The following piece I wrote some time ago in Dutch.
During discussions, we often see that fear and prejudice play an important
role. Driven by a certain idea it could lead to wrong conclusions. In our actual
society, this could even have serious consequences. See what could happen....
What happens if you find a pink elephant in front of
your door? It was very small and had nothing to do with the real animal in the
wilderness, nevertheless it caused a lot of commotion in the village. The woman
who found the strange object in front of her house was upset. In the first
place, it was not clear who had put this thing there and then there was the
question why somebody would do this.
On the one hand, she was curious and
started an investigation, at the same time knowing this was useless. Nobody
would admit that he or she was the perpetrator. The fear of wrong conclusions
made this impossible. During the day, the pink elephant was the main topic
of the discussions between the people living there. The main question was
whether anybody had seen something unusual.
The neighbour across the street was
cross-examined, but he denied that he had anything to do with this terrible
act. Why was he suspected? Earlier that week he had created a dog out of nothing.
This animal walked around in the street and entered the houses when the doors
were open. The strange thing was that the dog did not exist but in one way or
another for the inhabitants it had become a reality.
Started as a joke, everybody was playing the game as
if the animal existed. However gradually they began to believe in it and saw
the little black friend called Joey. After some time, people were annoyed by
the presence of the dog. But how to get rid of something that is not real? For most inhabitants, it was clear that the person who
had created such phenomenon in their brains, could be capable of anything.
He
must have been the person that placed the pink elephant in the neighbourhood.
Why not revive this small toy to a real one damaging cars and homes? They
decided to establish a committee to discuss the situation. What could they do
to avoid destruction? The ‘wise’ men in the community decided that they had to
act now before it was too late.
The ‘beast’ still had a reasonable size. They formed a group to eliminate the ‘enemy’. With big noise the cars loaded with men,
armed with rifles, went into the direction of the house where the ‘elephant’
had been found. When they arrived at the place, it appeared that the
object was a plastic watering can.
However, the men did not notice this
anymore. In their hunger to solve this matter once and for all they started
shooting. Small pieces of plastic rained down in the street. When the silence returned, the men congratulated
each other, because they prevented a disaster...
Wim Verhoeven
verhoevenkoffiekring@tele2.nl
