Jul
8th
2020
The Boy Who Cried Wolf · 7:14am Jul 8th, 2020
The first day the boy cried “wolf!”, and so the villagers ran to him. He laughed, and they left. He laughed because they had not seen the yellow eyes in the woods they'd scared away.
The second day the boy cried “wolf!”, and so they people ran to him. He laughed, and they left. He laughed because they had not seen the long prowling shape that had crept away when the villagers came.
The third day the boy cried "wolf!", and none of the villagers came. The wolf grapped the boy by the neck and dragged him into the woods. And the villagers said; “If only he hadn’t lied before, we would have come!”
Might be hard to find but the Muppets version of this story was amazing.
I don't remember the boy actually seeing something in the version that I was told. Changes the story, a bit.
Amazing what a small addition can do for an age-old fable.
It seems to me like the boy is, as in the traditional version, still the one at fault here, which I'm not sure was what you intended? My thoughts on this, in case you find them useful:
For a start, it's not clear to me whether the boy genuinely saw the wolf, or whether this was actually a "there was a cow, but you saw a bush with a sheet over it" situation, with the boy either being mistaken about what was the wolf or just, as in the traditional version, lying. I think that latter one is actually implied by the phrasing of "He laughed because they had not seen"; what would that mean, if not something along the lines of him not believing there was a wolf, and therefore being able to laugh because the villagers had not seen the truth and corrected him?
Even if he did genuinely see and report the wolf, though, while he's then not being dishonest and is actually spotting the wolf, probably significantly less bad from a virtue ethics standpoint, he still seems to be neglecting his duty as guard. Did he not say where he saw the wolf, when the villagers asked him the first and second time where it was? Are we to believe that none of them went to investigate the area, knowing that leaving when a crowd of defensive people show up to fight off the wolf is something a wolf might do? Are we also to believe that the wolf left no evidence of its presence, either time, no disturbed vegetation, no footprints, such that the villagers became convinced that the boy was not just mistaken but outright lying? And the story does imply that the boy's reaction, laughter, when the villagers arrived was a significant part of why they deemed his reports lies.
(Also, I'm guessing that, rather being a random thing, this is meant to apply to some aspect of the current political situation; I'm not sure which, but I thought that, if that was the case, it was more important to point out the potential lack of clarity.
But, you know, given everything going on at the moment, I can't be entirely sure that "Sometimes people tell what they think are malicious lies that a particular threat exists, but it turns out, after they've lost all credibility on the subject, that the threat actually does exist, and they and the people they lied to all suffer from it." wasn't the intended moral. Not even sure which specific thing that would apply to.)
(Sorry if this is a lot of overanalysis.)
5303388
How would you feel if I said the intended point of the story was actually the extent people rationalize the consequences to victims as their own fault?
ah, I was about to told this from perspective of wolves (who "thanks" to human actions often on biologically-endangered list, for now), but I lack skills ..
"Once wolf heard some humans, and tried to warn her people away from those, but they were found and killed none the less.
Second wolf heard about humans and tried to whisper about them, but humans burned whole forest just because they saw it necessary.
Third wolf heard about humans, and really tried to be The Good Wolf - he end up in a zoo.. with usual logic applied to his comrade..
and so on, and SO ON ... Hail Humans, Great Kings of Earth!"
But some days ago Julian pointed out few unknown for me stories, I waited for another MrNumber's blogpost for posting those in comments (because Australia!)
http://passionnature78.canalblog.com/archives/2008/06/04/9442980.html
https://www.lechorepublicain.fr/emance-78125/actualites/une-centaine-de-kangourous-sauvages-vivent-dans-la-foret-de-rambouillet_11554425/#refresh
Mildly tangential, but I was reminded of this, 'cause Garak is awesome.
5303394
Hm. Well, obviously it did provoke substantial thought in me, which came out in text longer than the story itself, so it has that going for it for that meaning, potentially. I'm still not sure you made it sufficiently clear that it wasn't in large part the boy's fault, though, if that's what you were going for; even something as simple as saying that the boy was laughing because the wolf had been scared away rather than because the other villagers hadn't seen the wolf might help. The story doesn't seem to be presenting the boy as trying to the best of his ability to convince the villagers of the existence of the wolf and being misunderstood or ignored. It is, of course, possible there is evidence in support of the boy which is not in the story presented -- but we don't have that to work with.
Not that the boy's the only one at fault, of course; if the villagers believed he was lying about the wolf, there's the question of why they left him on guard duty, at least still alone, instead of bringing in someone more reliable. Potentially there are unknown extenuating circumstances there, too, of course, but we also don't know that.
