Post by jacquelope on Jul 23, 2011 15:34:02 GMT -6
This is about the reality of the Aesop's "ant vs grasshopper".
It was something I blurted my teacher as a kid when the parable was told to us in class because it appeared to be absurd to me as I was listening to it. At the time I called it a lie. I keep remembering this because of the shitstorm it stirred up in class and the fact that I never, ever got over the way the teacher would not listen.
Well, as an adult I need to revisit that bit about it being a lie. What I called a lie as a kid, is actually 2-dimensional myopic thinking in reality. It is not a lie because occasionally you do see layabouts who don't like to work, living off those who do. It's like saying you can fly and land a 747 safely while piss drunk. You can, but how often out of 100 tries will that really happen? Would you want to be flying with a piss drunk pilot? The Aesop fable is 2-dimensional and myopic, however, because it fails to address the far more common issue of those who desperately want to work but cannot.
So this is what I blurted to the teacher.
The ant lied to Aesop about the grasshopper, calling the grasshopper lazy. In reality the grasshopper wasn't lazy, it was that where the grasshopper lived, there was nothing to collect for food. Then a while after Aesop wrote down the ant's account of things and departed to spread the ant's propaganda as a "parable", karma struck: the humans who wiped out the grasshopper's habitat and food supply, came for the ants. And they, too, were exterminated.
Now I want to add a little more to that as I bring back something I haven't tossed around to anyone in 30 years: the ant lied because the grasshopper, his food supply wiped out by an unknown force, tried to move in near the ant and the ant's nest attacked the grasshopper, which they are known to do in nature. The "industrious" ant didn't mention, of course, that the grasshopper got eaten by him and his fellow ants when it wandered by their nest. Aesop wouldn't have wanted that as part of his parable.
You guys out there with jobs, you are the ants. You out there without jobs, are the grasshoppers. The humans wiping out your habitats and leaving you to argue and fight with each other over who's worthier to survive, are the Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Republican Party.
You who think of yourselves as industrious ants might think you are better than the grasshoppers whom you can slander as "lazy"
and you might even be so lucky as to grind the grasshoppers underfoot in your mad stampede for what is left to you of the economic pie
but in the end there's only one thing that you really are, and that is...
NEXT.
It was something I blurted my teacher as a kid when the parable was told to us in class because it appeared to be absurd to me as I was listening to it. At the time I called it a lie. I keep remembering this because of the shitstorm it stirred up in class and the fact that I never, ever got over the way the teacher would not listen.
Well, as an adult I need to revisit that bit about it being a lie. What I called a lie as a kid, is actually 2-dimensional myopic thinking in reality. It is not a lie because occasionally you do see layabouts who don't like to work, living off those who do. It's like saying you can fly and land a 747 safely while piss drunk. You can, but how often out of 100 tries will that really happen? Would you want to be flying with a piss drunk pilot? The Aesop fable is 2-dimensional and myopic, however, because it fails to address the far more common issue of those who desperately want to work but cannot.
So this is what I blurted to the teacher.
The ant lied to Aesop about the grasshopper, calling the grasshopper lazy. In reality the grasshopper wasn't lazy, it was that where the grasshopper lived, there was nothing to collect for food. Then a while after Aesop wrote down the ant's account of things and departed to spread the ant's propaganda as a "parable", karma struck: the humans who wiped out the grasshopper's habitat and food supply, came for the ants. And they, too, were exterminated.
Now I want to add a little more to that as I bring back something I haven't tossed around to anyone in 30 years: the ant lied because the grasshopper, his food supply wiped out by an unknown force, tried to move in near the ant and the ant's nest attacked the grasshopper, which they are known to do in nature. The "industrious" ant didn't mention, of course, that the grasshopper got eaten by him and his fellow ants when it wandered by their nest. Aesop wouldn't have wanted that as part of his parable.
You guys out there with jobs, you are the ants. You out there without jobs, are the grasshoppers. The humans wiping out your habitats and leaving you to argue and fight with each other over who's worthier to survive, are the Koch Brothers, ALEC and the Republican Party.
You who think of yourselves as industrious ants might think you are better than the grasshoppers whom you can slander as "lazy"
and you might even be so lucky as to grind the grasshoppers underfoot in your mad stampede for what is left to you of the economic pie
but in the end there's only one thing that you really are, and that is...
NEXT.