When it comes to alternative interpretations on a subject, it is interesting that many business ethics textbooks contain The Parable of the Sadhu, about how these Westerners wrestled with the implications of a frozen mendicant Indian sadhu. In short, the author had been punishing himself for years because on a trip to Nepal to climb the Himalayan mountains, he and other climbers had come across a frozen beggar lying exposed in the mountains. He was revived and left in a shack, last seen throwing rocks at a dog. Thereafter, for years, the author suffered from feelings of guilt, feeling that he should have helped take the Sadhu to a village two days’ walk away.
What the story does not say, of course, is that the Sadhu had been exactly where he pretended to be, doing what he pretended to be doing, when suddenly these Westerners seized and manhandled him, and then turned his presence into a grave moral crisis for him. . themselves. To make matters worse, they left it to be eaten by a dog; Instead of dying peacefully on the mountain, they tear it to pieces and eat it. It is not a very happy ending for the Sadhu.
This seems typical of interactions between Americans and the rest of the world. Nowhere did the Sadhu seem to have asked anyone for help. The author interprets the Sadhu’s lesson as “In a complex corporate situation, the individual requires and deserves the support of the group.” The lesson I see instead is: beware of Westerners, they might grab you, mistreat you and take you somewhere you have no interest in being taken, to be torn to pieces by the dogs. A Syrian friend of mine sent me a photo of a sticker that is apparently becoming common in the Middle East: “Be nice to America, or we’ll bring democracy to your country.”
The real question we should ask ourselves, therefore, before we get involved in the internal affairs of other countries or in the day-to-day lives of other people, is whether what we intend to do is going to help or harm other people. If we assume the answer to that question, then we will continue to make the mistake made by the author of the Parable; that everything we do to another person is justified because it is we who are doing it. I suggest that this presumption is itself unwarranted and unjustifiable.
