A Stag had fallen sick. He had just strength enough to gather some food and find a quiet clearing in the woods, where he lay down to wait until his strength should return. The Animals heard about the Stag's illness and came to ask after his health. Of course, they were all hungry, and helped themselves freely to the Stag's food; and as you would expect, the Stag soon starved to death.
I know what you're thinking. This is so cynical! Actually it's not cynical at all! It's explaining a very real problem that can happen with humans on a grand scale. It's a sort of madness that creeps into society when they have far too much time on their hands.
Whenever a culture gets complacent without needing to deal with any dangers for a while, they tend to go a little nutty. Read the book or watch the movie for 1984 if you wanna learn more about this. But just to be short, peace causes people to have wacky ideals.
Throughout history, human beings have occasionally made the mistake of being far too generous with people not of their kith and kin. They had these ideals that everyone in the world has enough good in them, and we should care for them when we can. But the truth is that there is evil out there. There's evil nearby too. If there were no evil, all crime would suddenly just stop. But it hasn't.
The stag here is assumed to only being generous with the other animals as he makes zero attempt to stop them in the story. He had a kind and giving heart, but what he did not seem to factor in was that the other animals simply did not give a damn about whether he lived or died. And so.... they ate all his food and left the stag to rot.
Let's have a look at the official moral which was tagged along with the story:
Good will is worth nothing unless it is accompanied by good acts.
The others beasts were only acting nice. It was all fake. However the stag suffers just as much of the blame unfortunately. We do need to act with open eyes whenever we help others. And we should help others when we can! Just be aware so that you are not just going to be taken advantage of. Aesop understood this waaaaay back in Ancient Greece. It is a problem that we have to this day. Don't let the predators of the world exploit our good will and destroy everything we love.
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A good deed is only GOOD when its results are: Judge the tree by the fruit it bears. The stag starved and his "friends" ate snacks. Nothing was accomplished by anyone involved. The wages of sin is death... and the stag died.
ReplyDeleteThe stag certainly bore a lot of the blame. Sorry to say.
DeleteIndeed this is a great life lesson. Being purely selfless leaves us open to predators. We can and should do good deeds but should not cast pearls before swine and we have to be sure we can stand on our own two feet before lending a hand to others.
ReplyDeleteAnd there are so much swine out there!
DeleteThe other animals took advantage of his weakness. People are like that too: when they see a weakness they exploit it. They take what they want until there is nothing left.
ReplyDeleteThis fable is often only interpreted from only one angle. I saw a lot more in it.
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