The Scorpion and the Frog

Now, look at this in terms of the animal kingdom. When animals do something, we do not put a moral judgement on it. If a snake bites and kills a child, we do not say it is an evil snake. People might do that metaphorically, but there is not a moral component there. It is simply being itself.

There is the story Rūmī tells about the scorpion and the frog, right there at the side of the river. The scorpion asks the frog to give him a ride across the river, so that he does not have to walk around the lake. The frog says: I am not stupid; if I give you a ride, you will sting me. And the scorpion says: that is ridiculous — think about this: if I sting you, we will both sink and drown. So the frog says: that makes sense. He takes him across. Halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog. The frog says: why did you do that? He says: my nature.

So the idea then is that within the animal world there are natures that they cannot change. If a lion is hungry and it sees you, it sees lunch. It does not see you and think: I am going to do something really evil today, I am going to go and eat this poor person. It is just fulfilling its nature.

When a human being eats another human being — like that man Dahmer — there is something we say that is sick. Why? What is the difference between the lion eating the human being and this man eating the human being? The moral component. We say he should know better. That is a breach of the social contract; the person has gone out of his boundaries.