The Face of a Spider

Differences. They are what make us stand out, what make us unique, what define us. But can we honestly say that we don’t resent others for being different? As the author of Face of a Spider: Eyeball to Eyeball with the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly pointed out, the human countenance is only one accidental combination among many possibilities. Under different circumstances, who knows what we could have looked like? We could be like the spider, which so many people despise, with eight or more eyes. We could be like the legendary Cyclops, with just one eye, we could have two heads. There are an infinite number of possibilities.
    Stop and think. How do you react to a person with say, a birth defect? You automatically find them unpleasant and do your best to avoid them. I’ve seen many a friend shy away from that one kid in a wheelchair, or that kid who isn’t quite right in the head. If you take a chance and be nice to them, you’d be surprised at what you find. Though of course, in some cases you were right to shy away in the first place.
Another great example is the enslavement of the blacks, way back then. They were different from the “all powerful” people of England, so they were to be immediately despised and it was assumed that they were an inferior race. Speaking of race, racism is an illusion. It’s a theory, an idea, that states that because you are unique, because where you were born (or where your family is from) created certain characteristics that a race needed to survive (the darker skin color of Africans, the distinctive facial structure of Asians, etc.) made you completely different. Which basically means you can’t be trusted. As the various races are uniting, we as a species are trying to get over our bias for similarity and start appreciating the differences that make individuals stand out. There will always be people who still believe in the medieval idea that the white race is the ultimate power, but they will become few and far between if we keep teaching younger generations that being different is ok.
Other humans aren’t the only things whose differences frighten us. Animals are just as scary. Compared to many of the animals out there, humans are small and weak, better only in intelligence. That’s the key. We are afraid of animals like lions because they possess a different kind of intelligence, one that we can not easily understand. Part of that fear is also the fact that they are bigger, faster, possess keener senses, and they have claws. They wouldn’t hesitate to kill you to feed their young.
However, we bask in the attention and love of their smaller counterparts, the common household cat. Being much smaller, and more disposed towards laziness, we are completely unafraid of them, instead providing them with food and shelter. I bring this up because of the cat sitting on my feet as I write this. The cat in question, Keats, is more inclined to lick you to death than claw your eyes out.
The same basic principle applies to dogs, their close cousins being feared for their “savagery”. Birds also provide an excellent example, though they take a bit of training, birds don’t usually “bite the hand that feeds them”.
Overall, differences are both a good and a bad thing. They can be used as a weapon to alienate certain groups of people, or as a defining feature that lets you tell one person from another. Certain characteristics tell you what animals or people to avoid because they are dangerous, others will tell you that the animal or person in question is alright to be around. Differences and our reactions to them define us as a species.