The Lady or the Tiger?

The story of The Lady or the Tiger? clearly illustrates that the human being, despite his actions on the contrary, is still very civilized in his behavior and beliefs, and is the most advanced creature in the world. Like the king of the ancient land and his daughter, the human beings of today tend to enjoy living a life of gambling, and are very capable of great savagery if the occasion calls for it. It is also a very notable human characteristic that they have a great love for violence despite the fact that one is said to be ‘inhuman’ if he were to display any kind of violence towards another human being. Many world leaders today tend to preach peace but they are also the first, when they feel that their personal or country’s economic interests are threatened, to declare war on weaker nations which are often powerless to defend themselves. This just serves to show the human capacity to settle conflicts in such an orderly way that wars are no longer made out of the whims of human leaders, as would happen in primitive societies, but for very specific strategic reasons.

Human beings have a tendency of doing everything in their power to first secure their personal interests before they secure those of the communities within which they live. For example, it is very rare for any human being to take in a homeless child who has no food and lives out in the cold despite the fact they have more in their homes than they actually need. The claim that human beings are communal creatures is greatly exaggerated because even within the communities in which they live, they often compete with each other either to have more wealth or to have power over each other. This clearly shows that although the human being has moved away from the jungles and that he has build great cities for himself and created what can be considered to be advanced technology, for many, the law of the jungle still applies in their minds.

The civilized nature of the human being is also revealed through his jealousy of the success of his fellows and it is normal for such to do everything in their power to ensure the downfall of those who seem to be more successful than them. A good example of this is in the story of The Lady or the Tiger? where the kings daughter has the option of saving her lover or allowing him to get married to a maid who she suspects to have been a rival for the attentions of her lover. It is more likely than not that since she would lose her lover anyway even if she saved him from the tiger, she would choose to direct him to its cage. As a consequence, even if she lost him, she would not be able to see the satisfaction on her rival’s face when she claimed her lover as her husband. One would say that the human being has become more civilized than primitive because of our belief that if we cannot have something, then neither can our rivals, and to this end, the human beings endeavors to destroy it. It is therefore true to say that although there are claims that human beings today are still primitive, they are actually not the same primitive creatures that lived thousands of years ago.