When it comes to alternative interpretations on a topic, it’s interesting that many business ethics textbooks contain The Parable of the Sadhu, about how these Westerners wrestled with the implications of a sad Indian mendicant 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. They revived him and left him in a shack, last seeing him throwing rocks at a dog. Thereafter, for years, the author suffered from feelings of guilt, feeling that he should have helped carry 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 intended to be, doing what he intended to do, when suddenly these Westerners grabbed him and mistreated him, and then turned his presence into a serious moral crisis for him. . themselves. To top it off, they left it to be eaten by a dog; instead of dying peacefully on the mountain, they tear it to pieces and eat it. 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 appear 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 bumper sticker that is apparently becoming common in the Middle East: “Be nice to America, or we will bring democracy to your country.”

 

The real question that we should ask ourselves, therefore, before getting involved in the internal affairs of other countries or in the daily 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 making the mistake made by the author of the Parable; that everything we do to another person is justified because we are the ones doing it. I suggest that this presumption is itself unwarranted and unjustifiable.