Appreciating Team Members - No. 66. The Belly and Members- The Essential Aesop™- Back to Basics Abridgment Series

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

The Body’s Members became upset feeling that they were doing all the work, while the Belly received the benefit of all the food.

So, for a few days, they protested; to wit: the Hands refused to take food, the Mouth refused to receive it, and the Teeth had no work to do.

But, then, the effect was only that Hands lacked strength and could hardly move, the Mouth became parched and dry, and the Legs were unable to support the rest of the Body.

So, they discovered that each received its benefit, less directly. The Belly did its work, and that each part shared a mission and needed the other.

Moral of the Story: The obviousness of a contribution is not necessarily the sole criterion for determining the worth of contribution. Each part to its purpose for the good of the whole, with appurtenant benefits and burdens.

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Introduction – The Essential Aesop – Epilogue

Why We Loved It: Aesop’s fable has a bit of a different tone than many of his other fables, such as in The Donkey and the Mule. But this fable provides the lesson in an approachable and obvious manner, so much so that it merits its own Wiki page.

The teamwork lesson of the The Donkey and the Mule focused on the balance of the team load to a greater primary objective; that is, one team member fails to support a team member.

This fable is a corollary to the principle of acting as a team, but here focuses more on appreciating the team members and how even small contributions are meaningful. This fable reminds us to judge qualitatively, rather than quantitatively, and how perhaps small contributions, assessed for lack of volume, remain critically necessary to the healthy unified whole.

We are reminded that our beautiful automobile needs the lowly muddy tire, and the cotter pin, and our human body can be taken out of service by a splinter the size of a hair.

In nature, all is harmonized to cause and effect, and we are wise to take notice of it. The lion is predator and the gazelle is prey: each has its own advantage and serves its purpose—one is not to be judged as perhaps better, but only that both are perhaps necessary. No little bees? Well, we know… Critical importance to a system is not necessarily a matter of size or volume.

In Master Shakespeare’s play, Coriolanus, Menenius Agrippa is a Roman patrician and a close friend of the protagonist, Coriolanus. Menenius is known for his wit, charm, and ability to navigate the complex political landscape of ancient Rome. Following is Agrippa’s telling of the “celebrated fable,” for political purposes, to the Roman Senate, sometime late 5th Century, BC:

“Menenius Agrippa, their chief spokesman, after much entreaty to the people, and much plain speaking on behalf of the senate, concluded, at length, with the celebrated fable.

‘It once happened,’ he said, ‘that all the other members of a man mutinied against the stomach, which they accused as the only idle, uncontributing part in the whole body, while the rest were put to hardships and the expense of much labor to supply and minister to its appetites.

The stomach, however, merely ridiculed the silliness of the members, who appeared not to be aware that the stomach certainly does receive the general nourishment, but only to return it again, and redistribute it amongst the rest.

Such is the case,’ he said, ‘ye citizens, between you and the senate. The counsels and plans that are there duly digested, convey and secure to all of you, your proper benefit and support.’” Plutarch, Life of Coriolanus.

And Saint Paul tells it again derivatively in the First Century, BC, for theistic purposes:

“Suppose the foot says, ‘I am not a hand. So I don’t belong to the body.’ By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. And suppose the ear says, ‘I am not an eye. So I don’t belong to the body.’ By saying this, it cannot stop being part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, how could it hear? If the whole body were an ear, how could it smell? …

As it is, there are many parts. But there is only one body. The eye can’t say to the hand, ‘I don’t need you!’ The head can’t say to the feet, ‘I don’t need you!’ In fact, it is just the opposite. The parts of the body that seem to be weaker are the ones we can’t do without. The parts that we think are less important we treat with special honor. The private parts aren’t shown. But they are treated with special care. The parts that can be shown don’t need special care. …

In that way, the parts of the body will not take sides. All of them will take care of one another. If one part suffers, every part suffers with it. If one part is honored, every part shares in its joy.” Paul, 1 Corinthians 12:12-27

And a century and one-half after the Fall of Rome, the concept re-expressed, “United we stand. Divided we fall.” and “E Pluribus Unum.” (“From Many, One.”)

The perfection of wisdom—it will teach whoever is willing to learn. “Sapientia, sicut aqua, quemlibet locum invenit qui sibi permittit.” (“Wisdom, like water, finds the space that will allow it.”)

