WORLD VOICES

CHOICES
  BY WILLIAM EATON

Contents

Home
Introduction

About the Author
The Riddle of the Miners
The Anvil and the
   Hedgehog

The Beauty of the
   System

John Ruskin and His
   Mother

Kleptomania and Its
   Discontents

Smile and the Whole
   World Smiles with You

Transgression
Tiens, voilą une baffe
There is an object called
   'circle'

Sick
The Prophet Jonah

World Voices Home

The Literary Explorer
Writers on the Job
Books Forgotten
Thomas E. Kennedy
Walter Cummins
Web Del Sol



The Riddle of the Miners

In a book on investing I came across a riddle of two miners who emerge from a mine, one with a clean face, the other with a dirty one. The question is, which of the two will wash?

             The author offers three possible answers:

(1) The dirty one.

(2) The two miners will look at one another, and, seeing his partner’s clean face, the dirty one will assume that his own is clean, and vice-versa. So the clean one will wash.

(3) It’s a bogus riddle, based on a false assumption; it’s impossible for two men to be so differently affected by the same experience.

                 In my experience the correct answer is none of the above; rather, the clean one will wash his face because his appearance coming out of the mine reveals his commitment to cleanliness.

               I learned this (or learned that this is what subconsciously I believed) from the former employee communications director of a major corporation. When he was forced to golden-parachute and became a consultant, he made a list of all the major corporations whose employee communications were, let’s say, “dirty” — that is, in need of great improvement. He approached the managements of all these companies and did not get a lick of work. So then he turned to the “clean” companies, those whose internal communications were so good, they didn’t seem to have any need for his services. Quickly he had more work than he could handle.