The Fisherman’s Net
A little fable from ancient Greece about those political activists who make a living from stirring up controversy.
A little fable from ancient Greece about those political activists who make a living from stirring up controversy.
The ancient Greeks were the first European people to form democratic governments. The experiment was not without its problems, chief among them being the ambitious ‘demagogues’ or ‘leaders of the people’ who made a living out of setting citizens against each other. The phenomenon did not escape the notice of the storyteller Aesop.
ONCE upon a time, a man was catching fish in a river. He stretched out a net, tied a stone to the end of a piece of cord, and then began to slap the waters with the stone to frighten the fish into his net.
Someone from a neighbouring village saw him and ran over, shouting that the man was stirring up mud and spoiling the villagers’ drinking water. ‘But I have to muddy the waters,’ he answered simply. ‘It’s how I put food on my table.’
And that is not unlike the way the demagogues in our cities* make a living from stirring up social unrest.
* In Greek, τῶν πόλεων οἱ δημαγωγοὶ, literally ‘the demagogues of the cities’. The word demagogue strictly speaking means ‘leader of the common people’. These community leaders or organisers were often commoners themselves, who, working within a democratic system in which aristocracy remained a dominant force, initially performed a useful function; but they quickly gained an unwholesome reputation by fanning the flames of fear, envy and prejudice, recklessly encouraging social unrest and military adventures. Some achieved high political standing, if only for a time: see Pericles and the Fickle Public of Athens and Alcibiades. However, when it came to rabble-rousing much of the harm was done by a noisy band of political analysts, speech-writers, image consultants and opinion-formers who did not aspire to high office themselves, but made a less-than-honest living by helping ambitious politicians to rise in provincial and State government. See Socrates on Rhetoric and the Beast.