2010-07-16

Test your EQ!

I am going on vacation for a week, but I’ll leave you with a little test which is supposed to measure the EQ:

There is a woman and a man, who love each other but live on two different islands. The man shares his island with a savage. The woman seeks a way to get to the man’s island, because she loves him, and the only way she finds is to go by boat. There is only one boat available and the boatman tells her that he will take her to the other island, if she takes off all her clothes and goes on board naked. The woman is puzzled with the boatman’s request and goes to the wiseman of her island to ask him. The wiseman’s advice to her is: “Follow your heart”. After that, the woman decides to take off her clothes and go on board the boat naked, as the boatman requested. The boatman keeps his end of the agreement and takes her to her beloved’s island. When she arrives at the island, however, the first person she meets is the savage, who immediately rapes her. At that particular time, her beloved arrives and, seeing her with the savage, breaks up with her calling her a whore.

Who do you think is most responsible for this outcome?

You’ll have to wait for the answers until Monday 26 July. Stay well and have a good time till then!

11 comments:

Meow said...

The woman!

By the way, hv a nice trip! (though when u see this comment, you have already finished yr vacation)

James S. said...

A lot of emotions come into play here...love, anger, hate, jealousy, fear, rage, sadness, etc. Who is most responsible for the outcome?...good question. This is a series of events that has led to a paticular consequence compounded by a variety of good/bad choices made by the woman, so it would seem she is most at fault. The wiseman absolved himself by telling her to follow her heart, after that the woman made an immoral judgement to go aboard the boat naked; at this point she needn't have been raped by anyone to have the man call her a whore and break up with her. Now she has to take responsibility for her actions and perhaps find solace in the fact that the man (her lover), whose rush to judgement was idiotic, was not such a wonderful guy after all. Of course in a senario like this a bit of the blame can be left on everyone's doorstep.

Christina Linardaki said...

Thank you both for your comments.

First of all, let me give you the key.

The woman is supposed to represent the emotions.
The wiseman is supposed to represent the voice of logic.
The boatman is supposed to represent our interest in money.
The man is supposed to represent how we value the others' opinion of us.
The savage is supposed to represent the instincts (the sexual instinct included, of course).

You may understand, therefore, that we are essentially talking about an inner play, what happens within each one of us in a stressful situation.

Christina Linardaki said...

@Meow

You know, many friends of mine in the Greek section of the blog also replied that it was mostly the woman's fault. This is supposed to score low in the test and it really made me wonder, because when I was first told about the test, I believed that it was anybody else's fault, but not the woman's. After some thought I arrived at James' conclusion:

Of course in a senario like this a bit of the blame can be left on everyone's doorstep.

Christina Linardaki said...

@James

Of course in a senario like this a bit of the blame can be left on everyone's doorstep.

Like I wrote Meow, this is the conclusion I draw myself, after thinking about it a little. I also thought that the story was an illustration of how anything we experience is actually a combination of many factors and forces, but then they gave me the key and realized it's literally all in the head. :D

Meow said...

Glad you are back! Hope u enjoy yr vacation!!

Since your question is "Who do you think is most responsible for this outcome?" and the outcome is the woman had been raped by the savage and her beloved called her a whore and left her.

The savage was definitely a bad man and he should be punished, however when a woman stood nude in front of such an evil, no one would wonder why he did such a bad thing.

The so-called "lover", the man, I will never love such a stupid man :p

What I think is we are responsible for our own decisions, no matter it is a right or wrong choice, no excuse, especially we are adults.

By the way, one of my friend (real friend) she chose "wiseman" as the one should responsible for the outcome, I wonder!!

Christina Linardaki said...

Thank you very much for your wishes, Meow. I wish you back the same. We had a wonderful time.

As for the test. You shouldn't take it too seriously. Such tests are really intended as a pass-time; there is nothing special or important about them. They're just fun.

The so-called "lover", the man, I will never love such a stupid man :p

Nobody never intends to love stupid people, it's just that we don't get to know they are stupid beforehand!

But, look what happens, if we make the substitution using the key: the situation changes altogether.

Our emotions (the woman) urge us to do something. We then assess the situation, evaluating whether we get to gain something from it, even if it means taking a risk (the boatman and his request). We rationalise the whole thing (wiseman) and reach a decision. We are then ready to take the risk but our instincts take over (savage) with unexpected results. We are then left feeling shameful and mindful of what other people may think of us (the man).

This is more or less the play we engage in when in love, at least some of the times, isn't it?

Like your friend, I chose the wiseman at first too. It seems that both of us are too emotional and less rationalistic...

ersi said...

To me such tests are dead serious. By process of elimination, I first cancelled out the wiseman. Why? He only said: "Follow your heart," and nothing more. He didn't do anything.

Heart refers to both emotion and intuition. Heart desires an outcome, but can also sense the risk. This is quite applicable according to the story, where the woman has the dialogue with the boatman. Since the decision is made without much reason (the man is on a different island), the emphasis is on the intuitive aspect of heart.

For me, the greatest blame is on the man, but there are aspects to the story that bother me. To my taste, the story ends too abruptly. If the man and the woman love each other, how are they on different islands at first? There is obviously a relevant prologue to the story. Either that or the man should consider his judgement longer and better (an afterstory).

If I were the man, I would feel totally guilty for the event. The woman definitely deserves saving from the hands of the savage, even at the cost of someone's life. In my system of values, love cannot be denounced. No circumstances justify it. So, I prefer a story where the man dies attempting to save the woman...

Christina Linardaki said...

In chivalry you mean. You're such a gentleman ersi...

In maths, when we are given a problem, we are also given a key (what each parameter stands for) and they let us reach one of the acceptable solutions our own way. This story (test, whatever) had the solution already made out and the key was very specific too, thus the whole situation was limited to a degree that - to my eyes- makes the whole thing just not functional any more. This is one of the reasons why I wouldn't take it too seriously.

James S. said...

So the woman is an emotional train wreck who listens to the voice of logic by showing she is a money hungry gold digger whose instinct it is to throw caution to the wind and ignoring what others think of her.

Christina Linardaki said...

Mmmmm... more or less!! :D

Would you take anything of the sort seriously?