There is a fable about human nature I don’t want to forget.<\/p>\n\n\n
Here it is as retold by Sahil Bloom:<\/p>\n\n\n
A man and his son were bringing their donkey to the market.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
As they were walking along the path, a man passed them and said: “You fools, what is a Donkey for but to ride upon?”<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
So the man put the boy on the donkey and continued. They passed a group of men, one of whom said: “See that lazy youngster, he lets his father walk while he rides.”<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
So the man ordered his boy to get off, and got on himself. They passed two women, one of whom said to the other: “Shame on that lazy lout to let his poor little son trudge along.”<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
So the man took his boy up with him on the donkey. People began to jeer: “Aren\u2019t you ashamed of yourself for overloading that poor donkey?”<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
So the man and boy got off and carried the donkey on their shoulders. As they crossed a bridge, it kicked loose, fell over the side, and drowned.<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
Viewed from the perspective of the man and his son, the traditional moral goes something like this:\u00a0<\/i>“Please all, and you will please none.”<\/i><\/p>\n\n\n
But I too easily identify with the critics along the road and so I read it as a fable about how inclined we are to sit in judgement of others, even when we know next to nothing about their situation.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n
So I might state the moral along these lines: “Those who are being judged simply cannot win.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
There is a fable about human nature I don’t want to forget. Here it is as retold by Sahil Bloom: A man and his son were bringing their donkey to the market. As they were walking along the path, a man passed them and said: “You fools, what is a Donkey for but to ride […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[119,121,120,122],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7234","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-donkey","category-fable","category-judging","category-parable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7234"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7235,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7234\/revisions\/7235"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7234"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7234"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevegrossblog.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7234"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}