Are Owls evil?

The Oak must grow. The Deer must graze. The Owl must hunt.

A couple of weeks ago, Elizabeth and I went to a wedding. It was very hot and I was wearing a suit that always makes me look very VERY good but keeps the heat in, so I ended laying on the grass to cool down.

Here, Elizabeth noticed an owl sitting on a bale of hay. I didn't pay much attention to it as I was concentrating on cooling off, but I did glimpse it as it took off. It was massive. For most of the evening after that, when I went outside, I looked out on that field to try and notice it again.

And I did.

But when I saw it, it was later in the evening, around 9pm if I remember. It was still massive, and I was in awe, but I also wasn't alone. There was a boy who I assume lived on the site playing football. He seemed curious why I was looking out on an empty field.

"Are you ok?" he asked.

"I am," I replied, "just looking for the owl."

"The what?" the boy asked.

The question threw me a little, I knew what an owl was when I was his age. I didn't know all of them of course, but I knew they existed.

"The owl, it was on the bale there before it flew off."

"What is it?"

"It's a bird." I answered.

"Like a pheasant?"

"Yeah, like a pheasant, but a pheasant is more prey."

"What's an owl then?"

"A predator."

The boy seemed more comfortable after this, no longer curious but more matter-o-fact. The next words intrigued me.

"So it's evil."

I didn't really know what to say after this, but i needed to say something as I didn't agree with this response.

"Well, no. Owls just eat animals. It's not evil, it just does what's natural."

He then said that they get deers and foxes as well, and seemed to stop caring about the conversation, more interested in the football and tricks he was practicing. So I had to process this mindset on my own.

Because it's not a wrong idea that killing is bad. He lived on a farm with livestock, so things like wolves and foxes are seen as bad and to frame that as evil makes sense. But the wolf doesn't kill for divine(2) reasons, it kills out of neccesity to live. If the sheep didn't die, it would starve and so would the pack. The picture is more complex than the boy could see it, and if it doesn't effect his 7-10 year life(3), why would he care?

In history, we have seen predators and animals that kill by misinterpretation as these evil doers. Natural problems that must be ignored. I've just finished a book called 'the Deorhord' by Hana Videen where she discusses these things. The wolf is evil, as it only brings death to all that man cares for. The whale is evil, as it drowns sailors who think they have found land. It's very interesting, give it a read. I found it really inspiring as it shows how people viewed animals and their personalities in the past, pre-'enlightenment' (4).

Bringing it back these ideas of evil allow for a separation of responsibility. If the predator is evil, then it's okay to kill. Think Grendel or Smaug, they are a negative on the world, and therefore okay to get rid of as they only bring death.

But we are seeing that getting rid of predators because they are 'evil' is also bad. Here is Britain, we have gotten rid of our native wolf, lynx, and beaver(5) populations, causing massive ecological impacts. Red deer, prey, have exploded in numbers and have been a large reason why our forests are not growing as they eat all the saplings, meaning as the trees naturally die there is nothing to replace it. This is the problem with a lot of our temperate rainforests(6) as our old trees cannot be replaced, leading to just a bunch of dead stumps, and these are very important ecological areas!

But is the Red Deer evil? It's killing the environment, but not out of malice, it needs to eat. So why is it that predators are more negative when they control the population?

The answer here is obvious, it's control.

We, Humans, killed most of the more dangerous predators as we wanted to control the earth we use. We see ourselves in this Judeo-christian way as the stewards of the planet, needing to fix the problems we've been given. The thing is, the problems we are meant to fix are ones we've made for ourselves. Nature had a system that was both messy but also fuctional, and it's important to see ourselves as nature, because we are. We elevate the human species as somehow more important in the scheme of things, saying we are closer to god. But even if you don't beleive in a god, people like the atheists of the humanists fall into this category. There's this need to say we are the authority of the earth, but it's a bit of a fallacy in my opinion.

You see, if we climb off the pedestal we've placed under us, you will notice how precarious we are. We get rid of the problems we see, but the problems those problems were keeping in check are now the main problems, so now we have to sort those problems because we own the earth and must control it. The truth is much more humbling, the ecosystem is chaotic but self regulating and any change to it is catastophic, and it's childish to say that we are going to somehow fix all the problems. Hell! That's a whole theory of study in physics! Chaos theory!

So going back to the boy in the field, can we even say that evil exists? Things are so much more complicated than we are willing to even think about. The world of predator and prey doesn't exist in the human world anymore as we've dictated a separation of nature and the man made world. But that is a distinction that is not sustainable. Fences need maintaining, otherwise the two worlds mix. The real problem is that this mixture is true nature, as we are part of it. If we get rid of that distinction, everything will get scarier and unpredictable, but the beauty of the planet will show itself.

I will finish with this. The Oak must grow, the deer must graze, the owl must hunt. They will not ask for permission, they will not think about you and your personal world, they will not live conveniently. They will exist just as we have, and if they are inconvenient, so are we. If their actions are evil, then what are our cities? Our fields? Our cars and roads? The only difference is that we are doing so much more damage because of our need to control the world we see.

But when we disappear as we all must.

The Oak will grow.

The Deer will graze.

The Owl will hunt.

(1) Brilliant day, congrats Su and Dom!

(2) I'm using Divine from the Slavoj Zizek term 'Divine Violence'. The idea that there is violence that is only there for the sake of violence, and his refutation as violence usually comes from other factors. Either to take control or show a greivance. You can see this in the world right now, and divine violence is truly evil as it has no reason to happen except that it is.

(3) no idea how old he was. Not old enough for me to explain the ambiguity of morality in the universe. Let him kick the ball around for the time being.

(4) Just remember that enlightenment thought brought us medicine and scientific breakthroughs, but also justified racism and discrimination of the people who were neccesary for the said 'Enlightenment'.

(5) although not 'evil', they were a good source of waterproof fur. They also flooded areas that people were farming, causing problems.

(6) The rainforests of Britain, Guy Shrubsole. Good book, very important!