Basically, I think that it's important for the story, if that's the intended point, for it to be clear that the villagers weren't actually just correct. If someone in their right mind and fully capable of reading and understanding the "DANGER: HIGH VOLTAGE" signs then ignored them and the fence, touched the wrong bit of metal, and got electrocuted, there's a debate to be had, potentially, about whether things were sufficiently secured (and potentially, in the real world with imperfect information, whether the victim was, say, able to see and understand the signs), but at some point one does just have to say "They did as much as they reasonably could to make it safe and beyond that to warn the victim of the danger, and the victim went ahead and did the dangerous thing anyway".
If, say, a police officer, or a lot of police officers, had a habit of treating random darker-skinned people very, unfairly, and sometimes lethally harshly, well, those police officers are thinking people who are supposed to not do that, supposedly. Something's wrong on the side of the danger; they should know better, for a start, and maybe they shouldn't have even been there to begin with, and to put blame on the random darker-skinned people who were just minding their own business would be unfair. But they are, again, thinking people, operating in a structure created and run by other thinking people; they can know better, and so the solution shouldn't have to be just telling the random darker-skinned people to stay away.
Not all dangers are like this, however. A high voltage line does not have racial bias: it will fully fairly and with no way of reasoning with it electrocute anyone who touches it the wrong way; here, the long-term solution really is just to avoid it, and from an organizational perspective make it easier for the public to avoid it, if you don't want to do away with it all together (and unlike an organization such as a specific police system, in which many other different arrangements of people could provide the same services, doing away with all high voltage lines means just not having high voltage lines).
In the situation in the story, especially with the context of the traditional story in mind, it'd be very surprising if the boy or villagers, say, just trained all the wolves, or wiped them out, or somehow found the resources to build a wolf-impermeable wall all around their sheep pastures. In the small world-piece of the story, the wolf threat is something the villagers cannot eliminate; they can only guard against it and respond to individual wolves. It is, in the story, as implacable as the high voltage line; it cannot be eliminated or reasoned with, only kept away. The boy, having presumably grown up in the village and been placed on wolf guard duty, should know this, and know that the other villagers have important work to do (which is why they're not just all out on wolf guard duty). He should know that his job is important, and that he must do it well to prevent danger to himself and, through the loss of the village's livestock, to the survival of the village. The boy then either actively lies about sighting a wolf or gives the impression he has actively lied about it, through not just a neutral lack of evidence but an active emotional reaction suggesting such. If there are extenuating circumstances, we are not told about them. The villagers, having based on the evidence available to them adjusted their assessment of the boy's alarms from "there's almost certainly a wolf" to "there's a very small probability of a wolf" place themselves and the boy in danger by not replacing the faulty sensor, as it were, but act appropriately for the most probable-to-them-looking, if in this case wrong, situation.
As opposed to a situation where, say, we can observe a mixed group of random darker-skinned people and random lighter skinned people, see a police system interact with them and sort them into the categories of Corpses, Prisoners, and Free Citizens, and then observe that the color balance of the sorted groups seems curiously different than that of the of mixed group. There, if another such sorting happened, we could look back and see that it did appear to be in line with the evidence, rather than looking back and seeing that the groups previously seemed to have the same color balance but the darker-skinned people were saying that they didn't, then laughing.
Which, I clarify, is not what I think you believe or meant to say, but it is the sort of thought that the information in the story itself, without considering what else I know of you, led me to think of.
[looks up]
Ah, sorry about the length of that...
5303401 The Media who cried Russia!
(Hey, somebody had to say it)
I get that there's a deeper point that ia right; but honestly there's enough other ways the boy could have fixed this that I don't think it works.
5303406
I'm sorry lol, this is hilarious. Literally "well he wasn't trying hard enough!" Kinda like how people shit on rape victims for not screaming "help" loud enough.
Meanwhile "black people shouldn't riot they should peacefully petition."
fucking lul I don't even give a shit about that novel you wrote, as far as I'm concerned this invalidates your entire line of reasoning you smoothbrained banana.
5303423
Reese means well
5303418
I think because the point of this is to address the idea that any and all actions of the victim will be rationalized as justifying their victimization, making his faultlessness clear would undercut that. He didn't need to be faultless, and the reader's drive to assign blame to him for it because of that is part of the intended reading.
It's just a bad impulse I disagree with.
Be reasonable. I have to eat something.
5303423
"I'm sorry lol, this is hilarious. Literally "well he wasn't trying hard enough!" Kinda like how people shit on rape victims for not screaming "help" loud enough."
The boy did scream for help, literally, and obviously loud enough because people rallied. Twice, even after he'd made a very poor impression the first time and, at least from the information presented in the story, failed to provide any information to track the wolf, or find any evidence of it, with. It's also worth noting that the story leaves it at best unclear whether he actually did see the wolf at all, or was just lying and happening to be right, and it's also worth noting that, at least using the context of the traditional story, he wasn't just some random person but someone specifically set to guard against, among other things, wolves.
