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You'll Never Shine if You Don't Glow

2020-06-23 · letter vlog · John · 4:00 · watch on YouTube

Topic: Philosophy & meaning (also: Science & nature) · mode: Personal essay · tags: community lore

Prompted by Hank's shooting-star video, John traces his changing relationship with fireflies: a childhood emblem of the world's strangeness and beauty, then, from his teens, a beauty he scorned as cheesy for fear of unironized emotion, and now an encouraging example of making light where there otherwise wouldn't be any.

What is said

The parts of the video and what is said in each (★ — how much it matters to the video).

00:00:00 — Reply to Hank's shooting-star video; firefly season in Indiana; over 2,000 species of luminescent beetles

  • ★ John liked Hank's shooting-star video; streaks of light at night reminded him it is firefly season in Indiana, so he will tell of his complicated relationship with fireflies. — 00:00:00 · Hank Green, Indiana
  • ★★ John says there are over 2,000 species of fireflies worldwide, soft-bodied luminescent beetles glowing amber, green or yellow. — 00:00:00

00:00:29 — Firefly flash signals, synchrony and predatory mimicry; Indiana's native state insect versus Ohio's invasive ladybug

  • ★★ Fireflies tell each other apart by the pattern and color of their flashes, and some species glow in sync, so whole trees look like blinking Christmas trees. — 00:00:29
  • ★★ Some fireflies are predators: members of Photuris mimic other fireflies' light patterns to attract and eat them. — 00:00:29
  • ★ There are dozens of firefly species in Indianapolis. — 00:00:29 · Indianapolis
  • ★★ Say's firefly became Indiana's state insect in 2018, and the Department of Natural Resources stressed that it is a true Indiana native, unlike many states' state insects. — 00:00:58 · Indiana
  • ★★ Ohio's state insect is the seven-spotted ladybug, an invasive species introduced to the United States in 1973. — 00:00:58 · United States
  • ★ John reads the DNR's remark as a dis presumably aimed at neighboring Ohio and its dubious choice of state symbols. (playful, hedged) — 00:00:58

00:01:27 — Fireflies as cheesy: the high-school 'what is wrong with you' moment, fear of unironized emotion, and how fireflies' meaning changed

  • ★★ Fireflies are absurdly wonderful, John says, but so obviously and ostentatiously beautiful that they can be a little cheesy. — 00:01:27
  • ★★ Once in high school a friend called the fireflies lovely; John replied that they were a little lame, and she asked what was wrong with him. — 00:01:27
  • ★★★ What was wrong, John says, was fear of unironized emotion: that giving in to fireflies' beauty would make him seem childish, naive, or worst, innocent and vulnerable. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ John says he was right to worry: by then he knew it is not only carnivorous fireflies that lure in the innocent and vulnerable only to hurt them. — 00:01:56
  • ★★ As a kid, fireflies were John's example of the world's strangeness and beauty and the astonishment that life exists at all, in such bizarre abundance. — 00:02:26
  • ★★ In his teens and twenties fireflies were a beauty John had to guard against feeling too directly, lest he drown in misguided nostalgia or the emotion he kept dammed up. — 00:02:26

00:02:55 — Fireflies make their own light; Hank's dark starless planets that might make their own; celebrate light and make it

  • ★★★ What gets John now is that fireflies make their own light: their energy comes from the sun, but they make light where otherwise there wouldn't be any. — 00:02:55
  • ★★ John recalls Hank telling him recently that some planets orbit no star, hurtling between solar systems, where everything is dark all the time. — 00:02:55 · Hank Green
  • ★★ Hank Green (quoted): As John recounts, Hank said geological temperature differentials might perhaps fuel life on such planets, but there would be no light, unless they make it themselves. (hedged) — 00:03:24
  • ★★★ John found that possibility, however distant, encouraging, and toasts celebrating light where we find it and making light where we don't. — 00:03:24

In the description and comments

  • ★ The description credits the Indiana lightning-bug footage to YouTube user Cee Nova, shared, like this video, under a Creative Commons license. — video description · Indiana
  • ★ Replying to an Ohioan feeling attacked, John says he lived many wonderful years in Ohio and it is a great place, but Indiana has the better state insect. (playful) — creator comment · Indiana
  • ★★ To a commenter missing childhood innocence, John says he hopes and thinks they will get it back by being patient and working toward joy and broad curiosity, though it may take decades. — creator comment
  • ★ Told the All Star titles give a commenter a feeling, John says he has no idea what they are referring to. (playful) — creator comment

Threads in this video

Mentioned

Central: firefly (concept)

Also: Organizations: Indiana Department of Natural Resources

Concepts: bioluminescence · Christmas tree · Coccinella septempunctata · extraterrestrial life · invasive species · irony · meteor · mimicry · nostalgia · Photuris · rogue planet · Say's firefly · wonder (emotion)

Places: Indiana · Indianapolis · Ohio · Sun (star) · United States

Only in the description or credits: All Star · Creative Commons

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