What's mine is not yours! How far can you enforce that?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Simple story, a folk tale from years ago. It just came up in one of my classes, and I remember my father telling me the story when I was a kid.

Jake and Zeke are brothers. Jake is rich and has seven horses. Zeke is poor and only has one. They have an arraignment where Zeke can borrow Jake’s horses part of the time to plow his field.

Zeke has all of the horses one day, and he call out to them “Go, my eight horses.”

Jake hears this, becomes angry and kills Zeke’s horse.

Who is right and wrong here? And why?

There’s actually a reason I’m asking this but I’d like to hear other people’s thoughts before I tell the backstory.

2

Seems like killing a horse under these circumstances is wrong. I don’t see a counter argument, but I’ll monitor the responses.

3

Jake is wrong. When Zeke said that he was talking to the horses, not to Jake.

Also, it was a disproportionate response.

As for whether Zeke is in the right (your question DOES ask about who’s in the right), I’d need more information for context. It IS possible, in the right circumstances, to build a justification for saying that to horses that you don’t hold title to.

4

Presuming the humane society isn’t listening, there’s no real problem with killing your own horse. However, Jake kills Zeke’s horse in his irrational psychotic fit of rage. This is tantamount to theft of the horse, so Jake is in the wrong and would be required to replace the horse with equitable compensation.

Referring to something as being yours when it technically isn’t doesn’t actually do any damage, and it’s not like the horses are going to take Zeke’s word and refuse to return to Jake. Nobody was even deceived by his lie. Jake getting mad over the comment was stupid and borderline insane. And that, my dopers, is the truth.

5

Zeke said something. And not in a tricksy sense of ‘saying something’, like when a guy on trial for murder defends himself with a quick “Hey, I Didn’t Kill Anyone; I Just Told Someone To Do It, And Told Him I’d Pay Him In Exchange” or whatever: we can play lots of fun games with that, but this ain’t one of them.

Jake, though, didn’t Just Say Something back: it’d be a fitting and proper response, but that’s not what he did. He escalated, if you will, all the way up to sticks and stones and breaking bones — in response to, as it were, names will never hurt me.

6

Is there something I’m missing, like under the law did all 8 become Zeke’s horses upon that proclamation or did Zeke try to substitute his nag for Jake’s Khartoum? Because otherwise I don’t see how killing the horse is right. Check that. Even then I don’t see how it is right unless there is something bizarre (and unknown to us) going on like something to do with insurance or Zeke’s horse was injuring one of Jake’s.

7

You’re comparing two wrongdoings:

  1. Using the word “my” to refer to 7 horses that aren’t yours.

  2. Killing a friend’s only horse out of retaliation for #1.

Surely we can all agree that #2 is a far worse wrongdoing than #1. (The poll agrees with me so far, as 6 out of 6 votes have said that Jake was most at fault)

8

I genuinely am not seeing the dilemma in this question. Jake is a violent, petty, asshole. Zeke is, at worst, mildly imprecise with his language.

What’s the argument for Zeke being in the wrong supposed to be?

9

I’m with Miller on this one. I’m apparently missing something.

When Zeke said, “Go my eight horses”, who was he speaking to? Was he telling the horses to start plowing? Was he setting them loose? Was he permitting himself a moment if self-delusion, enjoying the feeling of owning eight horses for a time? How can any of that be in the same ballpark as killing your brother’s horse?

I have a feeling this is setting up some gotcha, but for the life of me I can’t figure out what it is.

10

Is this just a riddle playing off the wording of “who is wrong”? Everyone so far is answering (I think) by comparing the two wrongs. But the OP didn’t ask who was wronger, or who had committed a sin, just “who was wrong”. The answer to that is, “both”, in the trivial sense that both were wrong about something.

Is that the trick here? You’re seeing how many of us immediately make this into a moral comparison instead of recognizing that both were wrong, for certain values of “wrong”?

11

I like your thinking, but it seems incorrect because the poll itself asks “Which is more at fault or are they equally to blame?”

12

Ah, you’re right. Now I’m back to wondering what the hell this is leading to.

13

Unless I’m missing something, I can’t possibly see how the rich guy isn’t the villain here.

14

Does Jake kill waitresses who call him “my dear”?

15

Anyone who kills a horse during plowing season deserves the death penalty.

16

I don’t see that Zeke is wrong on any level, since “my horse” doesn’t have to mean “the horse that I own”; it can equally mean “the horse that I am riding/driving”, or “the horse on which I have placed a bet”, or no doubt many other things.

17

I apologize for posting what may seems to be a gotcha. I just wanted to hear people’s views before posting the explanation.

As I said inter OP, there is a backstory to this.

On Saturday, the story was in the material I was using to teach an English class. When I started to teach it, I remembered that my father told me the story when I was maybe 12 years old or so. Perhaps as old as 15.

When I heard the story from my father, my thoughts where that the rich brother was clearly at fault. You can’t kill someone’s horse for that reason.

I still clearly remember this as if it happened yesterday. My father told me that I didn’t understand. Zeke should not have called the horses his. Period. End of the story.

Looking at this now as an adult, 45 years later, as someone with children that I’m trying to teach morals to, as well as helping them learn to navigate the world, I was just struck by how fucked up my father’s world was.

Were this some sort of quirk only in this particular story, it wouldn’t be as strange, but my father lived by this code. He lived in an absolute world of dire consequences for the most trivial sins.

I’ve shared before but the worst beating I ever got was because I gave him the wrong spoon for breakfast. The sort of beating that my mother worried could kill one of us.

There were these psychotic fits of rage to certain things. One of them was not being “humble” and in this case since Zeke didn’t actually own the other horses, saying they were his clearly was so wrong he deserved to have his horse killed.

After my father told me that, my mind actually shut down. Apparently that’s a common reaction in child who are being abused. I simply couldn’t process any further. I couldn’t think my father was wrong, I couldn’t even mentally disagree with him.

So, some 40 something years later, I ran across this story, as now finally I can complete the thoughts that my mind refused to form: that it was psychotic reasoning and my father was psychotic.

18

Not going to disagree with you; both my parents had similar (if less extreme) tendencies, so I mostly went through childhood tip-toeing on eggshells, because I had no idea what would set them off.

I blame leaded gasoline.

19

I think it’s generally a crime to kill someone else’s animal.

20

I don’t see how it’s not Jake.

That’s like killing someone’s cat because they were were walking your dog and pretended like it was their’s for some reason. They’re not hurting anyone, at least not in a way that concerns you. Killing their cat over it is an enormous over reaction.
Or…if someone pointed at your house and said to their date ‘yup, I own this giant house. Do you like it?’ and when you find out, you burn down their house.

I feel like I’m missing something or the story was told incorrectly. Personally, I don’t see how this is even a question.