Peter and the Spider

Peter is a very shy but exceptionally intelligent boy of thirteen.  He could be in college today but he declined the offer of one ivy league school to get him into their program for gifted teenagers, free tuition and board, where he would have been enrolled as a biology major while pursuing his research on entomology.  It was his decision to decline and his parents agreed. 

He has very few friends and only  one whom he considers his best friend - a classmate named Abe.

Peter, as smart as he is, is singularly focused, perhaps even obsessively so, on just one subject outside of school work - insects; or bugs as his classmates describe it. To study insects more closely he invented something he calls a magnifying stereoscope, which enables him to see up close small individual insects in 3-D.  His well-off parents willingly spend the money that Peter needs, including renovating the large attic into a livable room, fully air conditioned with furniture but more importantly several tables, equipment and living spaces for insects worthy of their own miniature natural habitats. The parents feel every dollar is well spent, knowing he is not into drugs or alcohol as the other young kids are already into, who are not much older than Peter. Most of all, they always know where Peter is when he is not at school. He is at home tending to the ant farm, studying butterflies, etc. And more importantly, Peter is at the top of his class, albeit only in academics because he barely makes a passing grade in social skills.

Recently Peter invented another thing.  It's a super sensitive microphone that can pick up sounds and noises created by insects, in groups or as individuals.  So now, he can watch them up close and listen to them intimately, if there is such a thing with an insect.

Abe came one weekend afternoon.  He brought Peter a spider he found outside their garage. He had it in a match box. He thought Peter would be interested in this one uniquely looking spider.  Sure enough Peter was ecstatic about what Abe brought.  They spoke for a bit, ate some snacks, then Abe left.

Peter went to work right away. He has an enclosure of Plexiglass the size of a refrigerator  where he has a colony of fruit flies so he can formulate a new theory on insect mutation by conditioning their behavior through erratic temperature and humidity changes while feeding only on one variety of fruit - ripened papaya and nothing else. 

He trapped a couple of the flies. Moments earlier he had the spider moved into a plastic container the size and shape of a cigar box with a fine wire mess for a cover so he can observe the spider in full view and up close. Raising the cover slightly he introduced the two flies and left to retrieve his special equipment from downstairs.

Later he had the stereoscope and microphone setup for observation, all powered up including a special low voltage UV light. Immediately Peter noticed that the spider was in one corner of the box. In front of it was  one fly that was all wrapped up with white web.  At the opposite corner was the other fly alive but wary.

With headphones on, Peter peered into the stereoscope.  Then, expecting a crunching or slurping sound he picked up a voice.  He took the headphones off his ears to see if a radio or the phone extension was the source of the sound.  Nothing. He put the headphones back on and turned on the digital video recorder.  He heard the voice again.

Below is the transcript of the voice and Peter's.

(1643 H Saturday, 02/18/26)

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: You heard me. That was me, the first time.  It's still me now.

Long silence ..

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Hello! Surely you know my species. Highly evolved arachnid and unbelievably resourceful.

Peter: This can't be real!

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Oh, yes it is. You're a smart kid, for a human.  Come on, speak to me like a peer, okay? I am talking in your language. By the way, those are sophisticated equipment you have there.  I assume you made them?

Peter: I will for a moment suspend all doubts about my sanity but I must ask. How is this possible?

Pholcus phalangioides 1a:You want a short answer or a slightly sophisticated explanation?  What you just said, by the way, is an adult manner of speaking. You are thirteen, fourteen years old?

Peter: And you are likely just a figment of my imagination. Tell me right now, this is a trick.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Yeah, it's a trick. In my previous life I was human. And I must have switched back and forth for a number of centuries now.  There, shockingly enough for you?

Brief silence

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Come on, you're a voracious reader. I know it's not all entomology books and articles you read.  You're a very curious kid.  I know you can explain this.

Peter: No.  I mean reincarnation is not real. A mere belief system rooted in India and Tibet.  Maybe Bhutan and two or more places. But it's not true. It is all science-defying lore or primitive belief systems.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Well, conversation is over. Can I get back to my dining? And thank you for these two flies. Oh, these two are not reincarnated creatures.  Just so you know.

Peter: I can't believe this.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Do you want a conversation or not?

Peter: You believe you are a recycled entity?

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: What I cannot believe is that you, of all brilliant young men, do not grasp the idea that  everything you see and touch are all recycled material.

Peter: Yes, but not one life form to another and back again. It is not scientific.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: That's the best argument you can come up with.  It is not scientific? This whole earth, the entire solar system, including the sun are all recycled from something else. 

