THE CLEVER MAN IN THE FABLE

The clever man did not know that he had been written about by Aesop, La Fontaine, The Grimm Brothers, Samaniego, Torres Rivera as part of a human tradition that was oral in its origins, and as old as when the species, for the first time, saw the human body’s reflection on the water, giving birth to the need to think about what it meant to be astute while believing to be above everyone else. He did not realize that the others were able to stir the waters and see more faces than the one the astute man saw. Centuries later, on stories about that man, animals were used as symbols to represent him  -a crow, perhaps, said some students of the narratives that connect us all-, as the narrators were afraid to be discovered and killed, until the tales were passed from one person to another, and someone else added another animal -a fox, most probably- that was more clever than the crow. And then, in stories told centuries later, the fox faced the hunter. And then, the hunter had to deal with humans who were not only clever but wise and were able to think according to the critique of pure reason. When humans moved from a fables’ approach to ruling the world and began to use more complex story telling decision making techniques found in many folk tales, little they knew that in the 21st Century there would be leaders who continue to think like characters in fables: to be astute as the highest mental quality a person is to have and to brag about it using the internet.