What is it about the spider which captures the imagination unlike any other creature, insect, arachnid or otherwise?
Why is it that the creature phobia known by its technical term by most of western civilisation is not that of rats, nor sharks, nor scorpions, but the fear of fly-killing, web-weaving spiders? One could make suppositions about lethality, that spiders are both commonplace and dangerous, but if that were actually the case we'd have people scared for their life in the presence of cars, refrigerators, swimming pools and domesticated dogs.
No, what I believe is the case is that the spider appeals to our basest instincts; that its form, a bulbous mass on eight spindly legs appeals even to children as inhuman and aesthetically displeasing; and once its supposed capacities for harm, exaggerated as with most fears by a combination of media illustration and cultural demonisation, become known to us it is ingrained in our minds that this is something to be afraid of.
Spiders, then, can teach us a valuable lesson about societal conditioning. What would otherwise be disregarded in the manner of flies, and bees, and even the more potentially dangerous like the centipede and the scorpion, can be turned into an image of purest evil not through its actual intentions but what society makes us believe are its intentions.
Now, think for a moment. Is all that I'm talking about spiders? For some people; races, subcultures, identities are spiders. Some lifestyles, movements, ideals, are spiders.
Ask yourself; are you a spider? Or the human hand, clad in tissue paper or broadsheet, killing the spider for its own comfort rather than any supposition of safety?
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This piece stems from one of the great thinking places, the toilet, after watching a Daddy Long Legs slowly clamber its way up a wall and out of a window of its own accord.
I think I'm still recovering from the big piece I wrote a few days ago, hence the short, quirky pieces. The next couple of days will be busy, but hopefully by Monday I'll be right to write something decently long.
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