It's Not Our Problem ...

POINT TO PONDER

"What the hell did we do to deserve this?" - BP CEO Tony Hayward, speaking to fellow executives in London about the Gulf oil spill disaster, May 2, 2010

STORYLINE (and a possible answer...)

Not Our Problem: A Tale from Burma and Thailand, retold by Margaret Read MacDonald

The King sat with his Adviser eating honey on puffed rice.
As they ate they leaned from the palace window and watched the street below.
They talked of this and that.
The King, not paying attention to what he was doing,
Let a drop of honey fall onto the windowsill.
"Oh sire, let me wipe that up," offered the Adviser.
"Never mind," said the King.
"It is not our problem.
The servants will clean it later."

As the two continued to dine on their honey and puffed rice,
The drop of honey slowly began to drip down the windowsill.
At last it fell with a plop onto the street below.
Soon a fly had landed on the drop of honey and begun
His own meal.
Immediately a gecko sprang from under the palace and with a flip
Of its long tongue swallowed the fly.
But a cat had seen the gecko and pounced.
Then a dog sprang forward and attacked the cat!

"Sire, there seems to be a cat and dog fight in the street.
Should we call someone to stop it?"
"Never mind," said the King.
"It's not our problem."
So the two continued to munch their honey and puffed rice.

Meanwhile the cat's owner had arrived and was beating the dog.
The dog's owner ran up and began to beat the cat.
Soon the two were beating each other.
"Sire, there are two persons fighting in the street now.
Shouldn't we send someone to break this up?"
The King lazily looked from the window.
"Never mind.
It's not our problem."

The friends of the cat's owner gathered and began to cheer him on.
The friends of the dog's owner began to cheer her on as well.
Soon both groups entered the fight and attacked each other.

"Sire, a number of people are fighting in the street now.
Perhaps we should call someone to break this up."
The King was too lazy even to look.
You can guess what he said.
"Never mind. It's not our problem."

Now soldiers arrived on the scene.
At first they tried to break up the fighting.
But when they heard the cause of the fight
Some sided with the cat's owner.
Others sided with the dog's owner.
Soon the soldiers too had joined the fight.

With the soldiers involved, the fight erupted into civil war.
Houses were burned down.
People were harmed.
And the palace itself was set afire and burned to the ground.
The King and his Adviser stood surveying the ruins.
"Perhaps," said the King,
"I was wrong?
Perhaps the drop of honey WAS our problem."

From Peace Tales: World Folktales to Talk About. c 1992 Margaret Read MacDonald (North Haven CT: Linnet Books).

Comments

[Sam]

Very true. Most of the major issues can be traced back to something small which was not rectified and things escalated. Thats why in engineering if we use the 5 Why's we are most likely to get to a root cause of a problem and then correct it to for the long term.

[RV Rajan]

I guess this is the Theory of Chaos...something small which we think may have no impact at all will hunt us down. At least this could have been controlled but not the butterfly flaps that would have altered the tornados.

[Mike Goodner]

The flip side of this is assumed accountability - even if you didn't have a hand in the initial problem, if you see it, you fix it. Or at least take the problem to someone who is equipped to fix it.

[micro CEO]

“The opposite of love is not hate, it's indifference. The opposite of art is not ugliness, it's indifference. The opposite of faith is not heresy, it's indifference. And the opposite of life is not death, it's indifference.”
-Eli Wiesel

[G3B]

Too Good an article. "It's not our problem" is mostly the common statement that remains the cause of all the problems. Each time someone says this statement, they forget to realize, what has happened to others or outside, will not take too long to impact them. If this can be fixed, most of the societal problems can be solved.