The Reptile-Bug Matrix

[ver$hy ver$h]

@vershy versh do we have any threads on the insectoid and reptilian?

It feels like one of the defining metaphors for modern man. The sensory antennae. The Icke conspiracy. Connections between coldbloodedness and sociopathy.

The Bugman.

They're great, prickly words too. They just look and sound good. Insect, Reptile. Gaspar Noe says Pasolini's Salo is the most reptilian depiction of humankind he's ever seen on film. There's a Ballard story called 'The Reptile Enclosure' which I keep meaning to read, but I almost feel reading it might ruin the title for me. There's something so evocative about it.

The image of the anthill crops up a lot in the 19th century eg in dostoyevsky underground man

 

[luka]

Reptoid

"Reptilian" redirects here. For other races identified as such please go to Reptilian (Godzilla) and Reptilian (Lost Tapes). "Draconian" redirects here. For other races identified as such please go to Draconian (Doctor Who) and Draconian (Marvel). "Saurian" redirects here. For other races...

aliens.fandom.com

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

There's no warm pole on a spectrum from reptile to insect, but the reptile's the colder of the two. A detached, surgical presence in contrast to the nervous energy of the insect. Reptilian ice and Insect electricity.

 

[luka]

The insect has the group mind thing

 

[sus]

The Metamorphosis - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[luka]

No individuality no self Interest

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

Both capable of regenerating lost limbs.

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

The insect has the group mind thing

No individuality no self Interest

Infestation.

 

[sus]

In [BAP's] telling, today all the space is, and has been for some time, “owned” by a degraded elite, reducing the majority of men to “bugmen” and thwarting the innate will of the higher specimens. “Bugman” at first glance appears to be BAP’s term for Nietzsche’s Last Man, the analysis of which BAP endorses in toto, even instructing any reader who needs a refresher to put down BAM and go read the prologue to Thus Spoke Zarathustra.

Roughly speaking, BAP seems to divide the human race into three types: natural bugmen, who will always be the majority but who can be led in positive directions by the right kind of man; naturally superior specimens who “desire one thing above all, ever-flowing eternal fame among mortals” (BAP quoting Heraclitus); and a sort of middle category who in good times serve the natural aristocracy but in bad times become regime apparatchiks and enforcers of the “Leviathan” (BAP borrowing from Thomas Hobbes). It gradually becomes clear, then, that BAP’s bugman is not strictly analogous to the Last Man: the latter is much worse but also not always present. He is, however, ascendant at the moment and one aim of his rule is to degrade and multiply the natural bugmen.

 

[sus]

nervous energy of the insect

Yes they're very twitchy

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

The insect has the group mind thing

No individuality no self Interest

You get this in the Starship Troopers film and it quickly becomes clear the structure of mankind depicted in the film encourages more or less the same thing.

 

[sus]

I was just gonna mention Starship Troopers

 

[sus]

Hobbes anticipates bugmen (h/t to @snav)

 

[Mr. Tea]

I was just gonna mention Starship Troopers

The hive mind in action!

 

[sus]

 

[luka]

Way more ancient than the mammals

 

[Mr. Tea]

Way more ancient than the mammals

Triune brain - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

Way more ancient than the mammals

Sharks are another one. They have that same icy, machine-like thing about them that reptiles do and that even something like a bear or lion from the mammal side doesn't.

 

[ver$hy ver$h]

Triune brain - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

There's a phrase of Baudrillard's I love and which sounds ripped straight from Burroughs where he talks about the "blue gelatine of the reptilian brain."

 

[luka]

Black eyes without interiority or compassion