Thanks for joining me for another edition of the SerenityThroughSweat blog. We have spent quite a few of the recent posts talking about the importance of words. How they change and shape our lives. Sometimes these stories take amusing and unexpected turns.
I’m a sucker for a good dad joke. My favorite dad jokes have some form of double entendre. While the typical association of double entendre is something bawdy or an innuendo, it can also just be a double meaning with one being literal and one being ironic.
When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar.
Who doesn’t love a good dad joke? I found this article the other day that reminded me of this dad joke but turned out to be a whole lot more than I bargained for. When is a bee not a bee? When it’s a fish.
If you have the time, click on the article because it will make more sense. The headline I saw read “California court rules bees are now fish”. While a Floridian calling California crazy is a pot and kettle situation, this was still a little out there. However when I clicked on the headline it took me to the article linked above which provides the requisite details.
In order to use existing environmental protection laws to protect bees, a group of California judges ruled that bees are included under the California Endangered Species Act. The act does not protect the bees but rather protects “native species or subspecies of a bird, mammal, fish, amphibian, reptile, or plant.”
The law further defines “fish” as “a wild fish, mollusk, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals.” The judges noted that many of the protected classes under “fish” are not in fact fish, and that the terrestrial invertebrate bees would qualify under the protections extended to invertebrates.
It should be noted that a previous judge decided that “invertebrates” being under the subset of “fish” applied only to marine invertebrates and therefore bees were not protected.
There is a lot to unpack here. Bees being protected seems like a good thing to do. Maybe writing the correct language into the law is a better strategy than interpreting “fish” all willy nilly. California is still a little crazy (I know pot and kettle)
Just like our discussion on “sanitation” words are important. Definitions are important. The way that we intend our words to be taken can have a significant real world impact on our lives. (Or the lives of terrestrial invertebrates, as it were)
What is also important is a willingness to interpret those words and intentions based on a desired goal. Saving bees is certainly a noble and worthwhile pursuit. The classical question arises, do the ends justify the means?
If bees can be fish (albeit a little bit of an oversimplification) what other language and protections can be reinterpreted? If a new end is deemed to be a noble and worthwhile enough pursuit, the reinterpretation of something more close to home could easily be justified. Something that has more impact on our everyday lives than classification of terrestrial invertebrates.
Words mean what we intend them to mean, not what we decide later on that they mean in order to justify a new position. This is literally the foundation that our civilization is based on.
Without communication, without meaning, and without intention, there can be no civilization. And, there can certainly be no serenity.
Thanks for joining me, stay safe and stay sweaty my friends.