I saw a spider fight the other day.
While eating my usual oatmeal breakfast with chia seeds and linseed (good for the toilet), I noticed a relatively strong-looking, larger spider crawling into the kitchen window.
Oddly enough, it crawled right towards a spider that already lived in one of our kitchen corners
(Yes, me, and my partner, we have what we call a “spider hotel”. We are very pro life in that regard and do not kill things, even if they invade our private space. Cause WHO ARE WE TO determine if they or we have the right to live there)
I was surprised to see that. It was as if it knew that either:
- The corner is a sought after, lucrative living space, and it wanted to have that, but didn't know it was already occupied
- It knew that a competitor was there and wanted to kill it and rob it of its space
Either way, once it reached its destination, after slowly crawling towards the corner inhabiting spider, things got... very cosmic horror ...
The new spider, invading, crossed into the web of the other spider (maybe that's when it realized that it was occupied?) and the inhabitant of the corner, owner of said web, swiftly ran towards the invader.
What I saw then I can only describe as what can be seen in the big ol Godzilla like Monster movies where Claymation or clunky monster suite fights take place.
They hit each other with their legs, backed off, dashed forward... it was almost like a video game fight.
As a person of empathy, it felt terrible to see they caused each other harm. So I began to ask myself the Cosmic Horror elephant question in the room, besides eating my oatmeal:
What if "god"(or whatever) does this all the time?
If, there are beings above our comprehension (which I am sure of) to which we are the spiders, are they observing us doing each other harm too? And, simply decide not to intervene?
As the fight went on, to my surprise, the smaller, thinner, actually weaker looking spider, which I thought would be in danger, totally rubbed the floor with the stronger, thicker legged and more imposing spider.
The fear I felt for the weaker looking spider, suddenly, unexpectedly turned into pity and empathy for the stronger looking spider, which now, got swiftly cocooned by the weaker spider, with terrifyingly precise and calculated movements.
The stronger spider wanted to free itself. After several attempts to shake the smaller one off, it could not. It was already too immobile, and it thus had to give in to its fate at some point, unable to move, unable to do anything about its own brutal demise and consumption.
At that point I asked myself: Should I actually... like ... do something? HELP that spider that loses the battle? So it does not have to suffer?
My mind started to tumble. I have done similar things in the past where the empathy got unbearable because my old best pal cat came home with a still very alive mouse inside his mouth. Lets just say, removing it from its mouth was not the best idea .... (it ripped off and its intestines fell onto the floor. Since then I am extra careful and ask myself thrice before intervening anything in animal land.)
(I heard similar stories from a befriended couple. They "rescued" a big bug from sitting on a sidewalk to not get squashed by transporting it into a nearby forest area. When they returned to look how it was doing at its new location, they saw aggressive ants who where thankfully consuming it. Now instead of it being (potentially) getting squashed by passers, it was painfully eaten alive. Bitten to death and consumed by ants who didn’t question their free, non-hunt effort required meal which was brought to them by what was for them, unexplainable forces)
---> Back to the Spider Fight situation:
I did find this moment remarkable. Cause here I was. I COULD have helped the situation. I could have done something about a being in pain and suffering. I could have grabbed the victim, the "looser" of the fight, and crush it, ending its pain in an instant (which would have cost me a lot of overcoming).
But then, weirdly, I would have done the other spider, the winner, harm, and wrong: It made intense efforts to win the fight, it made a fight for its own survival. Cause what would have presumably happened if it would have not won, is that the other spider, the stronger one, would instead have killed it.
This is a dilemma. And one I love to think about, even if it makes me feel like my head is not capable of putting it together.
The question is if we have other beings we can not possibly comprehend or perceive observing us from all around us without us ever being able to notice (just like a spider will never know what New York is, or what a human actually really is. To them its just like, earthquake).
Sure, we can not see giants on the horizon who potentially step on us. I see that. So you might wonder why this thought is even a thing, cause there is basically no one above us in the "food chain". Well maybe there isn't in a traditional sense. But maybe there is. And we just not know what it is, because our brains basically "stop there".
(Spiders have very underdeveloped eyes and basically perceive their reality predominantly via vibrations. A completely different world. Dogs hear things we do not hear, snakes see infrared... what makes us believe that our mixed cocktail and weighting of senses allows us to see through anything with certainty?)
Ever watched Interstellar? Or any other movie about 4 dimensional beings? One thing is constant in what even modern physics tells us through quantum mechanics and stuff:
If there are beings of higher dimension, they can possible move through time the same way we move through space.
Just because we can not see or perceive something, does not mean it is not there.
I bet 100bu(g)cks on that the spiders that fought a battle for their lives in the corner of my kitchen, whilst I was eating my oat meal and thinking about game development stuff, did not, and will not ever know what I am. What I think, What I do. What MY very fights in life are. Yet, I can see theirs, and even decide, at a finger snap, about their fate.
And if I would be a non spider person, or anything less empathic, I would probably have mass killed all the spiders in our kitchen long ago.
Yet, I decide not to do so. How weird.
The log ends here. Continues elsewhere.
Thanks for letting me be part of your reality
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