So after toking many bowls throughout the day, i am now seated at my computer chair, listening to some chill music "Bonobo". 10 minutes ago, I decided to hop and lay in my bed, i quickly find a comfortable position and lay staring at the ceiling, pondering about life. I look to the side of me and see a medium-sized brown spider, with little spots. It may have been a brown recluse spider, i don't know. I quickly, like a scared little girl got the fuck out of my bed, pulled my bed out from against the wall...and looked around for a dirty old shoe i could use to smash it to death. I found one, and as i leaned in with the shoe to kill it...i began to have a second thought. I am killing something living. I am murdering a living thing. I found myself feeling guilty and bad that i am ending a life, no matter how ugly and disgusting spiders are. I wonder if spiders have souls, do they have thoughts and emotion? What was his last thought before i killed it? In the end, i still hate fucking spiders.
Spiders only have a primitive brain that acts as a central nervous system, and are not capable of creative thought or emotion.
They don't have any sense of what life is or what it means so the death you brought upon him/her had no meaning. It's not like he was staring at the shoe and thinking well shit I'm about to be murdered. But I can relate with the feeling you had. Feels bad to take the life of a living creature even if it doesn't comprehend what's happening.
This is true, however, I can't help but also feel guilty when I intentionally kill things. Not because I'm concerned for a soul or anything metaphysical, but merely because I often feel that life is special. Not necessarily that it's inherently valuable because it's life, but instead because I tend to feel a shared, common thread of existence. That is to say, I have evolved along with everything else on Earth; neither of us may have any intrinsic purpose, but the fact that we're both products of millions of years of evolution, as well as the birth of the universe--however it may have happened. Putting that into scope for me is something that gives me a respect for life, in all its forms. Anyway, when I kill something, I feel that it was likely very unnecessary and thus feel guilty over its death. Also likely due to many of the things we kill--spiders, flies, etc--have no malice towards us, even if we often perceive it. They're simply going about a routine as us.
I totally agree with what you said. I think that maybe we often don't give it much thought whenever we kill something such as a spider, ant, fly, etc. is because we have an understanding that they don't know nor can they understand death. Knowing that they have a Central Nervous System and have the ability to feel pain leads me to give them a quick death when the situation arises that I may have to kill one. I don't enjoy doing it, but sometimes it's necessary.