Who is right and who is wrong?
“Why didn’t you stop the wasp?” asked my children.
I was tempted. But I stopped myself.
It’s easy to villainise the wasp, a creature ready armed with a weapon - I’ve felt its burning sting, its
repetitive attack. In contrast, the moth, with its soft, dusty white spotted cloak looked like a damsel in distress.
But in this fight, who is right and who is wrong? was the question in my mind.
Is the moth the wasp’s meal, or perhaps a meal for its young grub, hard-earned and overdue? Is it worth saving the moth just for its beauty or for the fact I hadn’t seen one before? Is this what is meant to happen between a wasp and a moth? Can a wasp help being a wasp and can a moth help being a moth?
And so there I was, a human, projecting my emotions and prejudices onto the battle, standing and watching like an ignorant outsider.
“Nature is a Darwinian spectacle of the eaters and the eaten.”
It is unlikely that the wasp perceives the moth as beautiful - it’s just a source of food. It’s striking how the human imagination transcends this nature, creating stories in which those who are savage killers must be punished and assuming that beauty equates to virtue.
