- Gatac
- Apr 22, 2008
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Fifty Cent's next biopic.
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Op is asleep post parables
Children's Creche - The Story of the Righteous Woman posted:
A long time ago, in the world that was, we did not know the words "right" or "wrong". We were one, and we lived in one world. We took what we needed, we killed animals and ate their meat when we were hungry, we felled trees so that their wood might grant us shelter and fire.
One day, a woman stepped forward. She had thought about this, and she had decided for herself that things had to change. We were doing too much damage to the world, taking more than could regrow; should we not instead have the utmost respect for the bounty it had provided us for so long? We didn't understand, so she pointed to a nearby tree and said, Harm not the trees, nor the animals, nor the course of nature itself; that is exploitation, and exploitation is evil.
Well, we all felt that, indeed, we owed our lives to nature, so nobody disagreed.
Soon, we stopped taking things lightly. We came to her whenever we had to decide what to do, for she alone could tell what was right and wrong. A man came to her bearing an axe and said, There is a tree that is tall and made of tough wood that would build many good tools; may I fell it? But the woman said, No, you may not, for this tree is old and will not regrow within the lifetime of your children's children, and to fell it is exploitation. And a girl came to her bearing a bow and said, I have seen a family of beasts in the woods, a mother nursing her young, and I know their meat is sweet and filling; may I hunt them? But the woman said, No, you may not, for without the mother and her young, there will be no beasts at all come next year, and to hunt them is exploitation. We tried to reason with her; surely one tree could be felled, one beast slain? At last, she explained to us that we were wrong to think so. She said, We did not know better before when we did all these bad things; but now we do and we continue to exploit nature, thinking ourselves righteous because we only intend to harm it a little bit! There can be no degrees of evil; it is wrong, all of it, and when you fell a tree or shoot an animal, I shall think of it as if you wound me, too. We must only take what nature offers us freely.
Can you imagine what happened? Well, we would no longer use violence against nature. Every time someone raised the idea, the woman would cry out as if in great pain, and beg us to heed her words; and none could bear to disagree with her heartfelt pleas.
More and more we tried to save nature from ourselves. We walked far to find trees that had been felled by storms, even though their wood was rotten and brittle; and we ate animals that we found already dead, even though the meat smelled bad and made many of us sick; and we went and gathered fruits and berries, even though a day's work of gathering still left us hungry. And so our houses were fragile and drafty, our fires cool and smelly, our people sick and hungry. The woman had pleaded with us to make it so. But nobody wanted to contradict the woman; she had taught us that her cause was good, and we believed her. She became a righteous woman.
One day, a child came to the righteous woman and said, My grandfather is too sick to stand and too hungry to rest; he will not take what food we offer him, because he would rather see us fed. The righteous woman said, That is very noble of him; his suffering pains me, but surely he can take comfort in making the right decision. But the child said, Before we knew right and wrong, we all had plenty to eat, and we had warm fires and good houses, and we did not become too weak and sick to stand; why can't we have this now? The righteous woman shook her head; We are nothing without our principles, and to stray from them even one time is to admit that our principles are not principles at all, but mere opinion. One life, dear as it is, cannot be weighed against the threat of our moral ruin. At that, the child began to cry and shouted, Don't you care at all about the people? What use is being right if we're all going to starve and freeze and die for it?
Well, that child made the righteous woman very, very angry with all those questions! So she gathered her breath and shouted to the village, Still you do not understand what is right and what is wrong! Still you prize your own convenience and comfort over nature's glory! If this land cannot feed and shelter us with what it gives to us freely, then we have simply too many mouths to feed! It is sad that some of us will have to leave or pass away, but we will all be better off when we are fewer in number, because we will then finally be able to live in harmony with nature! We became very concerned with the righteous woman; no doubt she believed what she said, and was as hungry and cold as the rest of us, but we could not live in the way she wanted us to. We went to her and said, Forgive us, but we cannot live in a righteous way, and we will not give up our lives just to be right. This made the righteous woman even angrier! She shouted that we were worse than before, hearing the call to do right and not heeding it, and that if we could find no food or shelter here, it merely proved that we did not belong, and that the world would be better off without us! Well, we didn't want to fight with her, so we all turned around and left.
But at this the righteous woman realized that she was about to be alone, and would have nobody to turn to for company or help. She ran after the child, grasping a clutch of berries in her hands, and she shouted, See! See! This is what nature has provided us; let us go out together and gather more and thank nature for its bounty! But the child said, What bounty? I see around us everything that could feed us, but you won't let us take any of it, and I do not want to stay alone with you, I think you're crazy. And so the righteous woman ran after us, and she pointed at the bushes, a river and a tree hanging with some fruit, but we saw that it was not enough for all of us, so none of us wanted to stay, no matter how much she insisted. Finally the righteous woman said, Please, I cannot bear to be alone, why must you all be so stubborn and blind? Why can you not see what is so plainly right and wrong? And we said, What is right and wrong to you is not right and wrong to us; you have lost all perspective in the pursuit of righteousness. At this, the righteous woman cried out, Are you mad? White is white and black is black; what argument can you offer that it is right to hurt nature? And we said, There can be no right and wrong that is absolute; what we praise and condemn must be tempered always with kindness, not just to nature, but to ourselves, too. Principles may guide our decisions, but they exist from us and for us, not for their own sake. Believe what you will and sacrifice for it what you wish, but do not let your principles stand between someone and what they need to live. At this, the righteous woman at long last said, What was right for me was wrong for you, and in saving nature I was blind to how much I harmed us; please stay here with me! We asked the righteous woman, Will these lands feed and shelter us?, and the righteous woman said, I shall show you the trees that grow fast and true, that we might fell a few without harming the forest, and I shall show you the beasts that are not needed to replenish the herd, that we might hunt a few without driving them all away. And so we stayed, and took no more trees than the land could grow, and killed no more beasts than would be born in the spring.
The righteous woman learned about compromise, and it was good.
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May 13, 2018 17:03
