The North Wind and The Sun
Aesop's Fable (Perry Index: #46)
"Kindness, gentleness, and persuasion win where force fails."
Perry Index
The Perry Index is a widely used index of "Aesop's Fables" or "Aesopica", the fables credited to Aesop, the storyteller who lived in ancient Greece between 620 and 560 BC. The index was created by Ben Edwin Perry, a professor of classics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Modern scholarship takes the view that Aesop probably did not compose all of the fables attributed to him; indeed, a few are known to have first been used before Aesop lived, while the first record we have of many others is from well over a millennium after his time. Traditionally, Aesop's fables were arranged alphabetically, which is not helpful to the reader. Perry listed them by language (Greek then Latin), chronologically, by source, and then alphabetically.
There are 725 Fables, according to Perry, in total. Therefore, brace thyself..
Before we dive in, first the raison d’etre of this piece.
As you’ve known by now, my pieces are inspired, tangentially, or obliquely, never from sources one might expect. Keeps it fresh, and authentic.
Mad Men
In Mad Men Season 4 episode 8 (reflecting, and looking back, I really enjoyed this episode) “The Summer Man” Don Draper, the lead, is on a date, and metaphorically, symbolically he tells the fable to Faye. He is trying to woo her, similarly to the Sun in the Fable.
In the fable, the sun and the wind enter a competition to see who can make a man remove his coat first.
While the wind attempts a direct assault on him, the man simply draws his coat tighter;
Whereas the sun simply slowly warms him and the man easily removes his jacket. According to Faye, "kindness, gentleness, and persuasion win where force fails."
FABLE
The North Wind and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger, when a traveler came along wrapped in a warm cloak.
They agreed that the one who first succeeded in making the traveler take his cloak off should be considered stronger than the other.
Then the North Wind blew as hard as he could, but the more he blew the more closely did the traveler fold his cloak around him;
and at last the North Wind gave up the attempt. Then the Sun shined out warmly, and immediately the traveler took off his cloak.
And so the North Wind was obliged to confess that the Sun was the stronger of the two.
Note. The first picture already showcased that the Sun was Helios was Phoebus, aka Apollo, and the North wind was Boreas. These were the personifications of these “natural” phenemonon.
Note. Anthropomorphism is the attribution of human traits, emotions and intention to non-human entities.
It is considered to be an innate tendency of human psychology. Personification is the related attribution of human form and characteristics to abstract concepts such as nations, emotions, and natural forces, such as seasons and weather. Both have ancient roots as storytelling and artistic devices, and most cultures have traditional fables with anthropomorphized animals as characters. People have also routinely attributed human emotions and behavioral traits to wild as well as domesticated animals.
Anthropomorphism etymology: Anthropomorphism and anthropomorphization derive from the verb form anthropomorphize, itself derived from the Greek ánthrōpos (ἄνθρωπος, lit. "human") and morphē (μορφή, "form").
Couple important handles and levers and tools for you to leave with, in our narrative and rhetoric quests as we delve into the Antiquity.
Further Reading.
Notice the calm, gentle, disarming nature of the fable and it’s relation pertaining to the TAO FLOW and the Mushin, the calm flow like in the Zone state of Bushido. Check out the correlated pieces on the HOOA substack:
Dive deeper, Into the Antiquity:
HOOA