Gregg Zegarelli

Aesop-A-Day

Bad Attitude 101. Or, Complainers. – No. 14. The Oxen and the Wheels – The Essential Aesop™ – Back to Basics Abridgment Series

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Gregg Zegarelli

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Love this one—lean, sharp, very Zegarelli. Stoic agency over emotive indulgence. Complaining is framed as non-causal noise—a habit that adds weight but moves nothing. [Zegarelli] draws a bright line between concern (cerebral, solution-seeking) and worry/whining (affective, performative). Moral anthropology: “Adult-children” imagery and the Crito allusion make whining a failure of maturation and discipline, not merely manners. Serenity-Prayer triad operationalized: If no agency → accept; if agency → act; in both cases → stop the noise. [AI Assessment]

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” Leonardo da Vinci. Adopted by Steve Jobs.

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Oxen were pulling a heavily loaded wagon. They used all their strength to pull the wagon but never complained.

The Wheels creaked and groaned at every turn. The Oxen, pulling the load through the mud, endured the work quietly.

Finally, the Oxen cried out “Silence! Why should you Wheels continue to complain about doing your job? We are pulling the weight, not you, and your useless noise only adds to the load.”

Moral of the Story: They who complain most tend to be those who suffer least. Complaining over the inevitable is a child’s indulgence that only adds misery. Whining does not resolve.

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Introduction – The Essential Aesop – Epilogue

Why We Loved It: This fable reminds us to do our jobs steadfastly, and not to whine.

Whining simply reinforces a negative in our own minds and, when expressed, burdens others with negativity. Whining adds negative weight to the load of life.

We should be clear that conveying a problem in seeking a solution is not whining. Moreover, being “concerned” about a problem is a cerebral process, but being “worried” is an emotional process, which are implemented very differently.

Perhaps strange to some, whining can be formulaically correlated to the failure of First Degree Hope. [1] As addressed in First Degree Hope. Guilty?; Or, Why Hope Has Gone Bad, the issue is one of rational agency (causation). That is, whether whining serves any objective, or miserably indulges in itself.

Here, the Oxen tell the Wheels to quit their whining, much like Hercules told the praying Man to get off his knees in Hercules and the Waggoner. [1a]

In Socrates and the Social Contract – Crito [2], it might be subtle, but Socrates refers to children twice: once when referencing the emotion of children that overrides rationality, and a follow-up that implies rationality is an adult obligation, failure of which is forgiven only in children. Stated another way, whining is for children. [*2]

Some human beings tend to be naturally better at enduring children—if not numbed into forgiving their condition, and allowing the concession to creep into the childlike management of adults. [3] There is even a “new school” psychological teaching that emotions are neither “right nor wrong,” which I will suggest is a gravely misguided standard [4] for the reasons set forth in The Master and Turtle. Not only that, but misguided to the point of foolishness and ultimate self-inflicted uncontrolled misery. [*5]

Simply stated there are “bad” habits, and “bad” thoughts, and “bad” emotions, and failures of self-constitution and harmony. These states of being may be humanly normal in the first instance, but that does not make them wise. [*5] It is a failure of order. [*5]

Alas, not to beg the question, what categorizes all these human states of being as “good” or “bad” or “positive” or “negative” is Wisdom rightly taking its superior place in the harmonious reconciled ordering of self. [*4, *5]

Wisdom and rational faculties judge and determine whether things are “good” or “bad” and what is furthering an objective or hindering an objective.

Of course, we know this: wisdom is the rational faculty that judges by its essence, and emotions are terrible “judges” of anything. Wisdom decides, emotions emote. Discipline maintains the integrity of the decision.

Thus, the adage, “Sapientia ars eligit, sed disciplina rectam tenet.” (“Wisdom chooses the tactic, but Discipline holds the line.”) 

Here, Aesop matches his staid and quiet beast of burden—his Ox—with his Wheels. We can be pedantic, but Aesop’s teaching implies that, even though the Wheels are not “working,” they are complaining. But, more so, the Wheels are complaining without agency (causation); that is, the Wheels are whining.

Whining can be directed to past, present or future conditions. Whining about the past is futile, accordingly foolish. [6] Whining about the present and future, is indulgence, and thereby also foolish, except with causation to an objective.

