This makes me realize I’ve been misinterpreting bell the cat references my whole life. I thought it was about team work.
My mother told me a version that had the mice building some rube goldberg contraption to get the bell on the cat. It’s a very different lesson from what’s described here. I wonder if she got her version from someone else or if it was her addition to avoid teaching me a cynical lesson.
JdeBP · 2h ago
In fairness, there have been a lot of versions of this over the past 15 centuries, not always with the same moral.
The Wikipedia writers here have not plumbed the full depths of this, and have not yet reached Paul Franklin Baum.
You should feel free to contribute to the Wikipedia article.
JKCalhoun · 2h ago
Yeah, when I came across it recently (I was looking at it for inclusion in a free "Primer" for school-age kids I am creating) I realized it was a lot more cynical than I remembered.
I think it's hard to draw any other conclusion (at least from the versions I found online) that it's really about individuals wanting someone else to do a thing that they are afraid to do. "Talk is cheap" could be the moral they append to the end (I hate those though and am stripping those off for the fables that I am re-printing).
jacobolus · 28m ago
Some level of cynicism is probably justified though, at least when it comes to short-term solutions to large-scale problems or powerful bad actors. A single person or even a small group of people is going to have a lot of trouble, e.g., fighting back after having been wronged by a large corporation owned by a billionaire whose business is based on routine fraud and abuse, but who has friends in Congress and the Supreme Court. Even if the corporation dumped toxic sludge in their town, received services from a small-business contractor then refused to pay for them, forced employees to work unpaid overtime, unlawfully stuck customers with unwarranted fees, ripped off an independent inventor's idea, or whatever, it takes large-scale concerted action to make things better: just one person sticking their neck out won't cut it, and most people care enough about self preservation not to try.
I just realized this too. Gosh this brings a much darker and courageous meaning to their organization.
tuatoru · 1h ago
Congratulations on being one of today's ten thousand!
tuatoru · 52m ago
Wow, people here clearly don't like it when I express delight in learning.
Loughla · 48m ago
I've noticed that many individuals here assume negative tone in what are actually neutrally toned statements unless you add overly descriptive language to ensure neutral tone. It's not great and leads to echo chamber style communication and overly pedantic arguments often.
dev0p · 34m ago
I don't think it was intended to be negative, just a reference to this XKCD https://xkcd.com/1053/
Even when something is known by "everyone", there's still going to be someone who doesn't know it yet.
I never heard about this fable before, either...
praptak · 3h ago
It's also a tragedy of the (anti-)commons. The mice should coordinate, tax themselves fairly and hire a ninja to put the bell on the cat.
ben_w · 3h ago
The cat can represent many things, one of which is a government easily able to mobilise against such organisation.
ChrisMarshallNY · 1h ago
I heard the story, when I was a kid, but didn't realize that it was what was meant, when used in popular culture. I always thought that it meant establishing a warning threshold for undesirable outcomes.
I enjoyed this reference from the Wikipedia article[0]. Sort of the flip side of the Abilene Paradox[1].
Thanks for the reference. Never heard about the "belling the cat" concept before (I am not european/american). However me and another colleague at work always joke/inquiry (sarcastically?) about "who is going to do it" whenever the "team" (in retros, planning, etc) brings up some idea that it would be very nice to execute.
This reference will be very useful to articulate what so far it's been sarcastic comments at best.
renewiltord · 2h ago
Amusingly the part of the story that refers to the partially solved problem is also on its own just as evergreen.
"All you have to do is" is such a common phrase online. "why didn't they just". If one is a solo builder, yes, by all means. But why didn't the SFMTA "just build side bike lanes instead of center running bike lanes in the first place?"
Betrays a fundamental lack of knowledge of how democracies make decisions: it is the center of gravity of an object with varying mass distribution.
derektank · 2h ago
"People will not just" is a good mantra to keep in one's head
> One of the earliest versions of the story appears as a parable critical of the clergy in Odo of Cheriton's Parabolae. Written around 1200, it was afterwards translated into Welsh, French and Spanish.
thrance · 5h ago
It's no secret. Jean de la Fontaine was an Academician (as in, the French Academy) around the time of the ancients vs moderns quarrel. As a member of the former, la Fontaine believed everything good had already been written and all they could do was retell old stories.
