Class Meeting
There was a cow that was always folding origami alone during recess in a corner of the classroom.
One day, the pig went up to the cow.
“Hey, Cow, what are you making every day?”
“Hi, Pig. I am folding paper flowers.”
The pig was very surprised at the cows's handiwork and asked him to teach him how to do.
The cow nodded with a smile.
Every day after school, they folded origami in the empty classroom.
They became friends.
One day the class was having a meeting to decide who will Best wishes, the class representive.
A wing and a hoof raised into the air which equivalent to human's hands.
One was the rooster; the other was the cow.
The rooster is the most popular animal in the class and had many friends.
On the other hand, the cow has few friends so his classmates were surprised that he wanted to be a class representative.
They decided to take a vote.
“Who wants Rooster?”
Yes, yes, yes!
Almost all of the class raised their respective body parts equivalent to human hands.
The sight of human hand equivalents in their air evoked anxiety inside the remaining students, and so they voted for the rooster.
"Who chooses Cow?”
No one raised a body part equivalent to human hands.
The pig thought the cow should be the class representative.
He realized the cow’s ability to explain concepts easily when the cow was teaching the pig how to do origami earlier.
However, because everyone voted for the rooster, the pig had no courage to vote for the cow.
Someone said,
“Rooster is better than Cow! He's bright!”
“Yeah, I cannot read Cow’s mind.”
“I have no idea why he wants to be our leader.”
“Is he showing off?”
“What do you think, Pig?”
The pig said,
“Yeah, yeah... he's not a good fit for class representative."
Yes, Rooster should be our leader!”
The pig said what he didn’t mean.
The pig went to the cow to apologize after school.
The cow laughed and said,
“I don’t care.
I figured that everyone chooses Rooster because he has more friends than I do.
The thing is my grandma's in the hospital now, and I know I could make her very happy if I were the class representative.
Instead, I'll study hard and get a high score on the next exam.
And I understand your situation because it's hard to disagree with people around you.”
At that moment the pig felt as if he understood the cow's motivations.
And he came to like the cow more.
“I admire you, Cow.”
The next day they went to the hospital with a big paper bouquet to see Cow’s grandma.
Grandma alternated her glance between the bouquet and boys and smiled.
Commentary
Bandwagoning is a phenomenon that happens when people tend to like popular things or act in a similar way. The more people have certain things or behave in certain way, the more people want them or want to do it. In this story, some students have not decided who to vote for yet, but because many people voted for the rooster, they did as well.
Deindividuation is a phenomenon that happens when people are more likely to behave aggressively, irrationally, ephemerally, and antisocially in a crowd when they are not the center of attention. In this story, the pig said bad things about the cow automatically because many students did so and wanted him to do so as well.
It's up to you to decide how you will behave, but you shouldn’t be influenced by others to hurt someone. It might be difficult to disagree with people around you, but you should think of what is right and what will benefit you before making a decision.
Reference："bandwagon"
David McRaney."Deindividuation"
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