Aesop and the meaning of life

Aesop’s fables used to command a prominent place in our collective consciousness. The ‘dumbing’ down of education that has characterised Western civilization over the last 25 years may mean that Aesop’s fables are fading into obscurity, but many of his phrases have become part of our vernacular. “The lions share”, “sour grapes”, and “cry wolf” are all Aesop’s; and while we may not always be aware of the fable behind the saying, they are evidence of the fable’s former influence in helping understand what is the meaning of life.

Given that Aesop was alive way back when Buddha was walking the earth (Aesop was reputedly a slave in Ancient Greece around 550BC) it raises the question why his fables have endured for as long as they have. What is it about them that resonate to cause us to pass them on for so many generations? Plato wrote that Socrates, alone in his prison, spent his time turning Aesop’s fables, which he knew by heart, into verse.

What I would like to do very briefly is employ the thinking of an Australian biologist that I have recently come across, to see if within his work I can’t find whether Aesop’s enduring popularity is because it sheds any light on the meaning of life..

Firstly then, to layout Griffith’s theory: Griffith believes that while genes can orientate a species they are ignorant of the nerves need to understand. If I can just tease those concepts out a bit, Griffith says that as our intellect emerged or evolved, it was ‘criticised’ by our instincts, and that the intellect had no choice but to retaliate against what was unwarranted criticism. The symptoms of this retaliation (he says), was an intellect characterised by anger (toward the criticism), alienation (because it tried to block out the criticism), and egocentricity (because it became insecure in the face of the criticism and as a result the intellect’s meaning of life with proving its worth). In a word, Griffith says, humanity became ‘upset’.

If this is true, then it follows societies must be made up of interacting ‘upset’ individuals, with all the tensions and bewilderment that would entail.

Let’s now look at bit closer at some of Aesop’s fables before seeing if Griffith’s theory might explain their attractiveness. A fable is a short, pithy animal tale, most often told or written with a moral tagged on in the form of a proverb. An example will be more educational than more description, so I will try to retell the Lion’s Share fable so we can have a look at it:

The lion, the jackal and the wolf went out hunting. Together they combined to pull down and kill a stag. At this point the lion put his forepaws on the dead animal and told the others to divide it into quarters. Once it was divided he proclaimed: “The 1^st quarter will go to me because I am the king; as the arbiter, the 2^nd quarter will also go to me as payment; the 3^rd quarter, well, that shall go to myself because of my part in the chase; as for the 4^th quarter – I dare you to touch it!” As the jackal and wolf slunk away unfed, the wolf mutters to him-self “you may share the labours of the great, but you will not share the spoil”.

It’s genuinely funny because it is so honest about our egocentricity – well mine anyway. In the 500 or so fables attributed to Aesop, they all follow the same formula: a brief tale followed by a moral. The morals range from cautionary messages such as ‘don’t cry wolf, because at some point you might really be in trouble’ to what appear to be simply insights into our human condition e.g. ‘we often despise what we can’t have’ i.e. sour grapes. Others, such as ‘slow and steady wins the race’, appear to point the way to success. None of them purport to explain the meaning of life.

If we employ Griffith, we see a world where people have had to attempt to balance their personal upsets with not only those of others, but also with the demands of living together in society. In this bewildering environment, Aesop does provide a way to live: it is a pragmatic one to be sure, but it is also insightful. If we are as benighted as Griffith suggests - all of us as ignorant as children at heart – then Aesop’s fables, while not providing the meaning of life, have probably acted as signposts to help us stay on track, so that one day we could work it all out.

You may also like to read another of my articles that also discusses fairy tales, The love of the Beluga Whale.