A little parable

Once upon a time there were three friends. Their names were Charlie and Bob and Alice. They lived more or less contentedly on Earth.

One day they were sitting in the park, discussing Monteverdi or some other absorbing topic, and suddenly a space alien materialized before them and said that they were to be deported to a far-away galaxy.

They had a choice of two planets for their new home, and they had to take a vote among themselves which it was to be.

Planet A had a surface temperature of 1000 degrees Celsius, and was highly radioactive. Planet B was slightly cooler at 800 degrees Celsius, but even more radioactive, and the atmosphere there consisted of vaporized sulfuric acid.

Alice voted for planet A, because she had always hated the cold. Bob voted for planet B because he felt sure that he could live a few milliseconds longer there, so B was the lesser evil, obviously. He delivered this opinion in a rather pompous, surely-you-see manner.

Charlie pondered for a a while, then said, “The hell with it. We’re done for, either way. I refuse to play your sadistic game, you tentacled plug-ugly. Do your worst.”

Instantly they found themselves on the surface of Planet A (the alien had kind of a thing for Alice, and Bob had annoyed him).

In the last millisecond before their brains fried, Bob rounded on Charlie and shouted, “See? This is ALL YOUR FAULT!”

9 thoughts on “A little parable

  1. an asteroid is heading towards the planet. it may hit us in 6 months or 60 years.

    in any case, we should all go outside, hold hands, & sing “que sera, sera” like in the simpson’s episode, bart’s comet, when the time comes.

    but we’ll never make it to that time cuz before the asteroid hits, we’ll have blown each other all up. fighting over who gets to use for firewood the last sequoia sempervirens or whatever.

  2. Then, in a meta-parabolic universe, Bob hastens by SMBIVA to post a comment that begins, “False equivalence!” and continues to draw a distinction that he views as crucial, delineating details ad nauseam while failing to recognize the satirical paradox that the further he expounds, the more immediate becomes the equivalence he’d sought so hard to discriminate.

  3. Excellent little story… I’m so relieved that there were no equivalent situations in real life… because wouldn’t that be awful? (I hope you’re not on hiatus because the world is full of the braying cacophonies of lockstep hivemind dipshit donkey choirs and just can’t type for puking, or anything… because that would be awful)

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