Brian D. Buckley

I don’t kill spiders.

In the kitchen I have a spider-catching kit: a plastic cup and a folded piece of paper. If I find a spider in the house, I herd it into the cup with the paper, then hold the paper over the top so it can’t escape. (Spider Alcatraz!) Then I take the little mofo outside and set it free.

I inherited this quirk from my dad. He’s been a spider-saver all his life. Betsy, on the other hand, comes from a long line of spider-squishers, but she’s learned to accept my weirdness. When she finds a spider, she calls for me, and I catch and release.

Or at least, I try. I’d estimate my success rate around 70%. The fact that I fail to catch 30% of the spiders, and she calls for me anyway, is proof of her undying love.

We also get these nasty centipedes in our house – not the slow little reddish armored ones, but big gray fast ones with long, hair-thin legs. I used to shudder and murder the buggers on sight, but over time I migrated them to catch-and-release status too. I don’t hate them nearly as much anymore, even though some are so big they make a thump when they land on the ground. (I’m not joking.)

I’m very attached to this silly behavior of mine, even though it has no legitimate ethical foundation. I can’t claim it’s wrong to kill bugs, because I kill mosquitoes, bees, and fruit flies all the time. (Not coincidentally, so does my dad.) Besides, every time I mow the grass, legions of six-legged creatures fall prey to my blade. They’re bugs, and bugs die. No sense in getting sentimental. Hell, I even kill the occasional spider when saving it would be especially inconvenient.

Yet a part of me says that spider-saving isn’t entirely worthless. Part of me says that trying not to kill without cause, at any level, is a kind of compassion, and compassion is good for the soul.

Yes, I’m deluding myself. But then, we all have our delusions, don’t we?

I’ve lived with a chronic illness for a little over two years now. Lately it’s gotten worse, which accounts for the missed work days and the missed blog posts.

I can honestly say that the last few weeks have been some of the most difficult in my life. Not quite at the top of the list, but close enough.

Fortunately, I started on a new combination of meds last Tuesday (the seventh such attempt) and for now at least, it seems to be working. I’m in a lot less pain. Work is starting to feel possible again. Hope returns.

By an odd coincidence, my computer had also been getting worse lately. You’d boot up, and it would work for an hour or two, then slow down and lock up completely. I did a lot of rebooting. Finally I gave up on it and switched to using the PC in the family room, which we use more as a Netflix TV than a normal computer. I was sitting on the floor a lot, typing hunched over the keyboard. Not great for your back.

My friend (and local mad genius) Paul suggested extreme measures: reinstall the operating system from scratch. Yesterday I took his advice and embarked on the five-hour voyage of downloading and installing Windows 7.

It seems to have worked. I’m typing this on my old computer again, with no signs of the issues from before.

A healed computer, a healing body. Two things I’m very grateful for. It’s amazing how illness can change you, darken your world, contract the borders of your private universe into a little walled-off circle of pain. It’s amazing how feelings like hope and despair are so connected to getting the right combination of chemicals in the pills you take.

I’m a lucky man.

I don’t know how long this recovery will last. The illness has always been cyclical before, and it could be that I’m just in another temporary upswing. It feels different this time, but maybe it’s not. We’ll see.

In the meantime: I’m glad to be back.

Lack of new posts is because I continue to be pretty sick. Will return when I can. I’m on a new combination of medications now, so fingers crossed.

How much electricity would you send through an innocent person’s body?

In 2010, eighty volunteers in France signed up for a reality show called Zone Xtreme. Each volunteer was put on live TV, watched by a cheering audience and an attractive host, and told to play a game. Their role in the game was to administer electric shocks to another player, named Jean-Paul, whenever he got a question wrong.

The shocks started at 20 volts, and moved gradually up to 460 volts, which the players were told might be lethal. Jean-Paul reacted only a little to the smaller shocks, but gradually his screams became worse, until he was shouting he didn’t want to play anymore, begging to be set free from the booth in which he was trapped. Finally, at the highest voltage, he didn’t react at all. He just sat, slumped over, silent.

It was all a setup. Jean-Paul was an actor; the shocks were nonexistent. But the players didn’t know that. They believed it was very real.

Now ask yourself: of the eighty players, how many do you think were willing to ignore his screams and deliver every single shock, all the way up to the possibly-lethal 460 volts?

Take a moment to think about your answer. Remember, these are ordinary, randomly-selected people.

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Got your guess?

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The answer is 64 out of 80 people, or 80% of the contestants.

To be clear: 80% of these ordinary human beings were willing to deliver agonizing, potentially lethal shocks to another human being, in spite of his obvious pain and direct pleas not to.

They weren’t even playing for money. There was no reward. They were just on TV. Full details about the show are here.

Lest you think there’s something wrong with French people, this show merely recreates a much older and more famous American study called the Milgram Experiment. Essentially the same thing, with the same result, except it wasn’t televised.

And now, the big question. Would you deliver the full voltage?

Perhaps you say “No! Of course not!” But if you jump to that answer without some serious soul-searching, then you’re missing the point. Because nearly all of those 80 people would have said the same thing.

It’s not about whether you’re a good person or a bad person. You see, these contestants didn’t want to give the shocks. They felt bad about it. They objected to it. They wished they didn’t have to do it.

But they felt a tremendous social pressure. And in the end, in spite of all the complaints of their conscience, they pressed the button.

Think it over. Someday it might not be an experiment.

Still pretty sick.