Motion: This House, as the cockroach, would keep its human memories and thinking skills rather than lose them.

info: You have died. You were human and have been reborn as a cockroach.
You now have a cockroach’s body and abilities, and an average lifespan of 1 year. You can choose to keep your human memories and thinking skills, or lose them completely.

Recording: This House, as the cockroach, would keep its human memories and thinking skills rather than lose them.

It’s a very interesting motion. The first time when I read this motion I thought who would want to be a cockroach as its so disgusting. I listed three main arguments that I would think about:

1. Loneliness
   You will suffer loneliness cuz no one can understand you, no cockroaches can understand you.
2. Disgust
   Many people don’t like cockroaches. Even tho some may like them, but I’m pretty sure few of them would want to turn into one themselves.
3. Death
   They are easily killed by humans.

From my perspective a person dies once he lose his sanity and memories. Once an individual lose his/her memory and sanity they also forget their identity too. It could be a new mind living in an old body. So I believed that if I choose to loose my memory and thinking skills, it’s no difference than death.

And based on the three reasons mentioned above I believed that most people would chose to loose memory and thinking skills, which is to die, living as a normal cockroach.

So I thought I should explain why it is still better for me as a cockroach to keep my human memories and thinking skills.

Later I learnt from the adjudicator that it is an individual actor motion, which is about proving why it is in the favor/incentive of the individual to do x. So I should’ve been discussing about why me, as a cockroach, would want to preserve my human memories and thinking skills.

https://www.worlddebating.org/wudc-manual

I thought if I still want to stick around even in the form of a cockroach that no one recognizes, there must be something in this world that I can’t let go, for example my family, my friends, and people that I love.

Eventually I came up with these two arguments against the three ones I thought of.

1. It’s nice to stay in this world, even as a cockroach.
   You don’t have to experience the evil in human, imagine if you are betrayed by your best friend, how fun is that, right? Luckily, now as a cockroach you’ll never have to experience this, even though you will be eaten by other of your kind after you die lol.
2. Know what it is like after you die.
   1. Know how much we are loved.
      Living as a cockroach with your memory and thinking skills is like having an extra year of life as an observer to the world.
      you can see what your family will do and what your friends are like at your funeral.
      These are nice memories to have and nice moments to see as part of your experience.
   2. Imagine that in the final war, if Iron Man was able to turn a cockroach and attend his own funeral, seeing people gathering in memory of him, how touched and fulfilled would he be.

My partner, the Deputy Prime Minister, extended two arguments:

1. You can live longer in the human society.
   You are familiar with how humans cope with cockroaches, you can handle it better than other cockroaches and avoid falling into dangerous situations.
2. You can live with clarity despite the pain, but at least better than wasting your extra one year.

Let me stop by OG, I’d only like to do some sharing here of my most original thoughts, not to repeat the whole debate. Lemme know what you think of this motion in the comments!