The north wind and the sun

It's long been noticed in the art of strategy and of life that sometimes the more we try to push something, the more others want to resist it. And that overly aggressive actions tend to backfire and/or have unintended consequences.Several of the "soft" martial arts are based on that understanding.

Last night as I was driving home at the end of a long day I started listening to Aesop's Fables courtesy of my local library. One that stuck in my mind was the fable of the north wind and the sun.

Here's an older translation:

THE WIND and the Sun were disputing which was the stronger. Suddenly they saw a traveler coming down the road, and the Sun said: “I see a way to decide our dispute. Whichever of us can cause that traveler to take off his cloak shall be regarded as the stronger You begin.” So the Sun retired behind a cloud, and the Wind began to blow as hard as it could upon the traveler. But the harder he blew the more closely did the traveler wrap his cloak round him, till at last the Wind had to give up in despair. Then the Sun came out and shone in all his glory upon the traveler, who soon found it too hot to walk with his cloak on.

         “KINDNESS EFFECTS MORE THAN SEVERITY.”

You could also say the moral was that persuasion works better than compulsion.Or that unskillful actions and arguments can make others cling even harder to problematic behaviors and beliefs. 

The Tao Te Ching, the ancient Chinese classic of philosophical Taoism advocates wu wei or non-action as opposed to aggressive action. It doesn't mean doing nothing but it does mean acting in ways that are timely and appropriate rather than forced. Think sun versus wind.

“Tao abides in non-action.  Yet nothing is left undone” 

“He who acts defeats his own purpose;  He who grasps loses.  The sage does not act, and so is not defeated.  He does not grasp and therefore does not lose” 

Take it from Aesop or from Lao Tzu, any way you look at it, that one has a lot of applications.