A Parable For Our Time [View All]

[Plaid Adder]

My partner just discovered a book in a second-hand shop by someone named Sheldon B. Kopp entitled If You Meet The Buddha On The Road, Kill Him! She remembered it from when she was growing up--she read it at some point in high school--so she bought it. It turns out to be about the experience of going through therapy, but she just told me this story from it that struck me as so appropriate to contemporary American politics that I had to share.

Kopp says that he got this out of a text called "The Way of the Sufi." Anyway, here's the story, paraphrased by me because I don't have the book in front of me:

A traveller left his own country and entered the place known as the Land of Fools. {So, right away you can see the connections.} He was told by some of the inhabitants about a fearsome monster that lived in a field. When they brought him to see it, he discovered that the 'monster' was a watermelon. He offered to kill the 'monster' for them. He cut the watermelon off the stalk, sliced it up, and began eating it.

To his great surprise, the people, far from thanking him, became terrified of him. "He's killed the monster!" they said. "He'll kill us next!" And they eventually drove him out of the country.

At around the same time, another traveler came to the same country, and the same thing happened. But this traveler, when he saw the watermelon, said, "Indeed it is a fearsome monster. Let us withdraw to a safe place so that we can study its habits more closely." By this means he gained their trust, and working very carefully over many months he was able not only to get them over their fear of watermelons, but to teach them how to cultivate them themselves.

Kopp winds up by saying that the moral is, "The truth does not make people free. Facts do not change attitudes."

You can see how this would appeal to a therapist as a metaphor for what you have to do with an anxious client; but it also seems to me that it explains a lot about American politics. For instance, say that same-sex marriage is the 'monster.' My overpowering impulse is to go out there and say, "See? It's just a fucking watermelon! Look, it's harmless, and it's also tasty!" Which is just going to convince the people in the Land of Fools to say, "Kids, keep away from the crazy woman."

Unfortunately, the people who have gained the villagers' trust have no interest in getting them over their fear of watermelons, and instead have been running around for the past few years dressing up everything they can find as a watermelon, until the poor villagers can't even turn around without freaking out.

Ah well,

The Plaid Adder