Of Owls and Richard the Third: Part 1
by Theodore Dalrymple (May 2013)
Not long ago at a conference I was asked whether I thought that boredom was an important cause of bad, and worse than bad, behaviour. I said that I thought that it probably was, though I could not positively prove it. At any rate, those who behave badly often claim to do so because they are bored, and no one claims to behave well because he is bored.
But even if it is accepted that boredom causes, or rather explains, bad behaviour, it cannot be the final explanation: for why are people bored? Is not the world interesting enough for them? What would a world be like that they found sufficiently interesting to keep them on the straight and narrow path that leads to good behaviour? It is a terrible fate for a creature endowed with consciousness and self-consciousness to find the world uninteresting.
My problem is the opposite: I find the world too interesting. This means that I am all too easily distracted, like a child confronted with too many good things to eat. I pursue things that interest me until something else distracts me, which means that I master nothing. But at least I am not bored.
So Owl gave me the first intimation in my life that all are not wise who claim to be learned. And Owl was a hint also that the clever could be the most foolish of all.
Reading Owls brought back my second encounter with these birds. It was with their pellets rather than with the birds themselves. I had quite forgotten that these pellets are not faeculant but rather the product of regurgitation because owls have no crops. As I learnt from this book, owls have relatively low acidity stomachs, and tend to swallow their prey whole. They are bad at digesting bones, hair and the chitin of insects, so they dispose of them by regurgitation.
The law of unintended consequences is one of the hardest for people to learn because it is so unflattering to our conception of ourselves as rational beings, and because (if it is a law) it suggests inherent limits to our power. We shall never fail to commit errors.
Behold, there come seven years of great plenty
throughout all the land of Egypt:
and the plenty shall not be known in the land by reason
And so proceeds Ad infinitum.
There was another aspect of the book that pleased me. The authors were John Sparks and Tony Soper. There was no biographical information in the book about them whatsoever. This meant one of two things: either the authors and publisher thought the subject was more interesting or important than the authors, or they were so famous that readers needed no biographical information. Looking them up on the internet, I found that this might have been so, for they made nature documentaries for BBC television for many years. Not having had a television since this book was first published, people who are nationally, internationally or even world famous are to me completely unknown.
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