The Donkey, the Father, and the Son
A father was walking with his son and a donkey through the dusty streets in the midday heat. The son led the donkey while the father rode on it.
“That poor little boy,” said a passerby. “His short legs are struggling to keep up with the donkey’s pace. How can you sit there so lazily while the child tires himself out?”
The father took this to heart, got off at the next corner, and let his son ride instead.
It wasn’t long before another passerby spoke up: “What an outrage! That little rascal is sitting like a king on the donkey while his poor old father walks beside him.”
Feeling guilty, the boy asked his father to ride with him.
“Unbelievable!” exclaimed an old woman. “Such cruelty to animals! The poor donkey’s back is sagging under their weight, while these two good-for-nothings rest on him. The poor donkey!”
Father and son looked at each other, got off, and walked beside the donkey. Then they met a man who mocked them: “How foolish can you be? What’s the point of having a donkey if you’re not going to ride it?”
The father gave the donkey some water, then placed his hand on his son’s shoulder. “No matter what we do,” he said, “there will always be someone who disagrees. From now on, we’ll do what we believe is right!”
The son nodded in agreement.
Albert Einstein to Sigmund Freud, July 30, 1932:
“Is there any way to guide the psychological development of humans so that they become more resistant to the psychoses of hatred and destruction? I am by no means thinking only of the so-called uneducated. From my life experience, it is actually the so-called ‘intelligentsia’ that most easily falls victim to disastrous mass suggestion, because it does not tend to draw directly from experience but rather grasps most conveniently and completely through the printed word.”
From "Why War? – An Exchange of Letters between Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud"
