A drop of honey...

Hovhannes Tumanyan was a prolific writer who created fables, epics, novels, poems, and even translations of classic works by Byron, Goethe, and Pushkin into his native language, Armenian.  Today he is widely considered to be the national poet of Armenia.  He wrote a poem called "A Drop of Honey" in 1909, which I haven't been able to find on the Internet.  However, the poem has been paraphrased by a number of authors, and I will do so again here:

There once lived a king who ruled over a country far away in a time long ago.  On a warm, sunny, summer afternoon, the king sat with one of his ministers in his luxurious palace that overlooked the market place of the city.  The king was eating a dessert of puffed rice with honey, and he looked over his land with great pride and satisfaction.  It was a magnificent palace in an even more magnificent city in an even more magnificent country.  Life was great.

As he was thinking about his great fortune and success, a small drop of honey dripped from his puffed rice onto the window ledge.  The minister was about to call a servant to come and wipe up the drop of honey, but the king waved a hand to stop him, saying, "Don't bother.  It's only a little drop of honey.  It's not our problem."

The minister shrugged his shoulders and looked back down at the drop of honey.  The drop of honey trickled slowly over the window ledge and dropped down on the street below.  Shortly thereafter, a fly came buzzing by and landed on the sweet drop of honey that had fallen onto the street.  A nearby lizard saw the fly and shot out its tongue to catch it.  But this alerted a nearby cat, who suddenly pounced on top of the lizard, trapping it under its paw.  

As it so happened, a dog was lying at one of the market stalls close by, and when the dog saw the cat jump into the middle of the street, he ran to chase his worst enemy, the cat.  The dog and cat started fighting with each other in the middle of the street.  The king and his minister heard the commotion below.

The minister was about to call a servant to go and deal with the two animals, when the king again waved his hand and said, "Relax.  It's only a cat and a dog.  And they belong to someone in the market place, not me.  We should not interfere.  It's not our problem."

The cat's owner was absolutely horrified to see his cat being attacked by the dog.  He started whacking the dog with a broom.  Of course, the dog's owner was horrified to see her dog being attacked by the cat, so she started whacking the cat with her broom.  

Soon, more people started coming out from their stalls and houses to see what all the screaming and shouting was about.  Some of these people were friends with the cat's owner, and others were friends of the dog's owners.  They all started arguing with each other, supporting their friends.  A fight broke out in the middle of the street.  The worried minister turned once more to the king, whose only comment was "Not our problem.  We should not interfere.  Have some puffed rice with honey and do not trouble yourself any further."

As the king and his minister continued to watch, the police arrived to break up the fight.  Unfortunately, the people had become so angry, that they started fighting the police.  It was a full-scale riot.  The king turned to his minister and said, "I know what you are thinking, but it's not our problem.  Besides, the army can handle this."

But the army couldn't stop it.  The riot swiftly escalated with looting and destruction all over the city.  Buildings were set on fire, and by the next morning the once magnificent city had been reduced to a smoldering pile of ashes.  The king and his minister looked down with horror.  The king sighed and said, "Oh, maybe the little drop of honey was our problem."

Sounds a lot like the "butterfly effect", doesn't it?