Leading from the Middle

“ONE WINTER a Farmer found a Snake stiff and frozen with cold. He had compassion on it, and taking it up, placed it in his bosom. The Snake was quickly revived by the warmth, and resuming its natural instincts, bit its benefactor, inflicting on him a mortal wound. ‘Oh,’ cried the Farmer with his last breath, ‘I am rightly served for pitying a scoundrel.’"

“The greatest kindness will not bind the ungrateful.”
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Recent events in the news move me to repost, from May 30, 2014, this classic fable.
Humans have had it in for out slithery friends since the Garden of Eden.
Unfairly so, I would say.
When living in the southeastern USA on a large forested lot with much ivy ground cover we were always alert to copperheads lurking beneath the verdant cover.
Did I kill them?
No, when doing yard work I made plenty of noise and moved cautiously. Bridger, our wonder dog, never was bitten – she was too bright to poke her nose at a snake.
And, I like to think the snakes knew we were OK and meant them no harm.
Many neighbors annually went into a snake-panic and were all for their annihilation.
Fortunately, one neighbor, a herpetologist, offered to come gather up any sighted snake and release them into a nearby forest.
He knew snakes were very important creatures in our eco-cycles.
To return to the fable.
The fable’s snake betrays his Good Samaritan.
Is this really a betrayal or is it the snake being a snake?
In brief, nature or nurture?
If nature, what else do you expect when you bring a poisonous snake into your house?
If nurture, then yes, this would be betrayal.
Betrayal, among humans, comes in many forms.
A person you promoted and defended at work turns on you, without explanation.
A reasonable young person goes to college and comes back a brain-washed radical who then wants to burn down everything that paid for his/her education. That’s nurture.
And, that is the most hurtful kind of betrayal.
You put your trust in that person and now they seek to harm you.
In my first iteration of this fable I cited a professional associate with a reptilian reputation. A predator at convention "happy hours", he would use his position as the head of a major public organization to entice young professionals into “friendships” with promises of employment. Fortunately, he was often “falling-down-drunk” so he rarely consummated those so-called friendships.
Was his behavior nature or nurture? Nurture, for me. Most jerks are products of nurture rather than nature.

*Source: AESOP'S FABLES By Aesop Translated by George Fyler Townsend (probably from this edition): “Three hundred and fifty Aesop's fables”. Chicago, Belford, Clarke & Co., 1886.
Available at Gutenberg.

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And, for the snake bitten corporate worker, there’s,
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© Copyright commentary by John Lubans 2023


@Copyright all commentary by John Lubans 2014 and 2023