Ever scratched your head in wonder at how a certain law got passed, or why some machines work the way they do, or what caused folks to settle in a certain place?
Usually, we assume that there's some logic, or reasoning, to explain these things. People who are well-schooled, with sharp leadership skills, make the decisions and create the inventions and choose the directions that the rest of us follow.
That's the usual assumption, anyway, and I wouldn't be questioning it now were it not for a little poem clipped from a yellowed piece of newspaper that I found tucked away in the folds of an old book. Titled "The Calf-Path" by Sam Walter Foss, it begins as follows:
One day thru primeval wood a calf walked home, as good calves should; But made a trail, all bent askew, A crooked trail, as all calves do. Since then 200 years have fled, And I infer the calf is dead. But still, he left behind his trail And thereby hangs my mortal tale. The trail was taken up next day By a lone dog, that passed that way. And then, a wise bell weather sheep Pursued the trail, o’er vale and asteep, And drew the flocks behind him too As good bell weathers always do. And from that day, o’er hill and glade Thru those old woods, a path was made. And many men wound in and out, And dodged, and turned, and bent about, And uttered words of righteous wrath Because ‘twas such a crooked path. But still they followed, do not laugh, The first migrations of that calf. And thru the winding woods they stalked Becaused he wobbled when he walked.
Written over 100 years ago by a New England newspaper editor and columnist, Foss' poem pre-dates our convoluted highways and government bureaucracies and complex technologies, but its message remains undiluted by the passage of time:
The years passed on in swiftness fleet, the road became a village street. And this, before men were aware, A city’s crowded thoroughfare. And soon the central street was this Of a renowned metropolis. And men, two centuries and a half Trod the footsteps of that calf. Each day a hundred thousand rout Followed the zigzag calf about, And o’er his crooked journey went The traffic of the continent. A hundred thousand men were led By one calf, near three centuries dead. They followed still his crooked way And lost 100 years per day. For thus such reverence is lent To well established precedent. A moral lesson this might teach Were I ordained, and called to preach. For men are prone to go it blind Along the calf paths of the mind, And work away from sun to sun To do what other men have done. They follow in the beaten track, And out, and in, and forth and back, And still their devious course pursue To keep the paths that others do. They keep the paths a sacred groove Along which all their lives they move. But how the wise old wood gods laugh Who saw that first primeval calf. Ah, many things this tale might teach, But I am not ordained to preach.
Perhaps you've read this poem before, or even studied it in school. Foss wrote a handful of memorable verse that survive in dusty collections and a few old journals. Maybe its lessons are archaic in a society so full of criss-crossing paths.
Yet, it probably does no harm to keep in mind that our leaders are not always who and what we imagine them to be, and that there may be profitable alternatives to the well-worn path.