by Brandon Daubs

Created on: July 02, 2007

Yesterday, as I was desperately landscaping to make enough money for my rent (I've heard my landlord attacks tenants who don't pay with rabid dogs), I came across a huge pile of rocks. These rocks were piled just so, that they were filled with nooks and crannies perfect for all kinds of vile things. I counted one snake (fortunately not a poisonous one) about three mice, and nine-hundred ninety nine billion, nine-hundred ninety nine million, nine hundred ninety nine thousand, nine hundred ninety nine spiders. There were white spiders, fat black spiders, skinny spiders, muscular spiders, fanged spiders...sickly spiders, healthy spiders, half-eaten spiders, hairy spiders and smooth spiders. There were spiders from every corner of the globe packed into this rock pile, and I had to do battle with each and every one of them.

Imagine lifted up a twenty-pound stone crawling with spiders, all of which are trying to run up your arms while you carry the thing to the wheelbarrow. I'm surprised I'm still alive, considering that the majority of the spiders were black widows, fat and poisonous with fangs bared and showing off the hourglass on their abdomens. One of them climbed into my glove, actually. That sort of freaked me out. I was stomping on my glove for twenty minutes before I was ready to put it back on. I'm sure too that some of them got into my shoes, but I'm glad I didn't notice, otherwise I would have been running barefoot through the forest screaming with my hands up.

I've been told that fear is a sign of weakness. I mean, I understand that fear is what causes a lot of conflicts...from schoolyard fights to wars. It's obviously fear of something that makes you want to kill it, just like the fear of wolves almost made them extinct and the fear of being overrun causes crazy things like the Red Scare and lets the government get away with reading all your mail. I've been hearing lately that if you simply do away with the fear, the problems will vanish, also. I agree with this to a certain extent. For example, if I'm walking home from school and am faced with a mean dog gotten loose from somebody's yard, the very last thing I want to do is be afraid of it. In my experience, dogs and cats both are more likely to bite if you fearfully lay a hand on them, rather than if you face them with confidence and respect.

But there are limits to this. I mean, black widow spiders are poisonous. They can kill me. Is it really so wrong for me to want to crush them? I know a lot of you are thinking, "sure, that's fine. They're just spiders, and nobody likes spiders anyways." But what about people? I know there are people out there who are just as likely to kill me as a black widow spider. Would it be right for me to knife them preemptively? Would it be right for me to bomb their city before they could bite?

It's true that fear causes a lot of problems in today's world, and if it were kept under control a lot of lives could be saved. But fear is a mechanism built into the human system to keep us from getting ourselves killed. Our fear of heights keeps us from acting reckless in high places. Our fear of more dangerous animals keeps us away from them and therefore safe. At what point does fear stop being a tool to preserve your life, and become a disease that causes malice and strife?

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