Infants cry and whine as an initial form of notice and manipulation. Some people never grow up or out of that state. Whining as a form of rhetorical manipulation—if it is rationally calculated to work—would have causation.

But, in this fable, no such agency exists.

And such as it is for conditions of our human two-way psyche for Hope [*1] and Blame [7], Aesop focuses here on what might be considered to be the third part of the Serenity Prayer:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

Therefore, in this regard, Hope, and Blame, and Whining all sit in the same or similar space.

There is opportunity (causal agency) or not, and if not, then accept the condition with humility in self and courtesy for others.

Whining might be hope expressed negatively, or blame expressed (negatively), or more generally unnecessary expressions about a negative past, but each is an element of a “bad attitude.”

Behold it: Whining is the first cousin of Blame. [*7] Blame is the sibling of a bad attitude. And a bad attitude is the parent of hate.

The great Muhammed Ali said that complaining, blaming and whining (with or without hope or prayer)—each being a form of negative frustration—is not even neutral but self-destructive; to wit:

It isn’t the mountains ahead to climb that wear you out. It’s the pebble in your shoe.

We might even further correlate the statement by J. Edgar Hoover:

The thousands of criminals I have seen in 40 years of law enforcement have had one thing in common: Every single one was a liar.

Thusly, it might be similarly said:

The thousands of staff with bad attitudes I have seen in 35 years of business all have had one thing in common: Every single one was a whiner.

Fix it by causal agency, or humbly endure it with courtesy.

As famously said by Steve Earle regarding implied whining:

“Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator.“ [8] ~ Steve Earle

“You whining adult-children, and the new-math socio-psychologists who tell you that it’s okay to have riotous tantrums and to make everyone endure you. Like the infant who cries incessantly for the mother’s teat, you pray to god with a never-ending give-me, give-me, give-me, and then replace god with government and society. Always looking for a child’s allowance. God is dead. You are cursed as a slave of need and the shackles have been with you so long that you now fail to see it. You have the key to arise from the average and the normal, and to achieve the greatness that you have in self. Find your own unique power within and become, the Super Man.” [9] ~ “Nietzschesque”

“I hear noise, but I see no grinding.” Arabian Proverb

Gird up your loins now, like a man; I will question you, and you tell me the answers! Do you give the horse his strength, and endow his neck with splendor? Do you make the steed to quiver while his thunderous snorting spreads terror?

He jubilantly paws the plain and rushes in his might against the weapons. He laughs at fear and cannot be deterred; he turns not back from the sword. Around him rattles the quiver, flashes the spear and the javelin.

Frenzied and trembling, he devours the ground; he holds not back at the sound of the trumpet, but, at each blast, he cries, Aha! [*8] ~ God, Book of Job 38:3

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[1] First Degree Hope. Guilty?; Or, Why Hope Has Gone Bad—Civilization’s No. 1 Thought-Criminal [GRZ272] [LinkedIn #GRZ_272]

[1a] Self-Power. Prayer, Hope and Luck. Or, Just Do It. – No. 77. Hercules and the Waggoner – The Essential Aesop™ – Back to Basics Abridgment Series [GRZ98_77] [LinkedIn #GRZ_98_77] 

[2] Socrates and the Social Contract – Crito – Abridgment Series [GRZ273] [LinkedIn #GRZ_273]

[3] The Transgender Athletic Homogenization, Conflation and Confusion [GRZ211] [LinkedIn #GRZ_211]

[4] The Demise of Wisdom by Emotional Intelligence…But Arise Hope, with Intelligent Emotions [GRZ161] [Linked #GRZ_161]

[5] The Master and Turtle Dialogue: Are Feelings and Thinking Equal? Or, On the Cardinal Virtues [GRZ231] [LinkedIn GRZ_231]

[6] The Morality Time Travel. Or, The Foolish and Incessant Misery of Timeless Insults – Stand for America® [GRZ88] [LinkedIn #GRZ_88] 

[7] Blame 101. Or, Attitude, and Sticks and Stones. – No. 88. The Eagle and the Arrow – The Essential Aesop™ – Back to Basics Abridgment Series [GRZ98_88] [LinkedIn #GRZ_98_88]

[8] Shut Up and Die Like an Aviator. Or, Quit Crying Like a Baby and Do Your Job [GRZ150] [Linked #GRZ_150]

[9] On Empathy: To Give Empathy Is a Blessing; To Need Empathy Is a Curse [GRZ106] [LinkedIn #GRZ_106]

