In the essay “Not Nothing” the essayist by Stephen Cave is contemplating on what he did to a fly. Just to avoid his irritation he killed a fly without giving a second thought. After killing the fly, he starts thinking about the fly’s life and compares its life to his own life.
About the writer Stephen Cave
Stephen Cave was born in Cornwall back. He earned Ph.D in
philosophy from Cambridge. He is the executive director and senior research
fellow of the Leverhulme Center for the future of Intelligence at the
University of Cambridge. He has also served as a British diplomat, and written
widely on philosophical and scientific subjects, including for the New York
Times, The Atlantic, Guardian and Others. He is the author of the book Immortality
(Penguin Random House), a New scientist book of the year, and co-editor of Al
Narratives: A history of Imaginative Thinking About Intelligent Machines (OUP).
His first book 'Immortality' was a new scientist best book of the year and has
been translated into many languages.
Short summary of the essay Not Nothing
“Not Nothing”, an ethical essay by Cave depicts the matter
of non-violence by taking an example of a tiny fly which carries its multimillion
years history of its species. The essayist presents the fact that we kill many
insects or organisms and destroy their eggs unconsciously which causes the end
of their generation in the future sometimes. Every single death of every single
sentient creature is equally valuable as human beings. The essayist leads us to
believe that for an organism there is always better or worse, relevant or
inelegant, there is always something to do which differentiates living being
form the rock that is indifferent to being pummeled to sand by the sea. In fact,
human death is also insignificant and a kind of catastrophe as the death of
fly. Caring and campaigning about animal welfare is noble and worthwhile for
the author.
Detailed Summary of Not Nothing
The essay starts with the writer saying a fly was flying
around his desk. The fly has been disturbing him. So, he tries to keep it away
from him, but every time he keeps it aside, it comes in front of him. When he
is about to move it aside, the essayist's hand unknowingly lands on the fly and
the fly is killed.
The essayist describes the fly though he isn’t a biologist,
he knows a little about the flies. He says that the fly has an antenna, legs,
and wings made out of cells. He further says those cells contain the
generations of history of the fly. He also mentions that the fly had a family.
There will be two different opinions from the readers
regarding the death of the fly. One side will think it's just a fly whereas the
other side will make a big deal out of it. They would say that the essayist has
done a very careless job. He says that the first opinion would be the most
agreeable but some would favor the second opinion too. He thinks that the death
of the fly was a mistake and the fly also didn’t have any significant value.
The essayist, after that, tells a story. He tells that he
took his children to a park where there were frogs eggs. The eggs were in a
pond. The eggs would hatch the next day and the pond was full of tadpoles. But
each day the tadpoles were dying and only a few grew to become frogs. The frogs
will also repeat the same process with their offspring. This cycle has been
taking place for 200 million. He said that the death of frogs and their
offspring is a very important part of the cycle of life. The writer, then,
talked about the evolution of humans. He said if other species had evolved the
way we did then the human being wouldn’t exist. We should bow down to all of
our ancestors whose death helped us grow.
He now imagines himself being the fly. He imagines a hand
coming towards him and squashing him. He says it's normal for those tadpoles to
die in the pond. It is also normal for flies to get killed. According to the
essayist, he had summoned death on his desk when he killed the fly. Only if he
had turned around, its death wouldn’t be significant. But he was drawn to its
death. He imagined himself in the place of that fly, he imagined dying that
way.
The writer, then, talks about vegans. Especially the Indian
and Jewish vegans. He says that vegans believe in not harming any creature.
They believe every life is important.
He talks about the research conducted in the social
physiology aspect. The research shows that everything we do is to help us
manage death. Christian believes the gods will save them, those who believe in
science believe they will be saved by science. Overall everyone wishes for
eternal life.
The essayist, then, talks about why people become vegan or
vegetarian. He tells people become vegetarian to keep death at bay. They hope
that death doesn’t come for any living thing in this world. He gives an example
of his friend who decides to become vegan. He says that his friend throws the
butter away. What did it do for the animals? Nothing, but at least death wasn’t
there in his toast.
Seeing death as a catastrophe, he says, it is a reasonable
response, and veganism and Jainism are the logical extensions. They attempt to
resolve the paradox by denying the other side, which says that the death of a
creature is at the same time insignificant, natural, and inevitable. This
behavior only leads us to fantasy. He
gives an example of a fantasy: ‘the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the
leopard shall lie down with the goat’. He imagines a world where every organism
will live peacefully without the fear of death. Once st. Paul wrote that death
is swallowed up by victory and everyone might live happily ever after.
The essayist says “Just because nature is a cork-popping
party of death does not mean that death is right or good” He shared a story
about a museum in his hometown. In the museum, a lion and a zebra were staring
at each other. They both were just a few meters apart but also the lion didn’t
go to kill it. This was because they were filled with cold metals, not with hot
blood.
His vegan friend once said, she doesn’t want animals to die
because of her. Before they die they of course live. How they lived is a
different topic. Campaigning for the animals is good and noble but just killing
them because you are scared is wrong.
The essayist says that even though it is natural for flies
to die, but the fly, which killed didn't deserve it. Nature also sets limits to
what's possible. Even though he wants to stop the cycle nature won't let it.
Nature won't tolerate life without death.
The essayist said there was equal and opposite opinion on
the seriousness of death in veganism. He said on the one side, they favored all
life and didn’t dare to end one. On another side, they stripped the values from
a life making their existence insignificant
Once, during a holiday, the essayist saw his father spraying
an ant killing spray on the ants. On seeing this, the essayist went to an ant
nest and sprayed on the nest. He was scolded by his father. The essayist was
relieved from this because his father valued the life of an ant.
The essayist said that in front of the gods our death and
the death of the flies are equal. His
father hadn't explained why hunting the ants was wrong, but if his father had
to explain he would explain it as they could not stop death. We need to believe
that spraying the ants on the door will keep death away from us.
The death of the fly
was insignificant but catastrophic as well. He believed this about the death of
every creature even him and us.