=1 "A stupid story"
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A stupid story
This is a stupid story. If you don’t like stupid stories, don’t read it. But it is full of that oriental wisdom which is rapidly disappearing from our planet, a wisdom which seems stupid to the clever westerner.
In some far away oriental country there was a a young king who one day asked his prime minister: “What day of the week is it?” The prime minister, who had forgotten the date, said he would ask the second minister. But the second minister did not know either. The young king became angry. “How can you administer a country if you don’t even know the day of the week? What we need in this country is more data. We will appoint a new minister for data processing. As we already have a first and a second minister, the new one will be called the last minister. But I will see him first every morning.”
The first morning everything went nicely. “Good morning, Your Majesty,” said the last minister. “Today is a fine day, it is Friday.”
“Very good,” said the king, convinced now that his country had started on the path of progress. The next morning the last minister said the same thing.
“Good morning, Your Majesty. Today is a fine day. It is Friday.” The king was still a little sleepy, and he didn’t want to make a scene, so he didn’t say anything. But when again on the next day the last minister said, “Today it is Friday,” the young king became angry.
“It can’t be Friday every day,” he said. “Oh,” said the last minister, “tomorrow I will give you the correct data”. Still on the following day he said again, “It is a fine day, and if it’s not Friday I don’t know what day it is”.
The young king ordered a committee of enquiry to find out why it was that in his kingdom no one remembered the day of the week. A few months later, becoming impatient, he called the committee of enquiry, which rendered its verdict: “We are much too happy to remember data”.
Thereupon the king asked a high-powered investigating team from Unesco to look into the matter. At length he was told: “You are an underdeveloped nation. We will send you on lend-lease our last year’s calendar.”