there's a large daddy long legs spider residing in my cooking range hood. has a web, a piss poor one, covering a relatively large area, but very poor, seemingly haphazard construction. no discernable pattern to it, and not enough, not by a long shot, silk lines. i was just watching a couple of flies, one a common modestly sized housefly, the other tiny in comparison, has the size and look of a mosquito, but not the distinctive whine/buzz of it's wings (btw, mosquito means small fly in espanol/spanish. check it out on wikipedia. according to their article, by transmitting disease, mosquitos could have effectively killed 1/2 of the people who have ever lived!)
i digress. back to my spider pal. as i was saying before getting sidetracked, i just watched a fly and something that looked but didn't sound like a biting mosquito fly about it's raggedy and quite useless web. the fly flew in and out with impunity, sometimes flying right smack into a strand of web, appearing to burst threw it or slide easily by it, i'm not sure which, as i noticed no broken strands when i looked closely. the strands are just too far apart to snare prey. the poor spider (which appears healthy with a large abdomen, alert and vigorous and purposeful in movement) obviously perceived the fly as it sometimes buzzed about just above the spider, which agitatedly moved as if to perhaps shake and push it's sad little web toward the fly in an attempt to ensnare it. it didn't work. but it was very evident that the fly's close proximity had alerted the spider and brought out it's predator. it wanted to catch that fly! kill it, and eat it, eventually if not immediately.
i removed some cobwebs from it's/my home range a couple/few weeks ago, but i didn't remove all, or nearly all of it. it had become so spread out i was sometimes brushing against it. i removed the offending parts and a bit more, but mindful of my roommate, i hoped to leave enough web for it not to go hungry. the stuff i removed appeared much like i left alone. no pattern, and not dense enough to be very effective.
i guess that's how that species of spider does webs. i think i have several, if not many, residing with me. their webs have no obvious pattern. perhaps i disturb them too often, but i doubt it, as i tend to be tolerant of these harmless (to me!) arachnids, more tolerant than most. as long as their silk is spun in out of the way corners and ceilings, i tend to leave them alone.
i even feel a little bad for that spider now. i don't see how it can catch anything in that sorry excuse of a web, but i guess they do, or they wouldn't survive.
anyway, my point is we live in a world of predation. i watched some of a nature tv program the other day. it was about a wildlife reserve in africa, replete with lions, gazelles, elephants, the whole 9 yards, or what remains of such rare bits and pieces of remaining habitat. much of it was swamp land, mostly inundated during the wet season, which no doubt explains the relative absence of humans, allowing these increasingly rare and threatened with extinction species to cling to wild living in today's human dominated world. civilization/agriculture has spread to virtually every inhabitable (by humans) part of earth. with modern technology and infrastructure, we've even taken over large swaths of desert.
back to the point. the narrator of this show described this natural environment of large prey and predatory animals as one of tension or stress or something similar. many scenes were shown of predators stalking, chasing, attacking, and killing prey, making the point.
i think relatively large complex animals are a lot more like us than most of us imagine them to be. they're generally more intelligent and sentient than we give them credit for. like us, they have emotions and vulnerability to pain and suffering. they want to live. they want freedom, need habitat.
it seems civilized humans, or sheeple as i like to refer to my kind, have culturally evolved to have little if any regard for nonhuman life. we've lost touch with the natural world. it has traditionally been something to 'conquer'. In order to turn wild land into economically productive real estate, a whole lot of ecological destruction must occur. forests cut down or burned. prairies put under the plow. swamps drained, deserts made to artificially bloom, all at the cost of millions of wild species.
i saw a news report of baby wild elephants being kidnapped, taken from their mothers to be sold. it showed footage of one such incident, with much apparent cruelty on the part of the humans to the elephant, i guess to subdue and control it. i find such footage sickening, makes me hate my own kind, but then i think of what a privileged life i have. i live off the fat of industrial civilization, and although i generally conscientiously try to live very frugally by my society/culture's standards, i know i'm still a consumer, still part of the problem. perhaps if i'd been raised in extreme poverty and/or deprivation in a place like africa, and i was ambitious, i too could be involved in such activity. as it is, i'm still a very small part of a much more cruel and destructive thing: modern industrial civilization.
i've referred before to civilization, likened it to ecological cancer. humanity progressively appropriating earth, destroying wilderness and wildlife without compunction. we've come to view ourselves as special, unique, precious, sacred, and other beings, other species as not any of those things. we've even created creation myths and gods who have anointed us with this exalted status. we have 'souls', they don't! we're intelligent, sentient beings, they're dumb, instinctive beasts.
but surreally, we're not that different, just another branch on the biological tree of life, related to all the rest, if my understanding is correct. all come from a common ancestor, a simple single cell. whatever mysterious miracles were contained in that humble beginning have been manifested in the amazing and surreal variety of species that have evolved over eons of time. we're not the only species with impressive abilities and characteristics. we're not the only species whose lives matter or have value. we seem to have forgotten this.
i think our primitive 'savage' ancestors hadn't forgotten it. but they hadn't yet adopted a way of life that requires such a worldview. they were foragers, not farmers. they belonged to the land, not vice versa.
i digress further. back on point: civilization is the greatest and by far the most deadly and destructive predator earth has ever known. it's brought about the deaths of more beings, the extinction of more species. sheeple generally don't kill their prey, they pay somebody else to do it, and then to process it into tidy clean little packages for our purchase and consumption. removed from the killing, the suffering of factory farmed animals, the suffering of fellow humans, impoverished and exploited, who fill jobs in the industry, for privileged sheeple like me and perhaps u, dear reader.
even if u're vegan, unless u're living primitively, unlike a vast majority of sheeple, u're part of the cancer that is civilization, as am i. sheeple are responsible for the recently recognized and currently ongoing 6th great mass extinction in earth's history. responsible for disappearing forests, vanishing wilderness, desecrating and trashing the planet, and now initiating a climate disruption which might easily bring about our own near term extinction.
what kind of compassionate loving god would create life that feeds off itself? a world of eat or be eaten. a world of suffering and pain, horror and ugliness, as well as pleasure, beauty, and awe? an awesome awful world. what kind of god???!!!
if there is no god, if this is all a bizarre cosmic accident, how can life have ultimate meaning or value? if there is no god, how is that better than having a weird inscrutable god who doesn't love us, that has no problem with pain, suffering, horror? either way, we're screwed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosquito
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pholcidae
No comments:
Post a Comment