Like a Moth to a Flame

...and more on curating your life

Moths and the Artificial

Recent research has disproved the previous belief that moths and other insects are attracted to light. They are instead trapped by it. According to a recent 2024 paper, Why Flying Insects Gather at Artificial Light, the authors explain that their method of using high-resolution motion capture to reconstruct the kinematics of insect flight patterns found they turn their back toward the light, which generates a flight perpendicular to the light (Fabian et al.). The authors go on to explain that by having their backs to natural sky light, it helps them to maintain control. However, under artificial lighting, this can “produce continuous steering around the light and trap an insect.” In considering the common phrase, “like a moth to flame,” we might realize the resemblance of humanity’s entrapment by the artificial.

By now, the evidence has made itself abundantly clear that living a life online wreaks havoc on a person’s nervous system. With that, I will save us the paragraph of statistics that would provide insight into the relations between higher social media usage and worsening rates of depression and anxiety. Instead, we can more closely evaluate our relationships to the artificial and natural worlds. Because reality consists of shared consciousnesses, we must understand that while realness is arbitrary, what is natural is evidential. Experiences will remain real regardless of whether they occur through natural or artificial means. The moth’s experience of flight is real, whether it’s trapped by artificial means or free to fly by natural light. Likewise, the human experience is real regardless of the means by which it is experienced. Artificial realness is an illusion that enables it to remain enticing and justifiable. But a moth must break free of natural light to gain control over its flight pattern. To maintain control over its direction. Over its life. So too must the human.

You Are the Curator

Our existence lives in memory. What becomes of us resides in the experiences we share with others. Life is built around what is shared, and when we curate our lives, we choose the life we are creating. To be ruled by the artificial is to outsource choice, leaving one without direction. Curation depends on one having conviction over what becomes of them, that they actively participate in the creation of memories through shared experiences. Which further depends upon one to choose their company with care. However, this all remains meaningless if one does not realize their potential in the natural world. To live an online existence is to outsource the natural life to an artificial life. What humanity must come to terms with is that its existence remains in the physical. A light can be turned off, sending a moth spiraling.

Documentation of our lives is an odd feature of modern times. What we fail to reckon with is that this documentation does not necessarily equate to memory. Rather, it has become a means to self-promotion, to establish our space in existence. With this pressure to exist online, we fail to accept the validation our bodies already provide for our existence as we occupy a physical space. Disembodiment is a symptom of a chronically online world. Knowing one's body remains key to curating one's life. However, when the basic needs are not met for all, and when individuals cannot recognize emotions within them, or haven't the time to cook, get adequate rest, or move their bodies, then disembodiment will be normalized. When disembodiment is normalized, the online world will seem like a dazzling escape from strip malls, unwalkable cities, and the loss of public spaces. Yet this is misdirection that prevents progress.

That we must seek occupation of artificial spaces is only the modern advancement of seeking land domination, just this time through online real estate. The erosion of space has been felt throughout history, and the modern way of making individuals feel smaller is to force their physical reality into online spaces and suffocate it with constant entrapments of advertisements. Life has become an idea sold to individuals, instead of something they embody. Humanity must disengage from artificial worlds that lead us astray and provide us with the idea of living, rather than just living. Our experiences are not meant to be sold to us, nor are we meant to live vicariously through the lives of others. We are all meant to live. Through living, we create the memories on which our existence is dependent. Our actions define us, and through them, we become the curators of our lives.

How we embody our lives varies between people because each person has their own individual style. It is, however, these varying ideas (such as being "granola") of how to live that are being sold to us. Nonetheless, we each have a preference for how we like to spend our time. Through our preferences, our taste for experiences are developed. One must have a palette that allows them to learn their likes and dislikes, and this doesn’t happen without trying new things. A pallet comes to fruition by experiencing life. If you don’t try new foods, you aren’t opening yourself up to new flavors. With a limited number of flavors, there is a limited amount of recipes to be made. This can be applied to our taste for experience. Without trying new things, one becomes limited in what they know and who they can become. To be the curator of your life, you must first be open to what life has to offer. Experience life so that life may experience you.

Once we have created a palette, we have flavors to choose from that can be used to create new recipes based on existing ones. When we allow the artificial to shape the direction, we surrender lived experience and outsource choice in exchange for ease. Yet this ease remains temporary. Choice remains a constant, and we must take accountability for the outcomes of the decisions we’ve made, as our memory of ourselves remains in these actions. To be the curator, one must take responsibility for one's life. It is through the responses one has to life that define their character. While the memory of who we are to others remains kept with the secret of death, our insight into it lies in the actions we take in the present.

In discussing how our existence is dependent on memory, it is imperative here to highlight the importance of self-reflection. We must realize that our present self is the light cast on past versions of ourselves that facilitates growth. That our own memory is the natural light that provides our past selves a direction. Nonetheless, the light of our present self is dimmed when we aren’t an active participant in our lives. One must become one's own light source by embodying one's life.

Humans and the Natural

Moments that challenge us present us with a choice to be a curator. We have the option to let what happens to us define us or to let our response demonstrate our character. With that, every moment is a chance to reinvent. Choice will always be present, and when one is present in their decisions, they will see how quickly life shapes around their actions. Because choice remains pervasive, so does possibility. In living an algorithmic lifestyle that denies one new flavors, they lose out on choices they didn’t know existed. Numbers might provide insight into the workings of the universe, but the human touch is the cosmic touch, and neither intuition nor serendipity can be accounted for in the natural world.

Humans are part of nature; we are the evolution of existence itself, and an expression of the universe. All of the gadgets we make remain as an extension of our existence, while the communion between us remains as an expression of our existence. We live in the primary plane, where life takes place. Where animals are born, flowers bloom, and the waves crash on the shore. It is not boring or mundane; it is incredibly entertaining and interesting to accept the fragility of life. When life takes place on secondary planes, we are taking on some form of false invincibility, as if the actions we take there have no repercussions. In doing so, we have failed to remember that there is a person behind each face, as we pass judgments on them as we do a profile. The artificial has disillusioned us as it does a moth.

Source

Fabian, Samuel T., et al. “Why Flying Insects Gather at Artificial Light.” Nature Communications, vol. 15, no. 1, 30 Jan. 2024, p. 689, www.nature.com/articles/s41467-024-44785-3, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-024-44785-3.