The Third Mouse

Of the many fairy tales our oligarchs have sold the public on, one of the more pernicious is that the only permanence is change. One of their favorite clichés is, “Change is inevitable; growth is optional.” The implication is that your company doesn’t fire you; it liberates you. And in this state of liberation, you are free to move on to higher level of existence as you began collecting unemployment because anxiety builds character.

Some years ago, as corporations were making job security a thing of the past, a pamphlet was making the rounds titled “Where’s my cheese.” It told the tale of two laboratory mice who were made to run a maze at the end of which was there cheese. Once both mice mastered the maze, their cheese was moved to a new location.

One of the mice, when it got to the old location of the cheese, stayed put in expectation that the missing cheese would soon appear. Tragically, it wasted away and died.

The second mouse, being full of get-up-and-go, traversed the maze until it found the cheese’s new location.

The tale conveniently left out the third mouse, the mouse on steroids, that reduced the maze to kindling and beat the shit out of the researchers until they told him where the cheese was.