Earlier today, I got snagged on one of the many politically-inspired memes that have been zipping around the internet in this election season. It was a Turkish proverb, of unidentified personal origin, and it was as equally beautiful as it was prophetic. It rocked me back because it could have been written today and been just as relevant, just as meaningful, and just as valid. It's the kind of line that really underscores how engrained our behaviors and patterns have become as a species.
"The forest was shrinking but the trees kept voting for the axe," says the proverb. "For the axe was clever and convinced the trees that because his handle was made of wood, he was one of them."
Its lack of accredited author caught my interest, and I set about researching the phrase in a quest for more detail. I discovered that the piece is indeed quite old and well-traveled, but it's an idea that's outlived its maker. Today it is unattributable, having lost its creator to time.
The power of the metaphor stopped me in my tracks, as did the discovery that the proverb - like so many things on the internet - has inspired questions of its ownership, leading to a division between two groups: those who accept that it originated anecdotally in ancient Turkey, and those who pin it to the Greek fabulist, Aesop, who lived right next door.
There are many derivations of Aesop's version, but mostly they go something like this: "The axe goes to the wood from whence it borrowed its helve." Not as wordy, sure, but it really doesn't seem to capture the essence of 2020 quite like the Turkish version.
One side embraces a broad understanding that both Aesop and a Turkish author could have each written similar ideas from similar times. The second group - the Aesop folks - stand firm in their conviction that he alone was responsible for its creation. Never mind the possibility that Aesop - the famous male writer from the Greek global empire - may have even taken it from the unnamed Turkish poet, casting his own version to history with his name alongside it. The argument rages with such rancor and sanctimony that you would think the issue was set to appear on US ballots in November.
This meme's history echoes the story we're ripping up like carpet - bit by heavily-glued-down bit - that so much of history has been written by dictatorial men with conflicts of interest and access to self-publishing.
It's a reminder that our species loves to fight itself over who gets to write down its historical narrative. There's also a lot to unpack here about the cult of personality. In one corner, we have Aesop's devotees, blindly following a man they'll never know. In the other, the reality that an idea can outlast the person who says it. The constant battle between people in power and people with new ideas.
We are currently struggling with the very existentialism of accountability while also wrestling history away from those in power who have tried to dictate it. Much like the relevance of that Turkish proverb today, the weight of this moment is as profound as it is unsettling.
All of this internet trolling further exemplifies how we spend all of our time talking about politics rather than governing ourselves. It magnifies how often we use social media to tell our stories, but rarely use it to tell narratives of substance and purpose. And like all divisions of conflict, you can see how each side would feel encouraged by the proverb's metaphor, regardless of which side is right. Internet trolling is a battle of identities, not ideas.
It's also a warning that we need to do more to record and preserve our own history and not leave it up to the storage farms of corporate media conglomerates, or the endless cycle of internet-age journalism.
Otherwise, we risk losing control of the narrative or the identity that we attach to it, becoming just another proverb - a relic from a moment partially lost to time.
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Music credits:
Title: Elephant - Instrumental
Artist: Lily and the Pearl