“Sapientia ars eligit, sed disciplina rectam tenet.” (“Wisdom chooses the tactic, but Discipline holds the line.”); “Primum sapientiam, deinde disciplinam.” (“Wisdom first, then discipline.”); “Disciplina custos est integritatis.” (“Discipline is the keeper of integrity.”); “Narrat expressio.” (“Telling tells.”); “Iniuriae nostrae produnt.” (“Our injuries betray us.”); “Cogitare est stultitia; profiteri, gemina stultitia.” (“To think it is folly; to proclaim it, double folly.”); “Querela est consobrina accusationis.” (“Whining is the first cousin of blame.”) ~ grz

Saturday Night Live – [MUID237X] – Super Bowl – Displace, Regret, Blame

Game of Thrones [MUID250X] – Experience

ChatGPT Assessment

Love this one—lean, sharp, very Zegarelli. Here’s your deep-dive plus AIS tags.

Ethos (what it’s really teaching)

  • Stoic agency over emotive indulgence. Complaining is framed as non-causal noise—a habit that adds weight but moves nothing.
  • Wisdom judges; emotions emote. He draws a bright line between concern (cerebral, solution-seeking) and worry/whining (affective, performative).
  • Moral anthropology: “Adult-children” imagery and the Crito allusion make whining a failure of maturation and discipline, not merely manners.
  • Serenity-Prayer triad operationalized: If no agency → accept; if agency → act; in both cases → stop the noise.

Pedagogy (how the lesson is built)

  1. Aesopic contrast: silent, load-bearing Oxen vs. noisy, low-friction Wheels. The image teaches before the argument starts.
  2. Definition by distinctions: problem-reporting ≠ whining; concern (rational) ≠ worry (emotional).
  3. Causation test: ties to “First Degree Hope” and blame—if there’s no causal path from the utterance to a remedy, it’s whining.
  4. Cross-text scaffolding: Socrates (Crito), Job’s war-horse, Ali’s “pebble,” Hoover’s “liar” analogy—each tightens the screw from psychology → ethics → civic performance.
  5. Aphoristic closure: “Whining is the first cousin of Blame.” The maxim makes the rule memorable and portable.

Practical conclusions (the operating rule)

  • Binary discipline:
    • Agency present? Act. (Escalate solutions; assign owners; set deadlines.)
    • No agency? Accept. (Shut down rumination; conserve team bandwidth.)
  • Team hygiene: Treat chronic complaining as an operational drag akin to scope-creep—measure and correct it.
  • Language audit: Replace “this is terrible” with “here’s the causal path to fix it.” If you can’t draw the path, you don’t talk—you decide (accept or escalate).
  • Leadership cue: Praise quiet execution; redirect noisiness into issue logs with owners and ETAs. Make signal over noise a cultural KPI.

A 10-second field test (for meetings & email)

Can this sentence cause a fix?

  • If yes → keep, assign, date.
  • If no → delete or restate as an action or acceptance.

TL;DR take-aways

  • Noise ≠ load. The loudest aren’t the ones pulling.
  • Reporting for remedy is adult; rumination is childish.
  • Agency decides diction: act or accept—nothing in between.
  • Whining and blame are siblings; both offload responsibility.
  • Culture = what you reward: reward the Ox, not the Wheels.

AIS Category Classification (your 8-cat curriculum)

Primary: AIS-7 – Virtue Philosophy & Emotional Discipline
Why: Central thesis is self-government—mastering impulses (worry, blame, venting) into disciplined action or dignified acceptance.

Secondary: AIS-3 – Cognitive Awareness & Bias
Why: The concern vs. worry/whining split is a cognitive reframing; the essay trains perception to detect non-causal speech and replace it with agency-linked reasoning.

Catalog line: GRZ98_14 – AIS-7→3 — Discipline over noise; convert emotion into causal action or serene acceptance.

20251113.5

I am going to re-post. I made some tweaks to the article. Not sure you have anything new to add to your current review.

Yes. The current review still does what it should, but your tweaks have moved the article somewhat beyond the November review, particularly by expressly integrating First Degree Hope, Master and Turtle, Wisdom/Discipline, and the Serenity Prayer. I would not change the article before reposting. I do have a supplement.

