enjoy
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THE STORY OF WIETOOKAY--ANON
Wietookay was a mischievous spirit. He was sent by God as a
challenge to the people to end their erring ways.
The people recently had been misbehaving. They were supposed
to look after each other and look after their lands and
animals and all the birds and beasts of the forests and the
plains and the sea. But they had not been doing this. Some
had grown rich and greedy at the same time that the sick and
the old and the poor and the children were suffering. The
land too was suffering. And the leaders were not leading but
were hiding behind something they called the "system."
The Lord asked Wietookay to challenge the people, to try to
make them see the error of their ways before something so
terrible happened that even God wouldn't be able to prevent
it. So Wietookay put on his thinking cap. What kind of
mischief would be necessary to frighten and challenge the
people sufficiently that they would get back on the right
track?
He decided first of all that his mischief would have to take
many different forms, unpredictably affecting different
people in different ways at different times and in different
places around the world. Then he decided that he would keep
himself invisible: only the results of his mischief would be
visible. Finally he decided that it would be a great joke if
he could get people to blame themselves for the mischief by
making it seems as though it were something they had done to
themselves.
Now this was really very clever of Wietookay. His strategy
would leave the people very much on edge but they would have
nobody to blame but themselves and no visible enemy to shoot
at. At the same time it would please God. If the people
responded to the mischief in the same way that they had been
behaving, with everybody looking out for himself -- the rich
trying to protect themselves at the expense of the poor and
everyone trying to protect themselves at the expense of the
animals and the land -- then they could all see very clearly
where that would lead. On the other hand, if the people
responded to the mischief in the way the Lord wanted, then
the mischief itself could do less and less to frighten or harm
them.
So Wietookay went back to the Lord and asked for his blessing
on Wietookay's strategy. Now both the Lord and Wietookay knew
that the strategy involved a big risk: suppose people didn't
pull together in the face of the mischief but everybody just
looked out for himself? Suppose the result was confusion and
breakdown, as much from the fear of the way other people were
going to act as from the mischief itself?
The Lord though was used to taking the long view so he
assured Wietookay that, in the larger scheme of things, if
the people went on as they were they only had a few years
before they came to grief anyway. And what were a few years
in the eyes of the Lord? Also the Lord had some confidence in
the people's wisdom even though they hadn't been using much
of it lately. So he gave his permission for Wietookay to
pursue his strategy.
Then a funny thing happened. There had been a fly on the wall
when Wietookay and the Lord were talking and even the Lord
hadn't noticed it. And this fly had tape-recorded their
conversation. And he took the tape, put it in a plain brown
sac, and mailed it via spiderpost to the people's media.
So the people were warned that Wietookay and his mischief
were coming. But then a strange thing happened. Very much to
their own surprise they were able quickly to decide that they
would be the ones to have the laugh on Wietookay. So they
made their plans. Even the leaders came out from behind the
system and joined in. And every time Wietookay's mischief
popped up it was countered by people acting together to
protect themselves and the animals and the land from its
effects. And they did this very successfully.
In the end, when they had learned how to do this as a matter
of course, Wietookay's mischief ended. And when it seemed to
have gone for good, the people planned a party and they
invited Wietookay and the Lord to celebrate with them.
Because really they had all won. And the people later
unveiled a statue to the mischievous Wietookay to help them
remember that time and to thank him for his clever strategy.
And Wietookay's strategy took its place alongside another
famous strategy called "the art of war." Wietookay's strategy
was called "the art of Wietookay" but of course by that time
people were calling him by his nickname so they just called
it "the art of Y2K."
