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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank

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To: Poet who wrote (23229)	8/20/2001 11:21:22 AM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) of 82486

rather than the personal invective that's become de rigueur here. Reasonable responses flow from reasonable positions. One day in the jungle a lioness began to run with jackals. For a while this worked--even though she felt that her values were different somehow. When they ate, they always found carcasses that had been previously killed. They pounced on the work of others. Then they ripped the meat savagely while strutting about proclaiming their moral goodness, and vaingloriously pimping their sense of self importance. Finally the lioness left. She realized that she was not one of them. She said to them: "I am not one of you. I will detach from you; I will go my way. I will try to avoid you at the river so that neither of us are offended." But the jackals were furious that a lioness should ignore their feeding games. Even though she no longer ran with them or talked to them, or even noticed them--they were too small minded to extend the same courtesy. They needed to prove the "superiority" of jackal morality...by demonstrating it. And they had never done anything face to face. They had always fed off old carcasses--and snarled menacingly (even at one another) as they "impressed" the animals who lurked in the jungle--non intrusive gentle folk who secretly laughed at the spectacle, and dismayed at the shame which was come to their jungle home. So attacking from the rear came natural to them. Undoubtedly a built-in preference. They will never know what it is like to be a lioness or a lion. The lioness still ignores them; and they still spend all their time trying to convince the jungle that they are not jackals. I forget where I read this. Perhaps it was Aeschylus's fables. I like animal stories. Did you ever read Ernest Thompson Seaton (sic?) when you were a wee one?? I remember one about Old Lobo the wolf, who was heroic... BTW, Poet. When I read that story it put me in mind of the lurkers that contribute their quiet wisdom through their silence. I have a theory that lurkers are, by their nature, less aggressive and less intrusive than many of us who post. These "quiet ones" are the storehouse of much of the wisdom, tolerance, and good will which exists behind the scenes on these threads. Their ability to detach is admirable. If we could all only hear what they hear...

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