Peter: I know that. My point is that a human does not turn into a spider and a spider into a human. That does not make sense. Science does not support that.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: What about stream of consciousness? Okay, okay, let's start from something you can grasp in your scientific mind. You've heard of Julius Caesar's last breath, haven't you?

Peter: Yes

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Explain it to me.

Peter: It is all about this hypothetical, even a statistical possibility that someone, me, you, could conceivably be breathing in some of Julius Caesar’s last breath after he was assassinated by Roman senators on the senate floor over two thousand years ago.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Okay, how and what makes it more than just hypothetical?

Peter: Well, the idea is that as Julius Caesar at his last gasp and final exhalation his breath had twenty five sextillion molecules of air - 25 followed by 21 zeros of air. In just a couple of years those air molecules would have spread around the world, inhaled, exhaled umpteenth times over and over, and they're still out  there, here  and everywhere today, as we speak. 

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Good

Peter: But I will do you one better. One oxygen atom, expelled by a prehistoric fern millions of years ago was inhaled by T-rex, then exhaled it as a compound molecule of CO2, then absorbed by another fern or some other plant that later expelled the oxygen, keeping the carbon and the cycle started all over again.  And Julius Caesar could have inhaled that same oxygen atom  as he gasped and exhaled it as part of carbon dioxide compound before he died. But what has that got to do with you being a human in a previous life?

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Okay. You do know that the Law of Conservation of Energy and Matter dictates that both can neither be created nor destroyed in the entire universe.  They can only change forms or convert from one to the other and vice versa but neither is created nor destroyed.

Peter: I know that. Just please explain to me what you are.  I mean, you couldn't have been some creature at one time and be another the next time.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Do you believe that your mind exists outside of your physical brain?

Peter: You mean consciousness?

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Yes.

Peter: I can't prove it one way or the other.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: That's what I'm telling you. Consciousness is independent of physiology but it is real. I am proof.  You are talking to a spider. And I will tell you this. I admit that in my various iterations I have not been exactly one that you would describe as a model of good character.  Every time my physical body ceased to exist I moved on to another but, and this is where I know you will roll your eyes, heaven or hell is what I made of my next life each time I moved on, so to speak, and you know what I mean.

Peter: That is what adherents of the reincarnation belief system go by. By that I am to assume that you were a bad human before your current life?  Unbelievable. Scientific nonsense and well beyond even the lowest form of logical thinking.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: You are a smart kid. You are already arguing like a real adult.  For a teenager. But you are soon to learn some more. Have you ever wondered about how your intelligence had come and developed so rapidly in your young age? Have you wondered that perhaps you are a reincarnated Gregor Mendel or some earlier geneticists in the past century, or maybe you are Charles Darwin, reborn in the 21st century to perhaps make corrections and improvement on his theories?

Peter: Absolutely not. There is no basis for that supposition and clearly not supported by scientifically based logical processes.  No. Conversation ends here and now.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Yes, it ends here. Let me go back to my dinner.

Peter: Listen to you. You're a spider, yet here you are dining on food I provided you. You call that punishment? Or, according to your supposition, this is hell for you?

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Look, what if I tell you that I was dining on fine foods, caviar and champagne in my prior life but I'm being punished for my greed and horrible treatment of my fellow human beings and now I am  eating fruit flies. Do I deserve this? Perhaps.  But here I am trying to educate and give you fair warnings about engaging in unacceptable behavior.  Fair warning, remember that.

Peter: You are lecturing me? I declined a fully paid scholarship despite my age because I do not want to get carried away by hubris and potentially damaging exposure to what young people today are exposed to in so-called higher places of learning. No, you do not need to lecture me.

Pholcus phalangioides 1a: Good. I am succeeding already. There is hope, after all, I will be reborn under better circumstances next time.

Peter: Let's wrap this up.  Go back to your dining while I go back to tending to the  other creatures that need my attention.

Two hours later, Peter was awakened from a surprisingly long nap by his mom, who was worried why Peter had not come down.  She found Peter with the left side of his head on an open textbook on his desk.

Mom: You know I don't want to come up here but it's now six thirty.  Your dad will be home soon. Dinner will still be at seven, as always.  Come down soon, okay?

Peter: Yes, Mom.  I'll be downstairs before seven, for sure.

