There is a plant, that if you touch it, it folds its leaves, pretending to be dead.
When sensing a threat, the tortoise retreats it head and legs into its shell pretending to be a stone or whatever. A millipede coils itself, acting dead whenever it senses danger.
In Things Fall Apart, “Eneke the bird says that since men have learnt to shoot without missing, he has learnt to land without perching”.
Human beings are adaptive creatures, they quickly learn how to survive the system.
You tell them that they must report to work at 8 a.m. and leave at 5 p.m. They will clock in at 8 a.m. and spend the rest of the day doing as little work as possible. Then they will clock out at 5.10 p.m and they will have worked overtime.
In school, students are forced to be attentive. So, whenever you ask them a question, they will put a frown on their faces and tilt their heads at an angle, pretending to think hard. So that you can leave them alone.
We are told to attend seminars and workshops so that we can get promoted. So, we attend, sign the attendance sheet and learn nothing in the workshops. But we ensure that our names are spelled correctly in the certificate of attendance.
In church, the preacher expects us to say amen to show that we are inspired by his words. So, we have learnt to say Amen whenever he takes a pause after uttering some words. But the only honest Amen we give is a sigh of relief when he finishes preaching.
Human beings have mastered the art of ticking boxes to meet the expectations of the quality assurance guys.
And since men insisted that they should be applauded for their sexual prowess, women learnt to produce certain sounds during coitus.
Life is life
Fabio