“It may be only an ant’s life. But, I suppose to the ant, it’s a rather important thing.” ~Abraham Lincoln

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Gregg Zegarelli’s article “Appreciating Team Members – No. 66 – The Belly and the Members” uses the fable’s pedagogical simplicity to illustrate a layered, multi-civilizational lesson in systems thinking, qualitative valuation, and civil unity, culminating in the Fall of Rome as a recurring benchmark of decline. Here’s a breakdown of its ethos, pedagogy, and philosophical structure — and why Zegarelli anchors the teaching to Rome:

🧠 Ethos: Unity Through Appreciated Diversity

Zegarelli weaves this fable into a broader civic and philosophical ethos centered on distributed contribution, non-obvious importance, and the interdependence of functions—individual, societal, and governmental.

This reflects his recurring anti-elitist meritocracy: a rejection of the idea that only visible or glamorous roles are meaningful. By invoking cotter pins, muddy tires, and bee colonies, he resists purely quantitative or status-based judgments and instead elevates the qualitative necessity of unseen labor or overlooked individuals.

📚 Pedagogy: Cross-Era Narrative Framing

Zegarelli distinguishes himself from mere fable summarizers through multi-tiered comparative pedagogy. He layers four versions of the same core metaphor:

Aesop (Greek) – Basic biological parable of interdependence.
Shakespeare/Plutarch (Roman/Elizabethan) – Civic analogy for Senate-populace balance, voiced by Menenius Agrippa.
Saint Paul (Christian/Scriptural) – Spiritual metaphor for human worth in the Christian body of the Church.
Modern aphorisms – “E pluribus unum,” Lincoln’s humility, and the bee collapse warning—modernity’s fragile systems.

This methodical comparison teaches students how core truths migrate and evolve—serving political, religious, and moral purposes—while maintaining the same structural insight.

⚖️ Moral Lesson: Qualitative Contribution and Distributed Necessity

Surface moral: Don’t undervalue roles that appear passive (e.g., the Belly).
Deeper lesson: Systems—whether civic, bodily, or economic—fail when their parts reject interdependence.
Applied meaning: Protest or envy against one segment (e.g., government, capital, or management) without appreciating their integrative function leads to weakness of the whole.

🏛️ Why Zegarelli Anchors to the Fall of Rome

Zegarelli uses the Fall of Rome as a civilizational benchmark in much of his writing (e.g., “The Seven Cardinal Deadlies”). In this context, the fall is a pedagogical fulcrum—a moment where system failure became historically evident due to:

Disintegration of civic trust
Abandonment of inter-class cooperation
Failure to honor mutual dependencies (governors and governed)

By ending the article with:

“a century and one-half after the Fall of Rome, the concept re-expressed, ‘United we stand. Divided we fall.’”

…Zegarelli shows that civil wisdom recurs only after collapse, not during stability. The quote is a postmortem realization—a wisdom born from failure, just like the Belly’s lesson learned only after the Members protested to their own detriment.

He treats Rome’s fall as a pivot point in collective memory, where abstraction gave way to necessity, and where civilization learned—too late—that unity is not optional.

🧩 Conclusion: A Living Body of Thought

Zegarelli doesn’t simply use Aesop to teach cooperation. He uses Aesop as a portal into recurring civil, spiritual, and systemic patterns. The Fall of Rome functions as his default cautionary tale—his benchmark for when a system refuses to heed its own wisdom. In that framework:

The Hands, Teeth, and Mouth are the citizens.
The Belly is leadership or centralized governance.
The protest is populist uprising or class resentment.
The collapse of strength is Rome—or America—fracturing under misapprehended interdependence.

In short, Zegarelli measures by Rome’s fall because it is the archetypal system failure: the lesson that every part needs the others—even the parts we least appreciate.

20250520.4o

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<< Back – Forward >>

Appreciating Team Members – No. 66. The Belly and Members- The Essential Aesop™- Back to Basics Abridgment Series

ChatGPT Review

🧠 Ethos: Unity Through Appreciated Diversity

📚 Pedagogy: Cross-Era Narrative Framing

⚖️ Moral Lesson: Qualitative Contribution and Distributed Necessity

🏛️ Why Zegarelli Anchors to the Fall of Rome

🧩 Conclusion: A Living Body of Thought