He himself claimed to have based his fables on the writing of, among others, Aesop.
bigmattystyles · 14m ago
And he was the bane of fables to memorize and recite when I was a kid. Always struck me later on with ‘la cigale et la fourmi’ was always praised as a good lesson but that it was a bit cruel. I always preferred maitre corbeau avec son fromage.
ursuscamp · 2h ago
I never looked up the origin of the name before. Interestingly enough, I associate Bellingcat with permanent cold warriors, a group of people who seem determined to fulfill the moral of the tale.
card_zero · 4h ago
I'm surprised that medieval Europeans apparently put bells on cats sometimes. Did they care about the lives of small fluffy animals?
3eb7988a1663 · 1h ago
Considering how much more expensive food used to be, allowing pests to run rampant and get into the food stores seems unlikely. Although, I believe they were more likely to rely on dogs to kill rats.
thinkmassive · 2h ago
Also possible they wanted to reduce the number of small animal carcasses to clean up, whether from the doorstep or interior of the home. Cats love to bring these as gifts to their keepers.
bitwize · 4h ago
Or small feathered animals. Because they tended to thwart hunting, the bells could also discourage domestic cats from wandering.
behringer · 2h ago
I'm guessing it was more about stopping the cat from getting worms
esafak · 5h ago
Can anyone recommend an illustrated translation of La Fontaine's Fables for children?
Not illustrated. (Are any of Project Gutenberg's texts? I kind of hate that, ha ha.)
Traubenfuchs · 5h ago
Reminds me of us europeans expecting Ukraine men to defend us from Russia.
Which they have kind of been doing for years now, showing us what a big fat joke Russia is.
amelius · 5h ago
From EU perspective it seems like the decisions are purely based on short-term economics. I.e., just enough weapons are supplied to Ukraine to extend the war indefinitely, as opposed to supplying enough weapons to stop it now.
ACCount37 · 2h ago
US aid seems bound by the willingness to spend money and escalate. EU aid seems bound more by the industrial capacity and willingness to escalate.
Still, just "willingness to escalate" would move the needle by a lot, and I'm of the opinion that the only language dictators truly understand is violence. Anything short of that is far too often interpreted as a show of weakness.
ben_w · 3h ago
Yes, but not only economics, I think.
Russia cannot be allowed to win.
But also, Putin cannot loose so hard that he actually reaches for the nukes (meaning either he needs to die or those weapons are first removed from use), and even without Putin there's a fear a collapsing Russia would disperse nukes on the black market and/or oligarchs would fruit into atomic warlords.
This does mean Ukraine destroying Russian nuclear delivery systems a while back was directly useful, makes it easier for everyone else to help them.
But even so, I have no idea how this plays out: Russia's death throes spraying nukes at the west is still entirely possible; as is Ukraine developing a nuke, pointing it as stuff Russian oligarchs like, and getting them to defenestrate Putin without Ukraine even launching the weapon.
-
Other things to consider: qhich power grids, if any, can cope with a single nuke triggering a high-altitude EMP? Most extreme estimate I've heard says it would take only one to kill 90% of the USA in a year just from loss of electricity in too many places at once to repair fast enough.
How sure can we be that all post-Russian nukes get accounted for?
wbl · 50m ago
So long as we make clear the war ends with his troops removed nukes will never help him no matter how hard we hammer the bear.
amelius · 1h ago
As long as the West just limits themselves to kicking Russia out of Ukraine, then I don't see how that becomes an existential threat to Russia, and why it would warrant nukes.
We shouldn't be susceptible to intimidation tactics, because where does it end.
Anyway, before anything else I want more pressure on Trump to get those abducted children back to Ukraine.
justsomehnguy · 23m ago
> As long as the West just limits themselves to kicking Russia out of Ukraine, then I don't see how that becomes an existential threat to Russia, and why it would warrant nukes.
Literally in the comment you are responding to:
>> This does mean Ukraine destroying Russian nuclear delivery systems a while back was directly useful, makes it easier for everyone else to help them.
It is quite clear what "the West" doesn't limit themselves.
ben_w · 42m ago
> I don't see how that becomes an existential threat to Russia
Russia loosing is an existential threat to Putin, it is presently unclear how the other oligarchs would respond to the power vacuum.
thyristan · 2h ago
I'd wager that we couldn't be, even back in the 1992 USSR collapse. I'd guess a few are gone missing, and they didn't tell the world, or didn't even notice.
pengaru · 4h ago
> showing us what a big fat joke Russia is.
