If you are walking in the park and a bee flies near you, keep your distance.

  • You could do the same for people who make offensive remarks.

Important Points

  • It doesn’t matter if the bees intended to attack or not.
    • There is no need to identify whether the bee came close to you with the intention of stinging you or just happened to fly near you.
    • We don’t even need to identify whether a human being made the statement with malicious intent or just happened to say it, whether it was good or evil.
  • Beating the bees might offend them.
    • If you strike the bee, the bee may become angry and sting you, or it may attract a mate, so it is appropriate to gently move away without striking the bee. This is irrelevant to whether or not the bee has any intention of attacking you at this time.
    • The same goes for people who make offensive remarks. It has nothing to do with whether the person is saying it in bad faith.

This parable is related to Parable of the Summer Cicadas and The parable of the frightened cat.

  • If you touch a frightened cat, it might bite you, so you should keep your distance.
    • This and “keeping your distance from the bees” correspond.
    • But in the cat metaphor, the cat intends to intimidate.
  • Cicadas just exist, they are not singing with malicious intent to make humans noisy, but a natural phenomenon
    • This corresponds to “no need to consider the bees’ intentions”.
    • But the cicada metaphor makes it hard to imagine the damage that can be done by a cicada fighting back.

Cannot directly observe if others are malicious


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