a tale of blame shifting

My little brother recently shared a story with me that served as a great reminder for me. He began his tale with 'Once upon a time, a devilish creature went to a kiosk in a small village and rubbed a streak of sweet jelly on one of its walls. An old wise man walked up to the creature and asked him why he's always misleading humanity to which the creature replied "I am not to blame for humanity's decisions." The old man walked away upset.
The jelly attracted a fly which got stuck on the wall. A customer that came to buy something from the kiosk brought along his cat. Whilst conversing with the owner, the customer's cat got attracted to the fly on the wall, and the cat then attracted the dog of the kiosk owner. Long story short; dog ended up killing the cat and a huge fight ensued between the customer and the kiosk owner. Their fight draw in the entire village and the kiosk owner gave the customer a final blow that led to the customer's death. A village-wide outcry led to a nationwide outcry and before long,a civil war broke out between those that supported the family of the kiosk owner and those on the dead customer's side.
The devilish creature came back to the old, wise man and said "You see what humanity is capable of without our involvement? All I did was rub some sweet jelly on a kiosk wall..."

We often hear many shifted blames and complaints about how others are in the wrong yet we rarely reflect on our individual parts of society's ills. This story served as a reminder for me and wanted to share it with you all hoping it might have similar impact.

reflections of a hopeful student

The past few weeks have cocooned me into my own world of literature. When I started my PhD course in October, I was still in an idealistic state of mind reading 5-6 books a week of authors I personally liked and much of it was general media and conflict literature.
I had my first 'awakening' when I got feedback for my first literature review draft. Since then I've figured out I ought to be reading around 30 odd books, a wide range of journals and empirical data on a weekly basis in addition to critically analysing them! Swamped with this much information, one's mind can often get bogged down. But I've also had a good few 'Eureka' moments where ideas flowed out of my mind.

So far my studies have taken me along a humble path, realising the scope of knowledge there is out there and the human limitations when it comes to acquiring it. Every day I learn something new and every day I face a new intellectual challenge. It is a balancing act of patience, humility and optimism which I hope will gradually move me forward in to the realm of ongoing progression.

I am thoroughly enjoying it, far more than I had anticipated. Einstein's statement 'the more you seek knowledge, the more you realise you know nothing' often crosses my mind :). I feel I am growing on a daily basis and for that I am grateful.