Invisiblock
Assumptions are bad when you take them as fact. Intentions can be good, but they can also be destructive. Leave room for doubt and error. Be aware that you don’t know what is good for yourself, much less for other people.
Imagine a fish swimming happily in a creek and a monkey sitting calmly in a tree above. The monkey notices the fish, and immediately rushes down the tree and into the creek.
“Kindly let me help you, or you will drown,” said the monkey, putting the fish safely up a tree.
- Place yourself in the monkey’s frame of reference. Why did it want to save the fish from drowning?
- Now, place yourself in the fish’s perspective. Is the fish safe in the tree?
- Suppose the monkey could go about the situation a different way. What could it do to improve the outcome?
Explanation
Alan Watts, who passed away in 1973, is one of my favorite modern-day philosophers. His monkey and fish parable is an example of what not to do. It means to show how having good intentions to help can cause harm instead.
You can see how the monkey’s intention was great, but do you see how it failed to picture things from the fish’s frame of reference? The monkey’s failure proves less helpful to and more disastrous for the fish. Imagine the monkey’s distraught when the fish passes out because it couldn’t breathe. If the monkey new how to view the larger picture of how the environment works, the tragedy could have been prevented.
Moral
The monkey’s intention to help was full of conceit because it assumed that “safe” meant “dry” and “in a tree”. Because it couldn’t imagine a world where living in water is safe, he caused irreparable harm by assuming the universal good.
How would the monkey know what is good for the fish? Does the monkey know what is good for itself? It projected its private reality onto the fish’s. It mistook its personal experience as objective fact. If the monkey had taken a moment use the objective view to zoom out of the situation, it may have come to a different conclusion.
The moral is to be careful of how you help others. It’s not always apparent what is good or bad, and your kind efforts can be interpreted as aggressive. When you help people, be aware of it.