The Spider's Gambit
On a ship, on a hostile night where comfort kept its head below deck, a lone mother, a traveling man, and two sailors rested in their common cabin, having just finished their evening ration of salted fish, crackers, and a half lemon. The two sailors carried an easy conversation with the mother at a small, square, wooden table under the weak light of a whale oil lamp. A half-full bottle of rum and a tin of tobacco sat in middle of the table. They spoke of the courtesies—home and family—and had just broached topics that turn acquaintances to friends when a sudden exclamation snatched their attention.
“God! Nasty, ugly, disgusting thing!” shouted the traveling man, as he scrambled to get off and away from his upper bunk, nearly falling from it in the attempt. Upon recovering his balance, he stared wide-eyed at the source of his fright. The sailors followed his gaze, saw the harmless yet not insignificantly small, black spider on the wall next the man's bunk, and let out hearty, scoffing laughs. "What's the matter, dear?" the young sailor jeered, "don't want a bunk mate?"
The traveling man made no retort, but frustration creased his face and pursed his lips. The young sailor had teased him since they'd left port, he thought to himself. First, his colorful clothes, then, his insistence on proper hygiene, and now his natural aversion to a vile bug. The young sailor had insisted he lighten up and "adopt the spirit of the sea", at his first jeer. Whatever that had meant. The traveling man could feel his resentment mounting, raising the pressure of his blood and drawing a flush to his face. Suddenly, he boiled over: the traveling man raised his foot, took his velvet loafer in his right hand, and brought the slightly elevated heel down with cruelty on the spider on the wall.
Surprise silenced the room. Breathing through his nose sharply with an audible hiss, the traveling man underhanded his shoe to the corner; it tumbled a few times before coming to rest on its side, sole facing the room, the spider's remnants in view to all. The silence persisted. After three more hissing breaths, the traveling man climbed the ladder up to his bunk and regained his perch.
Then, the older sailor broke the silence. In a voice just stern and heavy enough to make listeners question whether it came from friend or foe, with his eyes still fixed on the shoe in the corner, he addressed the traveling man:
“It seems you're unaware, traveling man, of what we sailors call the Spider's Gambit.”
The traveling man looked toward the old sailor and shrugged his shoulders and shook his head dismissively, assuming correctly that a lecture loomed on his horizon, and saying without words that he had not such awareness, nor did he care. The old sailor didn't acknowledge his gesture. Instead, he withdrew a wood pipe from his front shirt pocket and loaded it with a pinch of tobacco from the tin, uncorked the rum bottle and swigged from it heartily, and continued on:
“Understand, sir, that we can rank all the groups of nature’s creatures in order of their apparent likeness to us, and how similar we see them to ourselves. Other humans rank atop, of course, as our kin. Mammals follow second. Reptiles and fish the next lower rank, for we seem to treat scaled things much the same. And lastly, to no one's surprise—bugs. And we sailors believe that you can learn much about a man from noting to what group of creatures he feels comfortable delivering cruelty.
Starting at the top—how we think of those comfortable doling out cruelty to their fellow man finds its meaning in a universal word: evil. And that ought not surprise you. I've yet to witness a culture that doesn't banish offenders of other people to a hell, or whatever they may call their ever-lasting punishment. And it says much about our aversion to such deeds that even the hangman, a man who earns a pay delivering said people to said destiny, must consult his conscious every once in a while, and reconcile his cruelty to another man with the teachings of his savior. Our aversion to inflicting cruelty on others comes from how clearly see ourselves in them; we see them wince as us, reason for their life just as us, implore us to think of their children and missus just as we would. And the likeness we see there reflects back any cruelty we inflict on them, like a mirror. Only the Rippers and pirates among us, those who look into others and see no reflection back, feel no wake from their evil deeds.
Things get more interesting as we descend the hierarchy. You and I, traveling man, know few among us who could deliver, or even witness, cruelty against another mammal and keep both his eyes open. But I assure you—we each know at least one. Do we consider such people murderers, worthy of a meeting with the hangman? No. But utterly depraved and without perspective or conscience, yes. For only a diseased soul can hunt a deer, hear its bleating cries echoing to its kin, and not do it the honor of making it supper. Or kick a cat for lazying in the wrong place. Or orphan an elephant calf merely for its mother's ivory. Or see a stray dog nursing her newborn pups and not, at the very least, wish for them Mercy from nature's crucible such as fortune allows. Even a bear cub of the fearsome Tundra kind—which may one day grow to threaten us with our own curtain's call—garners our goodwill that he may prosper in the meanwhile. For we familial, communal, loving, nurturing, playing, caring, daring humans see a great likeness between us and mammals, and it takes but a short hop of the imagination to put ourselves in their skin.