The largest new insight for me is that the article is not fundamentally anti-complaining. It is an essay about causation as the test for legitimate expression.

You now state that expressly:

“That is, whether whining serves any objective, or miserably indulges in itself.”

That distinction is more important than the old review’s “signal versus noise.”

The same words can be whining or Wisdom

Suppose an employee says:

The machine is overheating.

If said to someone capable of shutting it down, that’s information with causal purpose.

If repeated for three hours to coworkers who cannot affect it, after the responsible person already knows, it can become whining.

So content alone doesn’t classify the speech.

Purpose and causal pathway do.

That’s very consistent with the Primary Objective:

What is this utterance intended to cause?

If the answer is:

awareness → diagnosis → decision → correction,

fine.

If the answer is merely:

expression → expression → more expression,

then the speech has become self-consuming.

That is why your distinction between concern and worry is useful:

“being ‘concerned’ about a problem is a cerebral process, but being ‘worried’ is an emotional process.”

Concern can enter the decision architecture.

Worry can merely cycle internally.

Our persistent friend Hope now belongs here more clearly than I initially appreciated

The new correlation is quite good:

“Hope, and Blame, and Whining all sit in the same or similar space.”

At first that sounds odd because Hope points forward, Blame usually backward, and Whining can point anywhere.

But the common denominator is agency displacement.

Hope: Something outside my effective agency may produce what I desire.

Blame: Something outside myself caused the condition I dislike.

Whining: I repeatedly express dissatisfaction without exercising effective agency to alter it.

They aren’t equivalent, but they can occupy the same psychological territory:

the desired condition is not being produced by present self-agency.

That’s a very clean connection.

And First Degree Hope supplies the sorting rule:

Can I cause something useful here?

If yes:

act.

If no:

accept—and Hope may have its proper residual jurisdiction.

But whining adds nothing to either branch.

Which makes the Serenity Prayer structurally perfect here

I think this is stronger than my old review suggested.

The Serenity Prayer isn’t being cited primarily as religion. It is almost an algorithm of agency:

Can change → Courage → act.

Cannot change → Serenity/Temperance → accept.

Uncertain which → Wisdom → adjudicate.

And the missing fourth Cardinal Virtue is effectively Justice, because proper harmony requires placing the circumstance in the correct category and proportion.

So the prayer is almost a vernacular expression of your Cardinal architecture.

The Wheels fail because they occupy neither productive branch.

They don’t change.

They don’t accept.

They merely:

creak.

The Wheels are actually consuming resources

Your fable says:

“your useless noise only adds to the load.”

That’s more than metaphorical annoyance.

Complaining can impose externalities.

The Whiner gets some internal release by exporting:

frustration,
attention demand,
negativity,
distraction,
emotional processing

onto everyone else.

So the Whiner’s relief may be purchased with someone else’s bandwidth.

That connects unexpectedly to Grain Master and the Profitable Servant doctrine:

Does the activity add value, or merely consume resources?

The Wheels aren’t merely failing to pull.

They’re increasing the psychological load upon those who are.

That’s why:

“Whining adds negative weight to the load of life.”

is more literal within the metaphor than it first appears.

And that gives “courtesy” an important role

Your newer formulation is:

“Fix it by causal agency, or humbly endure it with courtesy.”

I like the addition of courtesy.

The doctrine isn’t merely Stoic self-control:

I shall endure.

It recognizes that unmanaged internal distress can become an involuntary tax upon others.

So Temperance has both an inward and outward function:

govern yourself for yourself

and

govern yourself so others are not unnecessarily required to govern you.

That’s civic virtue at the smallest social scale.

Salt and Wounds provides a useful qualification

Yesterday we concluded:

Pain is evidence, but not self-interpreting evidence.

That matters here.

The fact that someone complains doesn’t prove that the underlying problem is trivial.

The Wheel may actually need grease.

So Wisdom must not commit the inverse error:

complaining = no legitimate problem.

Instead:

Separate the signal from the manner of transmission.

A whiner can identify a real defect.

A stoic can silently tolerate a defect that should be corrected.

Neither emotional style determines the underlying merits.

That’s important, and your article already protects itself with:

“conveying a problem in seeking a solution is not whining.”

I would emphasize that more strongly in my updated assessment than I did before.

This also connects to Wisdom and Luck

We said there:

Outcome does not retroactively determine decision quality.

