A flock of sheep and a shepherd

There was a flock of sheep living at one point in creation. Their existence was peaceful and quiet because their favorite shepherd was always with them.

The shepherd led them through fields teeming with delicious food, found them water and shelter from the weather, played them a piper and sang them beautiful songs.

Everything was fine, except for one thing: the sheep remained sheep.

Neither deep meaningful songs nor breathing exercises had any effect on them.

The shepherd thought about it. He even stopped singing, and then suddenly disappeared.

At first the rams got very excited. What to do? What to do? They ran around the native field in panic and terror before the new reality, in which now there was no shepherd.

The most reasonable of the rams tried to reason with the others.

- Stop panicking," they said, "the same blue sky above us, full of water, and the same green field under our feet, full of food. Let us remain humble, let us learn to live on our own, and the shepherd will surely return.

The herd calmed down a bit, for indeed, a field of food was right under their feet!

Wisdom and Stupidity are twin sisters, and sometimes you can tell them apart only by their names. And they have another sister, Laziness.

Time flowed, the shepherd did not return and was soon relegated to legend by the sheep.

In their mindless existence, the rams ran around the field, overeating from idleness, sleeping a lot, and engaging in debauchery.

The most intelligent rams realized that such an existence would not lead to anything good, and they began to notice that there were more rams and less grass: it simply did not have time to grow. They tried to reason with the angry crowd.

The other, less intelligent sheep only laughed at this. They believed that their favorite shepherd was still here, but that he was somehow invisible, and that he would take care of everything as always.

The most sensible of the rams remarked to this that it might be so, but prudence would do no harm.

The most intelligent of the rams were more organized than the others. They began to limit territories and food, so that they could eat in one territory and grow grass in another. And then the other way around.

The other rams disagreed, as they did not want to limit themselves in eating. They argued and fought loudly. The hungriest and stupidest rams shouted the loudest and got to the point that the food had to be taken away. Riots and raids began and the sensible sheep had to defend their territories. This is how property and communities came into being.

The intelligent rams found it increasingly difficult to defend their territories from the hordes of unintelligent rams. And then they invented a hierarchy: they agreed with the strongest of the unwise rams, namely, they would receive more food if they helped to protect the fertile territories.

And everything was in order. But not for long. The unreasonable rams, who helped to guard the fields, wanted to get more and more and more. And one day they agreed among themselves and attacked the intelligent rams. In this fierce battle, the intelligent rams were defeated. And the victors rejoiced, and in a stupid orgy of rejoicing they became so mad that they ate the intelligent rams. And foreign blood flowed through their veins, and greed and permissiveness settled in their stupid heads. Thus came the rich rams and all the others.

The leaders also used hierarchy, but realizing that they might soon suffer the fate of intelligent rams, they went a little further. They invented ramocracy, a system in which the rams supposedly governed themselves and could choose their own wise leaders. In reality, of course, this was not the case: the wise leaders were chosen only by the wise leaders themselves.

At first, the ramocracy worked well, but began to lead some rams to free thinking and philosophy, which could not be allowed. Then the sheepocracy was recognized as a system of complex and ineffective.

The sheep, who were in charge, began to think how to replace the sheepocracy. And they came up with this.

One day they gathered the sheep for a morning meeting and announced to them that a shepherd came to the leaders at night and ordered them to look after and lead the flock, and whoever disobeys them will be severely punished.

The rams believed the shepherd was still out there somewhere and trusted their leaders.

Since then it went on like this: the leaders changed each other, fooled by permissiveness and debauchery, the rest of the sheep lived sadly and starving, piously believing, however, that their favorite shepherd will still show up and all this will end.

To keep the sheep from being sad and brooding, the leaders made them do something all the time, calling it work, and sometimes organized festivals with songs and sacrifices.

Over time, the rams learned to feed themselves, using the techniques of developed rams, about whom legends and songs were also written. Grass became plentiful, and now it was possible to eat more, and some deserving rams could even eat to their fill.

This satiated time, however, did not last long and very soon the small "civilization" fell into decay: from aimless existence and constant overeating the herd of rams became completely dumb, the field, which served them for collecting grass, became soiled, and grass stopped growing in many places, and the leaders degenerated so much that they began to attack the weakened rams and eat them, and in the end they fought themselves.

The remaining rams were very few, they were all bald and exhausted by the madness scattered across the field, on which they wandered mindlessly until now.

- Just like that, the shepherd left early," Fakofsky finished his story.

- It's a sad story," the listeners concluded, "and the sheep are pitiful.

- Sad," agreed Pyotr Afonasyevich, "but instructive: it is high time for you, for example, to hold hands and start calling loudly for your shepherd. And God help you.