However, our reptiles and fish don't receive such near-unanimous sympathy. And we don't need to wonder why: where warmth characterizes humans and mammals, coldness characterizes reptiles and fish—from their corpus to their psyche. Their blood runs cold. We feel this when our forgiving skin meets their defensive scales, and they draw our heat from us with greed. As opposed to a mammal's loving womb, their offspring emerge from cold eggs as simply shrunken adults, without the altriciality which begs for a mother's tenderness. And even if they did emerge desperate to nurse, their mothers couldn't give it to them: for one, they cannot nurse, but second, the grotesque number of offspring they birth turns the act from intimate creation into impersonal production, in which efficient process rules over nurturing care to reduce the baby into a mere unit. A family, certainly, cannot grow from such cold substrate. Nor can even friendships. The only relationships we reliably observe among them deal in their position as predator or prey: who can I eat, who can eat me. And when one of them meets the fate of prey, look into its eyes—what you do not see there will make you wonder whether it has ever known fear. Not a great many people can look across this valley of differences and feel, not just acknowledge, but truly feel a likeness, such as between them and a flopping fish, that breeds real empathy. Can you, sir, find your own reflection in a mirror with such heavy tarnish? I myself confess to have ended a lizard just to prove my aim. Much of the cruelty people deal to our cold-blooded friends hangs in the balance of their convenience. And so, we sailors don't revile the man who doesn't feel remorse for the errant turtle caught in his net, the excess of fish he spears but doesn't eat, or the snake he could have shewed but shot instead. We do, however, hold him in deep contempt for letting his lack of principles, his sloth, ingratitude, and indulgence, impede on one of nature's creation's right to life. But, alas, most people fall into this contemptible majority, at least for some small time in their life.”
The old sailor, then, turned his attention to the table. With his right hand he picked up the packed pipe, leaned back into his rickety, wooden chair, and brought his feet up on a stool across from him. Then, with his left, he reached back into his breast pocket and withdrew a long wick. He reached toward the whale oil lamp at table's center and held the wick in the flame just long enough to kindle its tip. With the flame imperceptibly creeping down wick, he continued speaking.
“And... about insects we need say the least, for humans see no likeness in them, and in most cases detest them without exception, and on them can bring down cruelty absolute. Aside from the fact that we both live to die, what commonalities unite us? What humanity can we find in a bug that will reflect our cruelty back to us? None. Only a Himalayan monk could peer into nothing and find himself. I say that because I once witnessed one, in robes and beads and perfectly bald, stop a full, four-horse carriage just to move a grasshopper from its path. Their ways remain a mystery to us. And so we cannot condemn, nor hold in contempt, those people cruel to pests. But there is an exception...”
The old sailor stopped once again, allowing the traveling man to answer in his own mind to which bug he referred. The wick had ceded a pinky's width of itself to the steady flame. Bringing the pipe to his lips, the sailor married tobacco and fire, and drew a deep take. He exhaled slowly, extending the silence. The traveling man sensed a denouement. Pipe still in hand, wick still alit, the sailor continued on:
“Spiders, traveling man, certainly rank among the ugliest, if not the most stomach-churning of the bugs. Their needly legs reach and creep. Their obsidian eyes penetrate. Their fangs—poison daggers. Their webs—boneyards on display. No person doubts their villainous countenance. However, if we wished death to every spider, as we do true villains, our world would not turn for the better, but the worse. For you see, although they look the part of evil, spiders help us in a great mission: the vanquishing of other bugs. We undertake it to stave off pestilence; them, for supper. This makes the spider an ambiguous creature, for he appears as vile foe but serves as reliable friend—we must choose how we greet him. Us sailors choose friend, one that works tirelessly and faithfully alongside us if we but let him, and we believe that to condemn a spider for its legs and webs and eyes and fangs amounts to judging a man for the tools of his trade, rather than the goodness of his work.
But, alas—breathe easy, traveling man, we won't do away with you. For in the spider maligners we see not evil or savagery, just ignorance, ingratitude, and a life of smooth seas which hasn't yet known the vagaries of fortune. Just do one thing for us, in honor of our friend on the bottom of your shoe: tonight, when you lie down to rest, tilt your head and take sight of his web for a venerable moment, count the flies, and note the size of the mosquitos, for the fullness of it attests to his success, and a burden—however tiny—that he lifted from your shoulders onto his own.”