Tuesday, 9 June 2026

World Gone Wrong

A good indication that this is a fallen world is the existence of insects that feed on human and animal blood. I would speculate that when God created the various forms of life it was a law that each group maintained itself by feeding on lower forms. Thus, plants absorb nutrients from the soil in which they grow, animals consume vegetable matter and humans can eat both meat and plants. I have left out carnivorous animals here but that is, as it were, a horizontal process. And it too may be the result of the Fall. Possibly there were no carnivores in the prelapsarian world or, if there were, they ate less evolved forms of animal life.

Be that as it may, bloodsucking insects are something else. We instinctively feel the wrongness of such a thing, and not just because they irritate us and spread disease. We recognise there is something unholy and corrupt about a lower form of life feeding on a higher form. One might even put certain bacteria and viruses into this category of lifeforms not created by God but instead being the product of the deforming of life by the dark forces and/or wrong human thought which has its effect in the external world, particularly in the deep past when physical matter was not as dense as it is now.

Obviously, the materialist will write this idea off as complete nonsense but it is a plausible theory from the spiritual perspective. God did not create mosquitoes and similar unpleasant creatures. They are either the creation of the created (a physical instantiation of spiritual misalignment) or diabolical perversions like the orcs Morgoth made from elves in Tolkien's world. For the sake of this post I looked up when bloodsucking insects are first thought too have evolved and the answer is about 150 million years ago which would seem to put paid to the idea. But life on this planet has been around for a lot longer than we currently estimate as the earlier forms existed when the Earth was less material than it is now so have left no trace. When God created the world he pronounced it good but it has gone bad and one of the signs of that is the existence of lower forms of life feeding on higher.

In Siberia there are myths that say the mosquito arose from the ashes or fragments of some giant creature or demon. Similar tales are found in North American myth, with the mosquito arising from the ashes of a man-eater, suggesting a common origin. It is accepted by many people that myths do point to genuine realities so perhaps here we have a folk memory of the fact that not all life forms were created by God/the gods but some are corruptions in a world gone wrong.

14 comments:

  1. i have thought of this very specifically and have reached a different, but possibly compatible, conclusion: i don't think the main issue is about lower forms feeding on higher forms (after all, isn't it the highest form of nourishment, for christians, to 'eat God' and 'drink His blood'). i think it has more to do with a matter of purpose and process, than position in a hierarchy.

    the parasite, unlike the predator, does not as it were 'commit' to the natural order of things, to the yin yang of which any kind of existence necessarily partakes. predators complete the cycle of life and death, in other words, whereas the aim of the parasite is to keep the prey in a halfway state.

    this is why, analogically, corporate or state parasitism on the poor is equally repugnant, if not more so, to the poor being parasites of the rich.
    .Laeth

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  2. an aside, but worth noting for the synchronicity: tonight i dreamt of Saint Paul telling me about a brain parasite that makes people understand portuguese.

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  3. I would agree with you about parasites which would be a similar sort of spiritual corruption of life forms but the mosquito is classified more as a predator than a parasite.

    Interesting point about Holy Communion. However, that is given rather than taken and it is the stealing that marks this out as diabolical.

    Saint Paul has clearly broadened his range of interests!

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  4. ha! old Paul has always been all over the place, so it kind of makes sense.

    biology taxonomy aside, i think the symbolism stands, as unlike most predators, and like most parasites, the mosquito does not intend to kill the host. i suppose ideally for the mosquito, he can keep coming back. and it sucks the blood (that is the soul, life; much like every parasite), whereas even most predators do not drink blood, although ofc they do end up consuming it, but not specifically. in other words, even if mosquitoes are not labelled as a parasite, their existence is parasitic. (even etymologically, parasite means 'feeding beside', rather than the more natural feeding on).

    i agree that the flesh and blood of God is given, instead of taken against God's will, makes all the difference.

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  5. Let's call it a predatory parasite. Or a parasitical predator!

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  6. William Wildblood9 June 2026 at 10:56

    That was from me from my phone.

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  7. This business of parasites is of great interest to theoretical biologists, because parasites seem to have everything on their side - smaller, simpler, reproduce faster etc. It then seems amazing that the larger and more complex can ever get going, or continue to exist.

    The same applies to human societies. It is so much easier to be a parasite that it is amazing civilization gets going and continues. This especially applies nowadays, when the parasites get specially favourable treatment!

    After about twenty years thinking about this - my conclusion was that when some situation is "biologically impossible" (or sociologically impossible) then that must mean there is some other factor at work, left out of the calculations.

    In both cases, I think this factor is divine creation. Divine creation - with a purposive personal creator God "must be" operating in these and similar situations - or else nothing would ever have happened, and if it did it happen (due to "random" whatever) would have collapsed very quickly.

    This is something I find encouraging! e.g. Western Civilization is so feckless, and purposively evil, and distracted, and inverted in values (etc) - that there is almost nothing going for us - and yet the fact that it is still going convinces me that there are powerful positive influences at work at all levels, which have been left out of the calculations.

    I'm not at all saying that we can/should rely on this to fix everything - or that all shall be well - but it is a tremendous encouragement to see God's hand at work everywhere and all the time.

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  8. Many people, me among them, were expecting societal collapse 50 years ago. The fact it didn't happen and we still manage to keep going, though with enormous amounts of debt, indicates you may be right. But I still wonder for how much longer as we are surely straining at the seams now.

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  9. Your other point about favourable treatment for parasites also makes me think that the time is coming when the host will no longer be able to support the parasites who have got too numerous and too greedy.

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  10. So funny, I often talk to my kids about symbiosis but just yesterday (before I had read this post) they asked about blood-suckers and whether that is symbiotic. I said no, I don’t think it ever is, and you can see all over the no animal willingly tolerates blood-eaters. We then similarly speculated about what consumption existed pre-fall. The idea of our corruption physically manifesting as blood-eaters is new to me though and compelling.

    Of all the bizarre dishes I’ve heard of, the one that repulses me the most is a Vietnamese dish where a live snake it boiled in its own blood.

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  11. Oh dear. That's enough to make the staunchest meat eater think twice.

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  12. Wishful thinking.

    The mosquite, loathsome as it is, is a reflection of the primary power on the planet, an energetic parasite.

    Earth is a containment field, a suppression field, a lead-lined room.

    The reason things don't collapse is the Harvester makes it so stasis endures to harvest frustration and friction. These are is main food sources.

    Just like in Colin Wilson's The Mind parasites, the planet is governed by a variant or relative or mirror of the god you quote, the same one who refer to it self as jealous and does mad genocide and enforces suppression of psychical man.

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  13. Well, that's a theory. I would agree that negative human emotions are used as an energy source by certain misaligned powers that are very active in the world, but I would not say they represent the primary power which remains the God of love and truth.

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  14. Christopher Cilician14 June 2026 at 22:02

    I earlier deleted this comment because I couldn't relocate the source - I am enstupifying myself with this easy encyclopediac access. There is a 2nd-ish century BC Roman comedic poet who states that parasites die along with the body.

    Anyway, beware the apex predator of insect kingdom, the ladybug! Typically I will collide with flying insects, and not wanting to crush them I inspect what is causing sensations upon my person. I will scoop insects into my hand and the flyers will typically climb to a height at the tip of my extended, skyward finger and then unlimber their wings for takeoff. One particular ladybug was famished for the most dangerous of game. Instead of traveling to the tip of my finger this one was chomping away at flesh until the irritation became much, and even red began to shone on the skin, so I kindly blew excessively and tossed the bug aside.

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