"Meanwhile "black people shouldn't riot they should peacefully petition.""
That sort of false equivalency is exactly the sort of thing I'm worried about.
The police, the authorities that control the police, and the people abused by the police there are all part of the same community; what should have happened is, yes, a peaceful complaint about the abuse, followed by the authorities solving the problem. Obviously, that second part did not happen, the complaints and objections got louder and louder with the system still failing, and here we are today. But in theory, those abused should have been able to rely on the authorities to rein in their badged abusers; that that didn't happen and things escalated to this point is not the fault of the victims, but of the system that failed to protect them from itself.
The hungry wolves are not part of the same community as the village. It doesn't matter if the village has wonderful relations with everyone all the way up the feudal hierarchy. Even if it's the king's favorite place in the entire realm and messengers from the village get priority over everyone else, he still has no more ability to just order the wolves to stop attacking the sheep and villagers than any random villager does.
The police problem, unless we're supposing some sort of armed police revolt, can be solved by just ordering changes to the police and related systems; the issue is that so far, effective orders to that effect haven't been given. The wolf problem cannot be solved by giving orders to the wolves, because the wolves will just ignore them; a different approach is needed, and not everything that applies in one situation applies in the other.
Also, I don't think personal insults are productive here; I'm not sure I should have replied to you at all, really, and I don't plan to if you reply to this with the same quality of politeness.
5303430
"Reese means well"
Thanks. :)
re your reply to Krack-Fic Kai:
Hm. Interesting. Well, it does seem to work, then, and I can certainly see you're well-intentioned too, as expected. Still not sure if I agree, but it's interestingly complex.
On the one hand, it seems dangerous to blur differences between unfair victim blaming and cases where the victim actually was at significant fault, especially cases where the latter might still look like unfair victim-blaming at some point. In real life, of course, things are complicated by imperfect information, but I worry that treating something as unfair victim blaming and having it turn out it wasn't unfair undermines efforts against cases where it is unfair.
On the other, though, I can see that it at least could be a useful illustration of bias, showing a tendency to blame the victim either way. But I'm still not sure if this is a poorly executed attempt at that or a really well executed one.
I think on the whole I'm still leaning more towards the former, but thanks for the discussion.
(I think I'd also say that there's a difference between assigning fault (which can lead to improved future performance through an analysis of what went wrong) and justifying the victim's victimization (which can lead to things staying bad or getting worse, since the people most hurt "deserved it"), but I also realize that that seems to be something very prone to getting blurred in people's minds.)
This certainly does seem to have sparked a lot of thought from just a few lines, at least, so I think we can say it's a success there!
Wait, but why did he laugh? In what situation does it make sense for someone to call for help from a legitimate threat and then laugh when the people that are supposed to help him ignore it and don't lend any aid? Why didn't he point out the evidence of the wolf or get some kind of gang together to hunt it down, especially after the second day when it becomes clear that the wolf is gonna keep coming back? I'm trying to figure out what the moral is supposed to be here, and the best I can tell the moral is, "don't laugh at people that are trying to help but don't understand?"
5303556
Oh no this child didn't handle the situation perfectly, must've been his fault.
5303586
Oh, so that's the theme? It does seem like it fits the story. I do think we should be careful with victim blaming, though.
I dunno about this; given that the narrative emphasis on the boy's laughter seems to imply that he would've gotten help if he just hadn't been a dick to the townspeople, this parable feels like it (unintentionally, I both assume and hope) promotes the "hey, racist cops/violent militias/literal nazis may be bad, but lacking civility is the real crime" school of thought.
For my part, I believe that well-mannered nazis are rather worse than the ethical but rude.
5303556
I’m guessing the shepherd laughed here because he laughed in the original fable, which MrNumbers was directly reinterpreting. He was constrained by the source material. It’s a bit of a clumsy fit IMO, but it doesn't really change or invalidate the point he’s trying to illustrate – that people are often too quick to judgement based on incomplete information, and that victims often get retroactively blamed over their own perceived failure.
Obviously you could rewrite the story to make it so the shepherd reacted differently, described the wolf, moved his flock elsewhere, bought guard dogs, built a fence, gathered a wolf-hunting posse, etc., etc.; but then it would cease to be a reinterpretation of the original material and it was all besides the point MrNumbers was trying to convey.
5303697
Or he laughed because the villagers asked “Where’s the wolf?” after he 1) screamed, and 2) a bunch of people came running and yelling, and what wolf will stick around in those circumstances?
