mom was a health nut, still is, but more so in those days. The health fads would cycle through the house from time to time: colloidal silver, blue green algae, supplements and herbs galore. I hadn’t seen a parasite pamphlet in a long time and temporarily forgot they existed (hadn’t encountered a spaghetti spoon in a while) until, like the return of a bad dream, my mom suggested over the phone that I may have parasites. I was having pregnancy symptoms but negative test results, and supposedly the symptoms are similar. She delivered the box, the complete kit, but I never opened it, which is a good thing. I was pregnant, and am so glad I didn’t believe my silly mother. I’m assuming the remedy would have negative effects on my child.

             The notion of human life itself as a parasite fascinates me, because in the earliest stages, it can be ambiguous what it living in your body. Speaking of interruptions, I am suddenly reminded of Ray Bradbury’s short story “Tomorrow’s child” where the character Peter Horn fathers a small blue pyramid. Having a child is quite the interruption, but I don’t think we can classify a baby as a parasite because the host is the same species of organism, and by definition, parasites feed off organisms of different species. That is in the modern sense of the word, but looking as the Latin roots parasitus and Greek parasitos, meaning one who sits at another’s table, in ancient Greece, “a person who receives free meals in return for amusing or impudent conversation, flattering remarks, etc.” Children are certainly amusing, and free meals? The majority of American children could eat countless meals a day, having the undeniable rights to free food, and did they work for it? Not likely.

So what really is a parasite and where do you draw the line? I suppose that is the point of all this academic rhetoric we are reading for this class. You can easily look up the definition and find the obvious most common usage first, and second projecting those leachy characteristics onto people who act in that way, living off, sponging off others. The second definition is in the broader sense of the word, but also getting back to the Greek roots.

There is a definite symbiotic relationship between organisms and their offspring. It is part of the natural life cycle. For example, breastfeeding for humans causing the uterus to contract in order to expediting the healing process (“bounce back into shape”) and all the fat they consume from the milk is helpful for that as well, and not to mention that breast milk is the perfect, ideal nutrition source for the baby, something that infant formulas could never replicate… don’t even get me started. I would say that a parasite is something that interrupts that natural life cycle. Defining “natural,” that’s the hard part.

There’s been a bit of talk about technology as a parasite, which is why we are subjecting ourselves to social networking programs, etc. The internet is rewiring our brains, right? Dr. Gary Small is one of the leading researchers in the study of this phenomenon, comparing the “digital natives” from the “digital immigrants.” He found that the “digital natives” who were born into computer land have greater skills in multi-tasking, complex reasoning and decision making, but lack social skills and empathy. We all should see examples of this every day, if we are paying attention. Like have you ever had someone friend you on facebook, then you run in real life and they don’t say hello? Or someone looks really familiar to you and you can’t place them, until you might realize, “oh, I think I saw them on a friend of a friend’s facebook pictures." Or the (becoming) classic email breakup. Lame! The social downside of the digital era is becoming commonly understood, but what I would question is whether even more is lost that the way people interact in the “real world.”

So you can multi-task, can you focus? Did I stop every few minutes during writing this blog to check my plurk? Maybe, and man has my innocent post degenerated – into porn. I swear, with boys everything degenerates to shit or porn, which is shit.

Anyway, what I find most interesting about the increasing amount of time humans are interacting with machines is the element of choice and resistance. I’m sometimes surprised about the so-called hippies that friend me on facebook. They get peer pressured into it, and at some point the convenience outweighs the privacy or freedom and they begin to subscribe. In a world full of screens, you don’t want to be screened out. Who doesn’t want to know where the party’s at? Well, calling everyone on your phone list is pretty cumbersome, time consuming and expensive, in terms of cell phone minutes, so you send out a facebook invite, and call it good.

Pretty soon not having a facebook will be like not having a driver’s license or a SSI card. From a paranoid creepy perspective, it’s so convenient for the FBI or any other interested government or other agency. They don’t have to waste time profiling people; we’re profiling ourselves. Did this infection spread exponentially? Is that even a qualifying factor of parasites? In contemplating choice and whether or not to subscribe, and to what degree I’m reminded of the tapeworm diet. Some people want to avoid them, some people want to get rid of them, and some people want to consume them – anything to lazily lose weight.