Those thinking beyond one moment — past what seems salient and people ascendant momentarily — would benefit appreciating that the greatest predictor of the future is not some eminent political theorist, historically or contemporaneously, but rather the keen commentator Theodor Seuss Geisel, who wrote under the nom de plume Dr. Seuss.
Dr. Seuss’ classic 1958 “Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories” explains everything needed to understand contemporary society’s Achilles’ heel:
Wikipedia documents that, “The eponymous story revolves around Yertle the Turtle, king of the pond (located on the faraway island of ‘Sala-ma-sond’), where all the turtles swim happily. Dissatisfied with the stone that serves as his throne (it’s too small for him to rule the landscape beyond the pond), Yertle commands the other turtles to stack themselves beneath him so that he can see farther and expand his kingdom, each time marveling at what he believes he now rules. However, the stacked turtles are in pain.
A turtle named Mack, who has a checkerboard-style shell and is at the bottom of the pile, is bearing the brunt of the suffering. Mack asks Yertle for a respite, but Yertle just tells him to be quiet. Yertle decides to further expand his kingdom and commands more and more turtles to add to his throne and rises above everything he sees. Mack makes a second request for a respite because the increased weight is now causing extreme pain and hunger to the turtles at the bottom of the pile.
Again, Yertle yells at Mack to be quiet. Yertle then notices the moon rising above him as the night approaches. Furious, he decides to call for even more turtles in an attempt to rise above it. Before he can give the command, Mack decides he has had enough. He burps, which shakes up Yertle’s throne and tosses the turtle king off the turtle stack and into the water, leaving him ‘King of the Mud’ and allowing the others to once again swim free, ‘as turtles, and maybe all creatures, should be.’”
Aesop’s Fable Number 133, “The Dog and Its Reflection,” conveyed the same message, two and a half millennia before “Yertle the Turtle.” Aesop lived between 620 and 564 BCE in Ancient Greece. Aesop’s insights remain relevant.
John Lydgate, writing in the 15th century, expressed Aesop’s thought laconically, “Who all coveteth, oft he loseth all.”
Those dissatisfied with the attainable, overreaching, are guilty of hubris, one of the seven deadly sins; also described as pride:
Quoting Wikipedia again, “Pride is known as hubris (from the Ancient Greek üßpis) or futility; it is considered the original and worst of the seven deadly sins — the most demonic — on almost every list. Pride is also thought to be the source of the other capital sins. Pride is viewed as the opposite of humility.”
When people cannot be realistic, accepting limitations, they invariably overreach and, like Yertle the Turtle, return to the muck from which they emerged.
Hedrick Smith’s “The Power Game: How Washington Works” (1988) explained that the Reagan Administration was effective because its aspirations were confined to three signature legislative accomplishments annually — without delusion that the administration could accomplish more than humanly possible.
The failure to recognize that seeking too much inevitably garners less than more modest aspirations do shall define the present epoch, given the luxury of hindsight.
Nothing will change appealing to reason for, as Tom Petty concisely concluded in “Too Much Ain’t Enough” (1978),
“… you just won’t be satisfied
Too much ain’t enough
It ain’t enough, it ain’t enough”
Jay Wiener is a Northsider
