The Riddle of the Donkeys  (A parable with commentary)

by Tim Cimino

One day someone gave a talk about world peace. During a question-and-answer period that followed the talk an argument broke out between two people. One woman said that, above all, environmental destruction needed to be addressed first, since if we ruin this planet, we'd have nowhere to go. But another woman disagreed, saying that people needed to get their own acts together first, since otherwise they wouldn't be effective at promoting environmental change. 

But then six others joined the argument, each with another priority: One man said that the economy needed to be strengthened since it was what truly undergirded contemporary society. Another man said health care was the most pressing issue, because its rising costs were sapping the economy. One woman disagreed and said that politics needed to be cleaned up first, because they controlled both the economy and the health care industry. Another woman disagreed with her, saying that children's education deserved priority, since after all, children were the future. Then someone added that if there were a nuclear war there wouldn't be a future. Another man said that one's spiritual life needed to be nurtured before anything else. As they argued and tempers flared, one who had been silent all along called for their attention and said, "Once there were eight donkeys yoked to one hub like the spokes of a wheel. In front of each donkey was a pile of hay. Each donkey saw only the pile in front of it, and so naturally tried to pull the others so it could reach its pile and eat. Unfortunately they were all equally strong and equally obstinate. None of the donkeys could reach their food. Filled only with anger, they all were slowly starving to death, only inches away from their food. And so, can any of you solve the riddle of how to feed the donkeys?" 

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There are at least three ways to interpret the story. One is to see the riddle as a simple objective question: "What is the real root cause of people's suffering?" In other words, which of the problems mentioned in the story (or what other problem) is the one to address first in order to produce the maximum benefit for humanity and the world? To properly answer this riddle, we'd need to survey people's actual situations around the world and then rationally weigh the pros and cons of each person's position. Ideally, we'd end up with a list of problems, their linkages, the order to solve them in, and the list of solutions. 

Another interpretation of the riddle is more sophisticated.  It's to ask questions like: "Why did all these people come up with such wildly different answers?"  "Why are they so locked into their own way of looking at the world?"  "Why are they so threatened by the other people's viewpoints?" And, most importantly, "How can we get people to drop their subjective and partial worldviews and the defenses that lock them into these views so that they can address the more objective riddle?"   In other words, "Why are people such jackasses? Why are they sometimes like stubborn donkeys, trotting around so sure of themselves and so unwilling to strive for a fuller, more objective worldview?"

As you can see, if you don't first bring the more sophisticated problem of people's subjectivity to their attention, they will have little chance of success in addressing the overt problems in a rational fashion. Or let me put this more directly: If I don't remind you that you probably have many biases, distortions and omissions in your worldview, then you are bound to reject or undervalue the methods which I present to identify and address the more overt "world-sized" problems. To use an analogy: If you keep a pebble (something small) in front of your eye you won't clearly see the way up the mountain, the way to address the world-sized problem (something big). Surprisingly then, you could say the small problem of subjectivity is "bigger" than any of the big ones, because if it's not addressed then the others won't be effectively addressed either. 

One major source of subjectivity is self-interest. We magnify the importance of things that interfere with our desires; and we diminish the importance of things that don't personally affect us or our loved ones. Another source of subjectivity is the tendency to magnify the importance of things that we can see and measure and to ignore or diminish the importance of things we can't easily label or measure. Many invisible environmental problems or complex economic trends affect us, but the newspapers are filled with the accident of the day and the murder of the week. The culture and religion of some readers will cause them to disagree with or disbelieve some things I write automatically, without conscious thought. Of course, my own subjectivity cannot be ignored either. 

A third interpretation of the story is also possible: Perhaps the whole discussion about world peace was insincere. If I ask you, "What do you think everyone should do in order for there to be world peace?" it's essentially a useless question since you'd be talking about what others should be doing. Most of us aren't in positions of authority to dictate what others should do. But if I ask, "What do you think is the best thing you could do to improve the world?" it's a more practical question. Moreover, each person is entitled to their answer, especially if they intend to act on what they said. 

But instead of calling the discussion topic insincere, it might be even better to say that the people of the story were in an insincere frame of mind. Here's why I say this: Imagine that I entered the room and interrupted their argument by saying, "My teenage daughter was just in a car accident. It's very serious and she will die unless we find someone with a certain tissue match or blood type." I believe that most of the people would quickly change to a practical frame of mind and cooperatively problem-solve, even though a minute earlier they had been mutually hostile and arguing about something they had very little control over. 

I have personally been party to these insincere discussions many times. Sometimes I was the person with the bright idea for saving the world. Other times I was a member of the group who felt compelled to burst the bubble of the wide-eyed idealist. Indeed, there are many people who become infatuated with some economic, political or social theory that they think is the answer to everything. Many deserve to have their bubble quickly burst because their notions are simplistic. Vegetarianism, capitalism, democracy and the biblical prohibition of high interest rates may all be good things, but they are not total solutions. It seems human nature to yearn for one answer that will solve everything, elegantly and completely. Unfortunately, looking for one solution is like looking for the one miracle food that will meet all our body's needs. Yet those of us who remember that the body requires many vitamins, hence many essentials, automatically dismiss the fanatics who claim a certain food is perfect. 

Perhaps one summary of the Riddle is that there are three hidden "meta-problems" that keep people from constructively addressing the problems that humanity faces: First, people can't even agree on a diagnosis of what the root cause or causes of the world's problems are.  Second, people's subjectivity is a major hindrance to productive dialogue. Finally, people's insincerity is sometimes a hindrance to productively solving some of our mutual problems.