I’ve laughed when asked, “Why didn’t you leave that house?” when I was squatting, because where else would I go? Back to the shelter where I was hurt, or in the snow? Because people totally think homeless people choose that, instead of realizing that SSI is less than $10k/year, and housing is difficult to get when you’re fully disabled and housing prices are beyond you w/o a subsidy.
5303593
Perhaps the sarcasm was a bit much, I just find it funny you were so hung up on the laughing. Like you were getting caught in that detail and accidentally or deliberately blaming the boy for his own death because... he laughed. Sure you could interpret it a bunch of ways but in the end he still died a preventable death if only the villagers had listened.
5303792
There were many ways his death could've been prevented. If the villagers actually believed him the first two times then it would be pretty sensible for him to ask them to hunt the wolf. He also could've survived if the wolf hadn't been there, or if he had refused to go work again because he knew the wolf could come back. The wolf is ultimately most to blame for the boy's death, but it would be silly to say that the boy had no hand in his death whatsoever, and also silly to place significant blame on villagers for not acting when they weren't presented with any proof.
It seems that Number's wrote this version of the fable to show that people will go to great lengths to prove that a victim is guilty for being victimized. But if he wanted to do that, maybe he should've actually had the villagers refuse to accept proof or turn down the boy's call for help. They believed him and showed up the first two times, and he didn't give them any reason to think he was telling the truth. Honestly I'd say they went to greater lengths to help him out of pure trust than they did to rationalize his death as his own fault.
Maybe the boy was just really into that sort of thing and that's why he was laughing and screaming the whole time? Sounds like someone having fun.
5303798
This is six lines man, the original wasn't the goddamn Lord of the Rings. This and the original are short and simple and that's the point. It says right there that the villagers didn't see any signs of the wolf after it fled. Who's to say the kid didn't try to tell them? Clearly they didn't believe him anyway so it doesn't matter. Nothing proves more the point of this blog than you needing such extensive proof and detail to not blame the boy for his own death.
5303697
This.
5303694
The idea was that the laughter was being misinterpreted, to recontextualize the original fable. The fact that everyone still found a way to blame him for laughing wasn't meant to be the moral: It's a punchline.
5303832
The story doesn't say the boy is dead, or even harmed at all. Perhaps the wolf carried him off to raise him as one of her own? Why are you jumping to the worst possible conclusions about this wolf who kept bringing laughter and joy? Sounds pretty prejudiced to me. Shrek didn't die on the cross just so you could make snap judgments about characters in fairy tales.
5304013
Aw dude you're the kid from the story? Did you keep fucking dogs after you grew up or are you not there yet?
... additional thoughts. May be those ultrashort tales can be politized a bit more - because, you know, villages in feudal/capitalist times not just hang out there, there is pressure to make 'product', there is hierarchy inside and outside it ....
As for boy ..well, may be he was modern internet cynic who was about to discover roots of this movements ....
As for 'dogs' themselves .... I dunno if I really can recommend this (because as I learned hard way even documentary omits and skews picture a lot ..!), but may be just for few first minutes:
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/xxtxlq
("A Woman Among Wolves")
For example under another video there is such text:
- yeah, usual human shit ...WHY those farmers so afraid? Because they already sucked dry by current capitalistic system yet have no means to admit it and resist it? Wolves become scapegoats for our unability to recognize root of the problem ....
5304073
Once you've experienced wolf dick, you'll never settle for anything less. You'd know that if you went outside the village and lived a little.
what the fuck just happened
5304308
Ah sorry this is just shitposting now I'll delete that and skedaddle.
Why's this kid keep going next to the woods? In the original Aesop he's just a stupid shepherd boy pulling japes, and there's no wolf. He's totally secure in taking his sheep to that pasture because he knows there's no real danger. In this he knows for a fact that there's a fucking wolf in there, and he doesn't even have any sheep, so why is he going to the goddamn wolf-infested edge of town? He's a dummy and that's why he deserved to get eaten.
Where's this kid's parents? Hope they got locked up for neglecting their idiot son and not spanking him because he keeps dicking around with the goddamn wild carnivores.
This is me taking this snippet of a fable hyper-literally, of course. I know what you're trying to do, didactically, but man this kid was stupid.
5304603
God, I'm sorry, I wasn't telling you off, I laughed like a hyena, I just woke up to that comment chain extremely confused how we got here
5304983
Guess I was a bit trigger happy on that delete then, oh well. At least some small good came from it.
i've been kind of sitting on replying to this but i've been thinking a lot about it and i have this to say: i feel like all the comments saying "why didn't the boy do more" is kind of...illustrating the point
the question isn't "why didn't the boy do more to convince the village" it's "Why didn't the village do more to ensure the boy's safety." Emphasizing the former is why victims tend to not come forward. And that's even taking into account that he laughed when they came running (people behave weird under duress- and i mean, stress laughter IS a thing)