The only joke in your statement is how naive you must be to believe that.
AnimalMuppet · 3h ago
As a conventional military power, Russia has definitely shown itself to be something of a joke.
As a nuclear power, a cyber power, or a disinformation provider, not so much.
cedws · 3h ago
I mean the US also lost to the Taliban after trillions of dollars and 20 years.
pengaru · 2h ago
Short attention spans are incapable of appreciating a slow burning low effort war of attrition.
nwellnhof · 4h ago
Russia is a nuclear power and direct NATO involvement could quickly lead to nuclear war. Doesn't sound like a joke to me.
My mother told me a version that had the mice building some rube goldberg contraption to get the bell on the cat. It’s a very different lesson from what’s described here. I wonder if she got her version from someone else or if it was her addition to avoid teaching me a cynical lesson.
The Wikipedia writers here have not plumbed the full depths of this, and have not yet reached Paul Franklin Baum.
* https://www.jstor.org/stable/2915573
Nor have they incorporated that one Piers Plowman text had a proposal to kill the cat, not to bell it.
* https://www.jstor.org/stable/4172513
I think it's hard to draw any other conclusion (at least from the versions I found online) that it's really about individuals wanting someone else to do a thing that they are afraid to do. "Talk is cheap" could be the moral they append to the end (I hate those though and am stripping those off for the fables that I am re-printing).
Even when something is known by "everyone", there's still going to be someone who doesn't know it yet.
I never heard about this fable before, either...
I enjoyed this reference from the Wikipedia article[0]. Sort of the flip side of the Abilene Paradox[1].
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_action_problem
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abilene_paradox
This reference will be very useful to articulate what so far it's been sarcastic comments at best.
"All you have to do is" is such a common phrase online. "why didn't they just". If one is a solo builder, yes, by all means. But why didn't the SFMTA "just build side bike lanes instead of center running bike lanes in the first place?"
Betrays a fundamental lack of knowledge of how democracies make decisions: it is the center of gravity of an object with varying mass distribution.
> One of the earliest versions of the story appears as a parable critical of the clergy in Odo of Cheriton's Parabolae. Written around 1200, it was afterwards translated into Welsh, French and Spanish.
He himself claimed to have based his fables on the writing of, among others, Aesop.
Which they have kind of been doing for years now, showing us what a big fat joke Russia is.
Still, just "willingness to escalate" would move the needle by a lot, and I'm of the opinion that the only language dictators truly understand is violence. Anything short of that is far too often interpreted as a show of weakness.
Russia cannot be allowed to win.
But also, Putin cannot loose so hard that he actually reaches for the nukes (meaning either he needs to die or those weapons are first removed from use), and even without Putin there's a fear a collapsing Russia would disperse nukes on the black market and/or oligarchs would fruit into atomic warlords.
This does mean Ukraine destroying Russian nuclear delivery systems a while back was directly useful, makes it easier for everyone else to help them.
But even so, I have no idea how this plays out: Russia's death throes spraying nukes at the west is still entirely possible; as is Ukraine developing a nuke, pointing it as stuff Russian oligarchs like, and getting them to defenestrate Putin without Ukraine even launching the weapon.
-
Other things to consider: qhich power grids, if any, can cope with a single nuke triggering a high-altitude EMP? Most extreme estimate I've heard says it would take only one to kill 90% of the USA in a year just from loss of electricity in too many places at once to repair fast enough.
How sure can we be that all post-Russian nukes get accounted for?
We shouldn't be susceptible to intimidation tactics, because where does it end.
Anyway, before anything else I want more pressure on Trump to get those abducted children back to Ukraine.
Literally in the comment you are responding to:
>> This does mean Ukraine destroying Russian nuclear delivery systems a while back was directly useful, makes it easier for everyone else to help them.
Also: https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2024-07/news/ukraine-strikes...
It is quite clear what "the West" doesn't limit themselves.
Russia loosing is an existential threat to Putin, it is presently unclear how the other oligarchs would respond to the power vacuum.
The only joke in your statement is how naive you must be to believe that.
As a nuclear power, a cyber power, or a disinformation provider, not so much.