How the Monkeys Saved the Fish

The rainy flavor that year had been the strongest e'er and the river had cleaved its banks. There were floods everywhere and the animals were all running upward into the hills. The floods came so fast that many drowned except the lucky monkeys who used their proverbial agility to climb upwardly into the treetops. They looked downwardly on the surface of the water where the fish were swimming and gracefully jumping out of the water equally if they were the simply ones enjoying the devastating inundation.

One of the monkeys saw the fish and shouted to his companion: "Look down, my friend, await at those poor creatures. They are going to drown. Practice y'all see how they struggle in the water?" "Yes," said the other monkey. "What a compassion! Probably they were late in escaping to the hills because they seem to have no legs. How can we salve them?" "I call up we must do something. Let'south go close to the border of the flood where the water is not deep plenty to cover us, and we tin can help them to get out."

So the monkeys did simply that. They started catching the fish, but not without difficulty. One by one, they brought them out of the water and put them advisedly on the dry out land. Afterwards a short time there was a pile of fish lying on the grass motionless. One of the monkeys said, "Do you lot come across? They were tired, merely now they are just sleeping and resting. Had information technology not been for us, my friend, all these poor people without legs would take drowned."

The other monkey said: "They were trying to escape from us because they could not understand our skillful intentions. But when they wake up they volition be very grateful because nosotros have brought them conservancy." (Traditional Tanzanian Folktale)

I was travelling home from Pasar Baroe with my family terminal Sunday, and I had no idea why we were somewhere around Pluit when my father started a conversation. We were going through a street with a river (not sure if information technology'due south natural) next to us, and we were able to encounter a lot of bird peddlers. My father then, probably aware of marvel in my eyes, informed me that they are sparrow peddlers. There are Buddhist temples effectually and so Buddhist community around besides, and they are buying sparrows, out of pity, to release them. It is counted as a adept human action. Of form, I didn't verify that information and you accept all the right to question the validity of it, but allow'southward assume that information is true and you can come across an interesting perspective from information technology.

And so, this is the simple story of it:

A bird peddler sells sparrows—A Buddhist buys sparrows and releases them—The bird peddler profits, he captures more sparrows—The Buddhist buys and releases more from the peddler—More people become bird peddlers, more than sparrows captured—More Buddhists buy and release sparrow—and so on

You can see that the compassion to assistance the sparrows have turned into the reason more than sparrows are captured. So, I come to conclusion that leaving the sparrows to die in the cage, or getting eaten, or whatsoever unfortunate events whatsoever befall to them, is ameliorate in aggregate, since it volition crush the market for sparrows with the absence of demand for it. Peddlers caused nothing but losses and they will stop capturing sparrows. Some sparrows, or a lot of sparrows, however will suffer earlier, just their relatives in the time to come volition take a better probability of not catastrophe in a cage at all. Indeed, in that location are too many assumptions and flaws in the model, just that is not the primary concern in this post.

I'm trying to take you to the interesting perspective in this story, just like the Tanzanian folktale above, that compassion does not necessarily issue in good ending. Compassion has been mistakenly overrated by the society equally far equally I find. The people effectually me keep emphasizing intention over result; things similar "at least you lot intent good, that's enough" and "the intention was proficient, information technology was just wrongly implemented". The monkeys had expert intention, the Buddhists had proficient intention, only it merely doesn't work that way. Pity is not enough, or worse, is not good in every scenario. Sounds morally wrong, I know, but it also sounds similar the truth.

What practise you think? Or experience?