It sucks to see a good deed cheapened by ulterior motives, but sadly one supposed good Samaritan has made it painfully obvious that they’re only being charitable out of naked self-interest: This honeybee is pretty clearly only helping guide a blind ox through a perilous swamp so someone will write a fable about her.
Ugh, this kind of calculating bullshit really leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
We’ll admit, we were downright charmed when we first heard that a benevolent honeybee who got separated from her hive in a storm had offered to help a blind ox navigate a dark and treacherous swamp so they could both reach the tranquil meadow that lay beyond it. It seemed beautiful to see two creatures so different work together toward a common goal of finding a great big meadow with tasty grass and lots of wildflowers, and the blind ox choosing to trust the honeybee even though she buzzed like the mean flies that loved to harass the ox felt like a particularly urgent testament to the importance of overcoming prejudice. But on closer inspection we’ve come to the regrettable conclusion that this story is indeed too good to be true, because the honeybee is almost certainly doing all this just to boost her own profile with a spot in somebody’s allegorical moral lesson.
Looking more carefully, there are a ton of red flags in the honeybee’s superficially altruistic behavior. For starters, her path through the swamp takes a number of lengthy, extraneous detours across especially hazardous sections of the mire, detours that serve no obvious purpose beyond dragging out the duration of their journey to give the honeybee a better chance of having her “good deed” noticed. The honeybee also got weirdly hostile when a passing stork offered to fly up high and point them toward the quickest route out of the swamp, telling him to “find your own imperiled ox” with the unsavory implication that his assistance would only steal her spotlight in any succinct, didactic tales about the adventure. And while we don’t have a concrete paper trail to prove anything conclusively, we actually overheard the mean flies talking later about how someone had paid them off to harass the blind ox in the first place—that detail would be fishy enough on its own, but it gets full-on sinister when you learn that whoever paid them did so in honey.
Man, we feel gross for having ever thought this was a good allegory for cooperation’s power to overcome adversity!
Of course the blind ox bears no blame for just wanting someone to help him avoid deep puddles of mud and thick patches of thorny brambles on his way to the meadow, but the honeybee using his predicament for her own personal gain feels undeniably fucked up and exploitative. It genuinely bothers us to realize how much of their uplifting, improbable journey was contrived by the honeybee to play on our emotions. Hell, even if some well-meaning contemporary Aesop ultimately does take the bait, we wouldn’t be surprised if this self-serving little apian egotist ends up wigging out on them anyway for calling their fable “The Ox and the Honeybee” instead of “The Honeybee and the Ox.”
Damn, we guess some sickos out there really only care about looking out for number one. It seems like the only moral here is to watch out for fake-ass clout chasers feigning compassion to fuel their own egos!
