When I was a child, you were called a monkey
if you were mischievous, a little bit cheeky in a nice way. You were not allowed to make a habit of it. Being a monkey was an occasional thing. Nowadays, monkeys would probably bring an action for defamation. I never thought about the monkeys (not my favourite creatures) though in the Chinese zodiac, I am a monkey.
You have probably heard of The Three Wise Monkeys – Hear No Evil, Speak No Evil and See No Evil.
According to my search engine, this is a Japanese image and Ghandi refers to a fourth monkey. I can’t be the only person who is silently screaming for mercy from saturation media coverage of Prime Minister Boris Johnson (I’d say he was Speak No Evil), tennis champion Novak Djokovic (Hear No Evil) and the Royal Family’s Prince Andrew (See No Evil). What those three have in common is a large dose of victim mentality – always somebody else’s fault.
The British Prime Minister doesn’t speak well.
*
That turkey hubble-bubble, incomplete sentences, wah-wah is a good example of how not to communicate with anybody you don’t want to communicate with, ie most of us, obviously lesser mortals. It sounds as though you’re saying something but you’re not really. All sorts of poor devils speak for him in matters great and small and they have one thing in common – when he perceives that what they have said and done hasn’t left him reflected in the sought after light of glory, if he can’t pass the buck, they are expendable. Pippa Pig, eat your heart out. It’s all somebody else’s fault, not a word of accusation, just –
out.
The best comment I have heard about Novak Djokovic is that, like a lot of high powered, busy people – he relied on somebody else to get the papers in order and say the right things, secure in his belief that he is so important and talented that, should there be a wrinkle, it would be ignored. The person expounding this point of view to me said “And he forgot: it’s his name on the form. He can’t blame anybody else – it is his name.” His mother’s comment in a press conference where she referred to her son “being tortured, like Jesus Christ” was frankly ill judged. The President of Serbia feels that, if the champion were from a bigger and more important country, his visa would never have been cancelled.
Poor little Serbia. It all went on so long, I began to wonder if this was Djokovic’s PR machine because he got coverage he could never afford. And the Australians didn’t handle it well – but they have made a legal decision.
And then there is See No Evil (Prince Andrew) who didn’t see anything because he didn’t see why he should have to look, much less ask question or make decisions contrary to his initial wishes.
Although playtime with a convicted paedophile is a bit much, you get the same sort of avoidance much lower down the scale – the child with cuts and bruises that nobody wants to have to notice, a woman’s black eye or broken wrist, or a man withdrawn and tense to breaking point – but nobody asks, because nobody wants to know. His point of view, it seems, is that a Royal Prince should be able to have a good time, at somebody else’s unlimited expense, without having to think about it, as in “I know nothing”. A retired Royal servant says he was ever thus. And even if he had better advisors, he won’t take advice. The word “entitled” comes to mind and you can just see that porky hand waving unwanted advice away
… Particularly unwanted if it isn’t what he wants to hear.
These are not happy men, any of them but I will forbear to bore you with pop psychology. What is interesting is that dozens of other men have been through the same kind of emotional confusion, uncertainty and dissatisfaction and handled it quite differently. Human beings are fascinating.
Boris Johnson wanted power and then got clobbered by a pandemic which made his interpretation of the highest office in the land a good deal less fun and successful than he had depended on it being.
Novak Djokovic learned he is better on the court.
And Prince Andrew will learn the high price of paying for your pleasure.
*nice poem, shame about the spelling (as in conjunctions)
Annalog 