Peter looked around to make sure everything was not overly messy.  The spider was still inside the plastic box. One fruit fly is gone and the other one is now wrapped up in white spider web. The video recorder is turned off and the other devices as well.  He remembered saving the video data into the cloud.  He will check it later.  Unbeknownst to him, by mistake, he had it saved into a Microsoft printer located at their neighbor's.  An elderly gentleman lives there but he has not really been using his computer or printer - waiting for a technician to fixt it. 

The technician did come by the next day.  He did the necessary fix, did some tests and set aside all the "scrap" prints that were on the printer's queue after he had the printer running. 

Now, my dear reader, you will be wondering  how I have possession of the transcript of the conversation between Peter and the spider.

Wonder if you will, but please be reminded that the musings you read here still go by the sub heading at the start of each blog that goes: 

"When you find yourself having to take a break from those that keep you on edge and stressed out, you can take the time to ponder with me some of the un-ponderable and the whimsical and lightly thought provoking issues you did not have the time to consider but now you may want to look into because you have a moment or two to spare or you just want some of your brain cells to be tickled out of slumber."

The Anatomy of Sacrifices

Why would  sacrifices have  anatomy?  Well, sacrifices have structure, though often hidden - visible to those who want to see or feel it - and there are motivations, varied degrees of intensity, purpose, and a beginning and an end. And this is how it is typically defined: "the act of giving up or losing something of value for the sake of something else to have a greater value or claim.."

That is one definition.

In Scriptures, it is both an act of worship and an expression of faith in the Divine. 

In some past cultures, sacrifices took on  a grisly macabre nature beyond comprehension today but was an acceptable practice then to please or placate the gods.

However, we do not have a monopoly on the capacity to sacrifice or on how to deem what it is.  Life, any life, apparently requires or demands sacrifices of one magnitude or another, that occurs even in the animal world where maternal sacrifices are acted on under extreme conditions.

Take one species of octopus. The "Graneledone boreopacifica, like all octopus species, is semelparous, meaning it reproduces only once in its lifetime. After laying her eggs in a carefully chosen location, often a rock crevice or other safe area, the mother devotes herself entirely to protecting and nurturing her clutch".

This octopus will spend as much as 4.5 years protecting the eggs from predators or other disturbances until they hatch. The unusually long incubation period is due to the cold temperatures at the bottom of the deep ocean, hence the extraordinarily long metabolic processes.  During that entire time the mother octopus will not feed, relying only on its fat reserves to stay alive. It is literally wasting away and dies as the eggs hatch.  Often, what remains of her body will feed the young hatchlings. No other definition of the ultimate sacrifice can match that.  But for a species that only reproduces once in its lifetime, we can say that such is the epitome of the ultimate sacrifice for the survival of the species. And by the way, octopuses are considered one of the most intelligent invertebrates on land or sea. The brain of the octopus is not centrally concentrated in its brain but outwardly connected to all eight tentacles so that each appendage can think independently on its own or in concert with the entire nervous system. 

We've read about the male praying mantis sacrificing itself as food to the female after mating.  The explanation is that the expectant mother is assured of an initial and immediately good nutrition by dining on the father of the soon  to be offspring.  I don't know how scientists figured that out but then what other reasons are there?

There are many other examples though not quite as dramatic as the two above. But one thing is certain - sacrifices are not only common but that life seems well provided with many ways that they can occur.  For life forms way below our intellectual capacities  to exhibit those traits may point to the fact that the capacity to sacrifice is all along a component required for the survival of the species.

This takes us to the level of sacrifices we, as a species, are capable of achieving. 

Pfc James Anderson  was born on Jan. 22, 1947.  At age 19 he enlisted in the Marine Corp in 1966.  The following year at just 20 years old his unit was sent to Vietnam. On Feb. 28, 1967, his unit was ambushed while on patrol. An enemy grenade was thrown at his platoon. Without hesitation he dove towards the grenade, covered it with his body and was killed when it exploded. His sacrifice saved several marines from serious injury or death.

"On August 21, 1968, he became the first African American U.S. Marine recipient of the Medal of Honor while serving in Vietnam."

In an eerily strange and almost retroactive coincidence, we go back to the previous  generation when on February 1, 1944 another heroic incident happened in another war - WWII. - with another Marine of the same last name.

Richard Beatty Anderson was born on Jan. 26, 1921. As you can see from the photo below, he was a white man. Wait till you read his story.

"Summary of Action for which He was Awarded the Medal of Honor

On 1 February 1944, during the assault on Roi Island in the Marshall Islands, Private First Class Richard Beatty Anderson was sheltering in a shell crater with three fellow Marines under intense enemy fire. As he prepared to throw a grenade at a nearby Japanese position, the grenade slipped from his grasp and rolled back into the crater where the men were crowded together."

