But mutuality requires our listening in good faith to the others in our world. To fail to pay attention to the context in which the snake found himself is to be insensitive by thinking that the snake will be pleased to wake up in the farmer's bosom. Peace does not depend on everyone trying to dictate that others be like them. The farmer would have been happy to be next to a warm bosom. But the farmer is a human, not a snake.
Peace depends on our respecting the unique needs of all the living members of our world.
In this painting there were four actors. All were endangered because two of them could not imagine the others' world enough to respect it as different from his own, the farmer and the snake. Notice that as I continued to fiddle with the drawing, I began to capture more of my feelings about the story. Leon Kossoff is a famous painter. Certainly his drawings from Poussin are works of art.