“50 steps laughing at hundred”

During the era of the Warring States in CHina, about 2500 years ago, there was this story told by Mencius to one of the head of the Warring States.

This head of a small state called Liang (later Wei), liked to laugh at other warring states for taxing their citizens and then engage in battles against each other. HOwever, Liang State was also involved in some of these battles , even though it was on a smaller scale.

Mencius told this Head of State the story:

 Once, there were 2 soldiers, running away from fighting at the battle front. One had started running earlier than the other and had reached about 100 steps away from the battle front. The other who started slightly later, had only reached 50 steps away from the front.

The one who had escaped to 50 steps called to the one at 100 steps : You, coward and scary cat, why run so fast?.

The one at the hundred steps laughed: it does not matter how many steps we had run away from the battle, we are both the same, both cowards trying to get away from fighting.

Mencius was trying to tell this Head of Liang that he was being hypocritical to laugh at others when he himself was doing the same thing , albeilt to a smaller extent.

Thus came the Chinese Proverb: ” Fifty steps laughing at Hundred Steps”.

The moral of the story is that we sometimes laugh at people without realising that we are of the same kind, or we are making the same mistakes, even tough the mistakes may be smaller.

I brought up this story because a few days ago, I had a chat with a Gerakan  member who was laughing at PPP. He was laughing at how this party, from arespectable opposition party had become a laughing stock of the country, with the latest infighting between 2 factions.

I brought up this to tell the member that  soon, many of the component parties will be like that of the PPP, if nothing changes. ALready, in one of the component parties, infighting has occured in Penang, with one leader criticising another openly…

On the bigger scale, sometimes we tend to laugh at other countries for being supressive, corrupt and dictorial , we fail to realise that we are only slightly better.