Good day, all!
Let me start this at last. I may take an example which I found most relevant and understandable. In every story, the perspective is most important, and if you look at it from a different direction, the concept may look different.
The essence of the story goes like this, and this one also comes with the warning that no questions may be asked. It's about a King's court in the olden days, and a cart comes from somewhere else and stops in front of the place, and it was reported to the King. The King sends a lower-ranking person to find out what the cart is carrying. So goes and asks the person what it carries and informs the King accordingly. Further to this, he asks another question, and the same is complied with by the employee. It is repeated so many times, and incidentally the minister arrives at the court, and the King asks the minister to go and find what the cart outside carries, and he returns after a few minutes, and he was able to answer all queries by the King. The moral of the story is to get as many details in one go, which saves a lot of time and effort and also demeans the lower-ranking person.
The following may be noted;
1. The King, being a king, was not very clear with the query, particularly when dealing with people with lesser intellect.
2. A minister is a minister and not anybody of lower rank because of his ability to behave this way.
3. Maybe the minister was wrong to spend time getting all the details from the cart and might have wasted his time if the king needed only to know what the cart was carrying.
4. Last but not least is the moral of the story of a lion, the King of the forest, who punishes a tiger for arguing with a donkey on the colour of a leaf, whether it is green or blue. The tiger was right about the colour but was punished by the lion for making inane arguments with a stupid donkey. ( Please note that I have seen donkeys working in Mumbai suburbs, and I found them quite okay, intellectually, and I still don't know why they are called dumb. For me, the King was the stupidest of the lot in the main story.
5. Most of the time, moralistic stories are reverse-engineered by people with hardly any ingenuity.
May add something later...
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