Spider Sense

 

Friend Xerxes has recently returned from a group tour of Southeast Asia. As one of the exotic experiences the tour company laid on for their charges, they got to see a woman hunt tarantulas, defang them, and let them crawl over their arms. Then she fried the spiders, and the tourists could opt to sample them.

Xerxes was upset that the tarantulas were killed. Aren’t we humans arrogant, he asks, to assume that only we are sentient? 

I wonder if he has ever been to a slaughterhouse.

“Sentient” is not the word he should have used here. Sentient means responsive to the physical senses. Everyone believes that spiders are sentient. 

So why are we any better than spiders? Are we indeed simply being arrogant, or “speciesist”?

Dating back at least to Aristotle, animal and human souls have indeed always been understood in to be fundamentally different. There are different words for them in Greek. Humans have psyche. Animals have anima.

What’s the difference? 

A common answer is “reason,” or “free will,” but that may not be right. Animals can figure out simple puzzles, and this has always been known. See Aesop’s fable of the crow and the pitcher. Dogs can be wilful, and understand when they have been a “bad dog.” 

On the other hand, I read somewhere that when the behaviourists and the linguists teach higher apes to talk using sign language, the one thing they cannot do is answer questions in the conditional. They cannot understand hypotheticals.

Animals, even those most closely related to us, cannot retain narratives in the mind of what is not present. This suggests the faculty that makes us human is the imagination. And this seems to have been understood throughout the ages:

“Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me! 
The present only toucheth thee: 
But Och! I backward cast my e’e, 
On prospects drear! 
An’ forward tho’ I canna see, 
I guess an’ fear!” – Burns, “To a Mouse”

Now consider the account of the creation of man in Genesis:

Genesis 1:

“So God created mankind in his own image,
    in the image of God he created them;
    male and female he created them.”

Genesis 2: 

“Then the Lord God formed a man from the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man became a living being.”

God created man “in his own image”; and what does that mean? Not to look like God, for God is a spirit. What is a spiritual image? Literally, or rather, etymologically, “imagination.” God is the great architect of all, the creator: creation is his image. Creation is in his image.

He then created man as a potter forms a pot. That too reveals his image: the human potter, the artist, acts in the image of God. In creation, God breathes his spirit into us—literally, or etymologically, he “inspires” us. 

What is the point of man’s creation? To tend the garden. As with pottery, this is a matter of taking the material God has created for us, and forming it by art. The intended end result, according to the Book of Revelation, is a celestial city, the New Jerusalem, one great work of art, a collaboration between God and man.

“One of the seven angels who had the seven bowls full of the seven last plagues came and said to me, “Come, I will show you the bride, the wife of the Lamb.” 10 And he carried me away in the Spirit to a mountain great and high, and showed me the Holy City, Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God. 11 It shone with the glory of God, and its brilliance was like that of a very precious jewel, like a jasper, clear as crystal. 12 It had a great, high wall with twelve gates, and with twelve angels at the gates. On the gates were written the names of the twelve tribes of Israel. 13 There were three gates on the east, three on the north, three on the south and three on the west. 14 The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them were the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb.

“15 The angel who talked with me had a measuring rod of gold to measure the city, its gates and its walls. 16 The city was laid out like a square, as long as it was wide. He measured the city with the rod and found it to be 12,000 stadia in length, and as wide and high as it is long. 17 The angel measured the wall using human measurement, and it was 144 cubits thick. 18 The wall was made of jasper, and the city of pure gold, as pure as glass. 19 The foundations of the city walls were decorated with every kind of precious stone. The first foundation was jasper, the second sapphire, the third agate, the fourth emerald, 20 the fifth onyx, the sixth ruby, the seventh chrysolite, the eighth beryl, the ninth topaz, the tenth turquoise, the eleventh jacinth, and the twelfth amethyst. 21 The twelve gates were twelve pearls, each gate made of a single pearl. The great street of the city was of gold, as pure as transparent glass.”

For this reason, a human life, and a human soul, is of infinitely greater value than an animal life.

We commonly understand a further distinction between plants and animals. Animals are sentient; plants are not. Plants are not conscious. They do not have the five senses. An animal life is therefore of greater value, their death of greater meaning, than a plant life. So vegetarianism.

There is another traditional distinction. There is the Christian pescetarian tradition: during the Lenten and Friday fasts, you are to eat no meat, but are allowed fish and seafood. Buddhist monastic “vegetarianism” follows similar rules: one is allowed seafood. Why is this where the line is drawn, and not at vegetarianism?

Because cold-blooded creatures lack emotions. They do not feel anger or love or fear. 

How do we know this?

Because they do not nurse their young.  Any creature that does not care for its young apparently has no emotional life. This is no doubt why the Devil himself is represented as reptilian, as a snake or dragon. They operate on sheer self-interest, lacking love or empathy.

Of course, they are really amoral, not immoral; they have no moral sense. Spiders presumably operate like robots, following their programming, their instinct. But there is therefore no moral issue in killing them, any more than in turning off a light.

This is why cannibalism is not cool, but it is cool to swat a mosquito.