gemfyre | Is Raid the answer? (Reply)

riverrealm, posted to

naturalliving.

I had a lot of thoughts after reading the comments to the recent post about black widow spiders. I was intrigued that people in a natural living community feel it's justified to purchase and use Raid because of their fear of spiders. It makes me think about the origins of industrialized societies' phobia of predators. It seems there have been pre-industrial societies who lived with predators, and respected/valued the things they do to keep our planet in balance, without resorting to spraying poisons that end up in the earth, the water, on our skin, and in our lungs.

Predator phobia seems to originate from various sources--

the monotheistic attitude (reinforced by the bible) that we are created in g*d's image and therefore superior to nature and should tame/control it (making it easy to turn various species into the Other if convenient),

the moralization of nature (some animals are "good," some are "evil"),

people like Peter Benchley writing inaccurate books like Jaws (and Spielberg making a movie of it), spawning profit for some and the senseless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of sharks,

similarly inaccurate books/movies about spiders (made for profit),

the concept of hunting/killing for sport (bears, wolves, foxes, sharks, etc being particularly valuable trophies),

the profit to be made from cattle/domesticated animals (making it "okay" for ranchers to shoot wolves, jaguars in South America, etc etc),

the industrialized lifestyle where the main animals we interact with are "cute" domestic animals, making any other animals/insects seem ugly/frightening/killable in comparison.

Everyone agrees that predators are dangerous and can do great harm. Same with cars (in fact cars kill and maim many more people than spiders), but I don't see people freaking out and spraying poison everytime they're crossing the street and a car appears.

Most, nearly all, predators do not specifically and aggressively target humans. More often, humans do not bother to learn about the predators' behavior in order to reduce the chance of meeting one. Many times, an animal is going about its business and happens to cross paths with humans-- it is not stalking the human, and is often just as frightened as the human upon meeting. (Peter Benchley later wrote about diving and encountering a great white shark face to face. The shark turned around and swam away. Part of me wished that shark had behaved like Jaws.)

I feel it's important to examine why we're so afraid of certain animals, to the point where we are rendered senseless by fear and poison seems like the answer.

This pretty much expresses my sentiments exactly. But you'll see that when you read my comments on the post.