Friday Fable: Aesop’s “THE BELLY AND THE MEMBERS”*

Posted by jlubans on December 27, 2013

20131227-bellyfable*.jpeg
Caption: The belly as a dropped capital “O”.
“The Members of the Body once rebelled against the Belly. ‘You,’ they said to the Belly, ‘live in luxury and sloth, and never do a stroke of work; while we not only have to do all the hard work there is to be done, but are actually your slaves and have to minister to all your wants. Now, we will do so no longer, and you can shift for yourself for the future.’ They were as good as their word, and left the Belly to starve. The result was just what might have been expected: the whole Body soon began to fail, and the Members and all shared in the general collapse. And then they saw too late how foolish they had been.”

In short, the proverbial cutting off your nose to spite your face. And, so it goes when one part of an organization fails to recognize and appreciate the value of the other parts. There are libraries where departments do not speak to each other – it takes an emissary bearing a white flag to cross the line traced across the office floor in library glue and date due slips.
More notorious are university teaching departments in which faculty have not spoken to each other in 30 years, nor made a significant contribution to scholarship. Academic Deans dare not tread into this No Man’s Land. A Provost might – with trepidation – knock on the departmental door, but why bother – no one’s there. We are told intra-department communication (e.g. Who is going to teach those pesky freshmen?) is handled by the Swiss Embassy.

*Source: AESOP'S FABLES A NEW TRANSLATION BY V. S. VERNON JONES WITH AN INTRODUCTION By G. K. CHESTERTON AND ILLUSTRATIONS BY ARTHUR RACKHAM (Publisher: London: W. Heinemann; New York: Doubleday, Page & Co., 1912).
Available at Gutenberg.

Leading from the Middle Library of the Week: University of Cumbria, UK


Copyright John Lubans 2013
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