Pfc Anderson "hurled himself onto the grenade, absorbing the full force of the explosion with his body. His deliberate and selfless act saved the lives of the Marines beside him at the cost of his own."

Did you make note of the date?  Both died in February, 23 years apart - one generation between them.  Both were Marines, one black, one white. Both recipients of the Medal of Honor.

Reincarnation buffs have this to say. Pfc Richard Anderson died in 1944, three years later he was reborn as James Anderson in 1947, to a black family.  The two heroic incidents seemed like a re-play, except that in Vietnam the grenade was thrown by the enemy.  It was as if Richard Anderson wanted to redo his heroism when it was not his fault and by sheer selfless sacrifice, he saved his fellow Marines (again).

Reincarnation or just plain simple coincidence is up to the reader to determine.

Just last week I got into a conversation with the nurse who took my vital signs (pulse, temperature, blood pressure, weight) before the doctor could see me in the other room. Since there was a patient before me I had to wait.  The nurse stayed with me until the other room became available. She proceeded to tell me her story when she realized my wife has Parkinson's to share her experience in care giving to a family member.

She is the eldest child with a younger handicapped brother - unable to speak and  suffering from epilepsy. Then a few years ago her mom was diagnosed with cancer. The nurse became caregiver to both.  During all that time she took only night shift jobs so she can take care of them during the day. Her mom passed away.  She still had to care for her brother.  The brother, at 44, died two years ago. The nurse never had  time to enter into any personal relationship of her own so she never married. 

When she finished her story, I did not have the courage to tell her my own caregiving story vis-a-vis  my wife's Parkinson's.  Compared to what she went through, my so-called sacrifice is petty and a minuscule facsimile of her own sacrifices.

I hope I have given enough credence to what  anatomy of sacrifices mean.

 

Does Every Decision Really Matter?

Without us realizing it, we ask this question often, whether we actually  say it or not, every time  we do things or merely contemplate on doing something, or even just saying something to somebody, or anybody. And, for that matter, does everything we ever do really matter. Before we go on let's  just for a moment revisit the one famous fable about the "butterfly effect".  We find that it is more than just a fable because, while hypothetical in every sense, it is profoundly and sensibly within the realm of loosely correlated causality; keeping in mind, however, that there is a big difference between correlation and causation.  The embellishment to the little story is all mine.

"Out in the plains of the Serengeti, a lone butterfly was going about its business from flower to flower. Not too far away is a pride of lions patiently waiting for a herd of wildebeest to come closer. The butterfly, as it flutters its wings, hovering and landing on several flowers, causes some of the disturbed pollen to be carried away by the wafting air. A few of the pollen went into the nostrils of the lead lioness, thus causing it to sneeze uncontrollably and loudly - loud enough to spook the ever alert and nervous wildebeest. They turned, saw the lions, and they panicked. The resulting stampede of  several thousand wildebeests soon after, caused a cloud of swirling dust to ascend with the rising warm air. The dust clouds joined the Jetstream up above, which somehow changed its density and air speed. In a matter of three days, the global weather pattern had changed considerably and by the seventh day, a typhoon had developed on the Bay of Bengal.  In a few more days, Bangladesh was devastated by strong winds and flooding that followed.  All that was caused by one butterfly."

Can one event from the activity of a single butterfly   really cause that much devastation? 

Or, how about the decision of one Dutch family during the German occupation of their homeland when they decided to hide an entire Jewish family in their basement until the end of the war.  Had the Dutch family not done it an entire  lineage could have ended right at the moment of their capture.  Instead, the Jewish family survived and later emigrated to the U.S. at  the end of the war.  The family's children went on to excel in school, one became a doctor and another an engineer. Two generations later the Jewish family's descendants continue to contribute to the betterment of the community of people around them wherever they settled, always acknowledging the remembrance of a distant debt of gratitude. That was just one story.  Just imagine many more stories from just that one global tragedy of a war that raised so many acts of courage and sacrifices that in the words of Winston Churchill, "Never was so much owed by so many to so few".

Richard Feynman, acclaimed theoretical physicist in his lecture on the chain of probabilities asked and answered, "Why one small decision changes everything".  With anecdotes he went on to tell how one decision,  large or small, changes the outcome that affects all outcomes that followed. Of course, his discussions were from the points of view of a physicist. That is true but then I ask, "Where did it all begin?" You see, from the question and from every example, before every decision or choice  was made, there were conditions that already existed that were also products of decisions, choices and events prior.  It is as if the decision maker was merely being part of a continuous chain of events and decisions that he or she may have little to do with.

