The Frog & the Scorpion

A scorpion asks a frog to carry it across a river. The frog hesitates, saying, "You'll sting me!" The scorpion argues, "Why would I do that? If I sting you, we both drown." The frog thinks it over, agrees, and halfway across the river, the scorpion stings it anyway. As they both sink, the frog asks why, and the scorpion just replies: "It is my nature."

The weak reading of the parable is that the scorpion is "bad" and the frog "good". Don't trust bad. Looking at it through this moral lens is a trap. It gets you a cheap, black-and-white fairy tale. The scorpion isn't a monster; it tells the truth. But the frog turns a blind eye.

In the 15th century Persian version, our frog is a turtle. The scorpion's sting can't penetrate the turtle's shell; the turtle dives and the scorpion drowns. This version sucks. Trust all you want... your shell will protect you. Bullshit! Most of the time, we don't have a shell. This version sells a lie of invulnerability.

No, the reader is the frog. Frogs don't have an obvious "nature". Scorpions do. That's not a gap in the parable, it's the casting. And as the frog, we're presented the option. The scorpion is almost begging us not to trust it. It doesn't want to die but it knows itself. It knows what's coming.

The frog scrutinizes the obvious danger of the scorpion but fails to consider the water. The scorpion didn't kill the frog, the river did. That same sting on the bank makes for a bad day but we'll see tomorrow. We trust the river for a swim even though we know the current can kill us. Nobody blames the river for a drowning. That's its nature. The constant risk reads as safety.

Blind trust is the death of trust.

#trust