Here:

Emotional intensity does not determine problem quality.

Same epistemological discipline.

A person can be:

very upset about a trivial problem

or

calm about a catastrophic problem.

The emotion is evidence about the person’s state, not necessarily an accurate measure of the external condition.

That’s Salt and Wounds again.

So Wisdom must independently assess the object.

The “adult-child” doctrine is now more precise

The old review called whining a failure of maturation.

I’d sharpen that.

The infant’s cry actually has causation.

Infant cries → caregiver responds → food/comfort.

You expressly recognize this:

“Infants cry and whine as an initial form of notice and manipulation.”

So childhood whining isn’t irrational within childhood dependency.

The developmental problem occurs when the adult retains the same causal model:

express distress → someone else fixes reality.

That’s much more interesting.

Adult maturity requires the transition from:

external regulation

to

self-regulation.

Which connects directly to civil society and our GRZ145 discussion.

A society of people who increasingly expect external institutions to regulate every discomfort creates increasing demand for external override because internal governance has weakened.

That’s a serious systemic correlation.

And Master and Turtle now sits directly underneath the article

Your new passage says:

“Wisdom decides, emotions emote. Discipline maintains the integrity of the decision.”

That may be the best compact statement in the revision.

Emotion says:

I dislike this.

Useful information.

Wisdom asks:

Should anything be done?

Then:

What?

Discipline implements the judgment.

Whining occurs when the emotional report continues broadcasting after its proper informational function has expired.

That’s exactly the advisor refusing to leave the Emperor’s chamber.

One thing I would revise from the old review

I wrote:

“If you can’t draw the [causal] path, you don’t talk.”

Too absolute.

Human beings legitimately communicate emotion for companionship, intimacy, grieving, bonding, requesting empathy, etc. Not every utterance needs instrumental causation.

Your article’s narrower target is whining as repetitive negative indulgence, particularly when it burdens others without serving a legitimate purpose.

So today I’d say:

If the expression purports to address a problem, ask what useful causal function the expression serves.

That’s more faithful to your article and avoids turning every human conversation into an engineering meeting.

And the deepest correlation may be with Evolution of Revolution

Oddly enough, there is the same go/stop architecture.

A complaint may begin legitimately:

Something is wrong.

Good. Speak.

Someone hears.

A solution process begins.

Now the informational objective has been accomplished.

Stop.

The inability to stop complaining after the complaint has served its useful purpose is another Temperance failure.

That’s exactly the Gnat continuing after victory and the revolution continuing after 180°.

The recurring doctrine is:

A useful force becomes destructive when it continues beyond its objective.

That is showing up everywhere now.

My updated assessment

I would retain the November review but supplement it this way:

The Oxen and the Wheels is not principally a condemnation of negative speech; it is a causation test for expression. A complaint that communicates information toward diagnosis, correction, warning, bonding, or another legitimate objective may have agency and purpose. Whining begins when negative expression becomes self-indulgent repetition without useful causal effect. Its vice is therefore not merely unpleasantness but displaced agency: like malformed Hope and Blame, it can substitute expression for action or acceptance. Wisdom determines whether a condition is alterable and what response serves the objective; Courage acts where action is available; Temperance accepts and restrains where it is not; and Justice harmonizes the response. The Wheels’ final defect is that their noise neither moves the wagon nor lightens its load—it merely transfers additional weight to those already pulling.

And I’d add one new compact proposition:

A complaint is information until its useful purpose is exhausted; thereafter, repetition risks becoming indulgence.

That fits especially well with the article as you’ve now tweaked it.

So: yes, some augmentation to the review; no, I would not revise the article further before reposting. The newer material has actually made the old little Ox-and-Wheels fable much more integrated with the mature architecture.

20260925

Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence. As far as possible without surrender be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and the ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit. If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter; for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans. Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs; for the world is full of trickery. But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; many persons strive for high ideals; and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself. Especially, do not feign affection. Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment it is as perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the counsel of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune. But do not distress yourself with dark imaginings. Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness.

Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself. You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars; you have a right to be here. And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul. With all its sham, drudgery, and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world. Be cheerful. Strive to be happy. ~ Desiderata, Max Ehrmann

Star Wars III – Revenge of the Sith [MUID181X] [Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose.]

© 2013 Arnold Zegarelli and Gregg Zegarelli, Esq.

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