Decisions begin as  mental processes, assuming that the decider did take the time to think everything through.   A 3-1/2 pound mass of tissues and nerves and blood vessels sit atop between the two shoulders of every human  decider.  Inside that mass of tissue are approximately 100 billion nerve cells or neurons that are capable of making billions upon billions of connections from neuron to neuron  at any one time. Is that where we begin?  How about family upbringing, inherited genes, mental trauma, even nutrition, etc. Of course not.  But just for fun, let's go back to  one specific point prior to but somewhere that is simple enough - the early universe.

Eons of time had elapsed before the universe had its first atoms. Then everything was made up of hydrogen and a little bit of helium and nothing else.  It took more eons of time before there was oxygen because massive stars (all made of hydrogen) at the later stages of their existence that took millions of years needed to explode to create the other elements, one of which was oxygen.

That was crucial because only then that the combination of two hydrogen atoms and one oxygen gave the universe its first water. How is it then that neither hydrogen nor oxygen may exist as a liquid at room temperature, yet when the two of them combined we have liquid water? Perhaps we do not  want to begin there although as far as we know only our earth has water in such abundance that makes life possible, significantly, human life - able to ponder and wonder about these things.

Where do we begin? Well, we can go back to where one hundred billion neurons reside - in each individual human brain. 

One U.S. president at the beginning of 2008 did say that elections have consequences.  

We find out, of course, that all the  neural activities of all the voters combined in one election decided all past elections.  Elections that had consequences.  Does that explain the butterfly effect?  It will be one massive undertaking to explain, well beyond one blog.

Suffice it to say that everything begins where everything is still small. Did a career criminal begin with one stolen candy bar from  a grocery store? But then what was it that caused one man to hunt down early Christians only to turn his life around the opposite way and write several gospels of the New Testament? His writings are now known as Paul's Letters to various recipients - from "to the Thessalonians to the Hebrews", and nine others in between.

So, now we may begin anywhere. The question is whether anything that occurs anywhere and everywhere has a consequence that is worthy of consideration as to have any effect on everything, or just anything. As a general rule, yes, when taken from the point of view of cause and effect.  But it is always from someone's point of view, or is it?  This takes us to another common if not purely parlor-esque question as in a cocktail party setting that asks, "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it still make a sound"? The question always recedes back to "from whose point of view" is the consequence being assessed. We don't want to go there because we are not prepared to dig a bottomless pit into which we may end up dumping an infinite number of scenarios no matter where we start.  You see, from the butterfly effect story, would it have mattered if, say, it occurred in ancient times when there were no people living then in the present day country of Bangladesh?

Well, here we are. Back to the one hundred billion neurons again.

For  conclusion: Yes, every decision we make does indeed matter.  Just by believing that can mean that from here on in, you and I will take great care in every little or big decision we make, convinced that it will have one small or large difference, however inconsequential it is.

One thing to keep in mind is that consequences do not just add up. They actually multiply.

Let me end with a portion of what I wrote in Dec. 2016, "What's Fishy With Human Nature":

"There was a B-movie that reminded me of how one little trickle of a white lie could cascade into an unstoppable waterfall.

A guy called in to his boss with a little lie for not coming to work one morning.  He lied that he was taking care of a sick daughter at home.  Granted he was quite unhappy with his job he didn’t exactly want to quit.  He doubled up on his excuse next time he felt like not showing up for work again by telling that his sick daughter was now at the hospital.  So the one simple lie has taken a life of its own as he lied to his wife as well, doing his routine task of taking his daughter to a baby sitter every morning, but never said anything about not going to work. The third time he called in  for not coming to work his boss fired him over the phone.  Then, again bereft of any thought process, he doubled up his lie further by telling his boss that his daughter just died at the hospital.

His daughter was perfectly fine but his boss softened immensely by asking  him back to work the following day; his boss spoke kindly to him and later took up a collection for him from very willing co-workers to help him out.  One morning a kind co-worker went as far as to bring a home-made quiche to his home.  His wife opened the door to greet the co-worker but his quick maneuver saved the day for him as he shortened the visit without alerting his clueless wife but to the bewilderment of his co-worker.  Of course, as always with cases like this, things unravel rapidly with devastating consequences.  This was fiction but how many have we seen in real life where one simple lie intensified to more lies and ultimately to a disastrous resolution, shattering lives and reputation or sometimes resulting in violence?

Remember, in real life consequences don't just add up; they multiply.