A Blog to the Lesser Good

This is the chemical butane-1,4-diamine, a rather simple molecule made up of just four carbon atoms in a row, a nitrogen at either end, and 12 hydrogens along the whole. You'll all probably have experienced this chemical at some point in your lives and butane-1,4-diamine's common name - putrescine - might give you a clue as to where.

Putrescine is produced through the breakdown of proteins, putrefication, and is one of the main chemicals that causes "rotting-meat smell". When we smell the decay of meat, or a rotting corpse, it is molecules of putrescine that are hitting our notstrils. It is this chemical which causes a visceral reaction of disgust, in extreme cases a gag reflex or even vomitting, and can do so whether we can see the source or not.

And yet to a carrion fly, this same chemical causes an opposite reaction. The fly is positively attracted by putrescine (an instinctive attraction some tropical flowers use to their advantage) so that it may lay its eggs and continue its life cycle.

Our reaction to this chemical is very much at a biological level, rather than a learned response, which is just as well because putrescine is toxic at high levels; however, it is of course not the chemical itself that we have to be most wary of, but the decaying flesh that produces it.

Nothing that I, or a fly, does can change what putrescine is. It always contains four carbons, two nitrogens, and 12 hydrogens per molecule. A man cannot raise putrescine's melting point above 27 °C, and nor can a fly add to putrescine's molar mass. If anything, it is putrescine that defines us - it is this chemical which can divide living beings into humans or flies, and the reactions we flies and men have are just proof of this. Because if a man did find putrescine attractive, then he would most probably die of some disease unless he could control his urge; and if a carrion fly found putrescine replusive, then it would starve with its eggs still inside it.

This is important to remember. We discern and define the world - our surroundings - but so too does the world define us. Putrescine can drive away a group of men like a swarm of flies, and attract flies like a rabble of hungry men. And to be found on the wrong side of this chemical's divisive act leads to starvation or poisoning. Is it true for other things too? Are we sometimes attracted - by sight, sound, smell or taste - to something which is ultimately poisonous? Can we be turned away from something because it is repulsive, only to be starved by its absence? For either to be happen would mean we are diseased in some way, so that we react against natural instincts that should be salvific. But that's possible, isn't it?