THe businessman and the fisherman

[Liberator]

I found this. I like it.

A few years ago, a very rich businessman decides to take a vacation to a small tropical island in the South Pacific. He has worked hard all his life and has decided that now is the time to enjoy the fruits of his labor. He is excited about visiting the island because he's heard that there is incredible fishing there. He loved fishing as a young boy, but hasn't gone in years because he has been so busy working to save for his retirement.

So on the first day, he has his breakfast and heads to the beach. It's around 9:30 am. There he spots a fisherman coming in with a large bucket full of fish!

"How long did you fish for?" he asks. The fisherman looks at the businessman with a wide grin across his face and explains that the fishes for about three hours every day. The businessman then asks him why he returned so quickly.

"Don't worry", says the fisherman, "There's still plenty of fish out there."

Dumbfounded, the businessman asks the fisherman why he didn't continue catching more fish. The fisherman patiently explains that what he caught is all he needs. "I'll spend the rest of the day playing with my family, talking with my friends and maybe drinking a little wine. After that I'll relax on the beach."

Now the rich businessman figures he needs to teach this peasant fisherman a thing or two. So he explains to him that he should stay out all day and catch more fish. Then he could save up the extra money he makes and buy and even bigger boats to catch even more fish. The he could keep reinvesting his profits in even more boats and hire many other fisherman to work for him. If he works really hard, in 20 or 30 years he'll be a very rich man indeed.

The businessman feels pleased that he's helped teach this simple fellow how to become rich. Then the fisherman looks at the businessman with a puzzled look on his face and asks what he'll do after he becomes very rich.

The businessman responds quickly "You can spend time with your family, talk with your friends, and maybe drink a little wine. Or you could just relax on the beach."

[beth]

That was quite wonderful, ratarsed. A nice reminder that life is here and life is now.

Thanks.

[Liberator]

I'm busy writing stories of my own at the moment, but rather longer. To be precise I am also rewriting a few from ages. including interviews with a very unpleasant Cinderella (we only hear the story from her side!) and a Communist millionaire Uriah Heape. He's one of the few Dickens characters I have some sympathy with - nice to his mum and all that.

I see half the point of why we can't all be fishermen. I think the Industrial Revolution was one of history's Great Mistakes (or at least the way it turned out) but some people reckon it was farming and we should all be living off the land like Kalahari Bushmen (Apparantly the PC term is Saan except that nobody asked them and they hate it because it's somebody else's word meaning vermin - typical! Or there is !Kung for those (A) who know how to pronounce !K and (B) can do so without swallowing their tongue).

What we need to remember is why we have all this elaborate stuff. At least back in ancient times if you were lucky enough to be well off you made a point of having other people to do the work and living a life of elegant intellectual leisure interspersed with casual debauchery. There was a reason to make money and get out while the going was good. We seem to have forgotten what all the effort is supposed to be for. The work that actually needs to be done is usually where it can least afford to be paid for and most of what is done just produces more of the same detritus to throw away so that it will keep employment going.

Glad to see it hit General Motors anyway - they invented planned obsolescence so they could keep repeat sales without any real improvements and they have been the most pig-headed manufacturer with a reputation for years that if Europeans don't like American-style tanks because they don't fit cities 500 years old designed for ox-carts, Europeans just have to be taught otherwise. Except the Germans: even GM couldn't bollix German expertise.

That's the root of my dislike of 'feminism'. It's not feminism as such at all, it's the women insisting they have to get in on the act instead of saying that there are a lot of other things important in life that men have forgotten about and bloody well need to learn and take part in and learn to be complete human beings like women instead of company cogs. Of course it get up the nose of people with hidden agendas or just plain taken in by all the bovine waste. I have more respect for a single mother battling on her own than any Alan Sugars and the hopefuls thinking they can fight and buy their way into the human race.

[beth]

Well, I enjoyed your first 4 paragraphs, here. When the rant against feminism starts, though, my eyes kind of glaze over because it's been overdone to the point of redundancy.

What we need to remember is why we have all this elaborate stuff. At least back in ancient times if you were lucky enough to be well off you made a point of having other people to do the work and living a life of elegant intellectual leisure interspersed with casual debauchery. There was a reason to make money and get out while the going was good. We seem to have forgotten what all the effort is supposed to be for. The work that actually needs to be done is usually where it can least afford to be paid for and most of what is done just produces more of the same detritus to throw away so that it will keep employment going

I suppose some still live lives of leisure and debauchery after retirement. Not sure many enjoy it, though.

This all probably connects with the need to be productive and competitive in various ways - instilled in some of us early on. In fact they may eventually discover it's genetic. I read this weekend that a "warrior gene" is now thought to contribute to the tendency toward aggression in response to provocation. The opinion is that boys with this gene are more apt to join gangs. So a gene to propel over-achievers and compulsive attainers may be equally possible.

www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090605123237.htm

It doesn't so much seem to be simple greed as the desire to best the other guy who is up a rung on the ladder of power - an obsessive sort of thing.

Most people I know are not anticipating retirement with any degree of relish. It's symbolic for growing older and less useful.

So, even though the fisherman could work constantly and retire earlier, he's really much better off embracing multi aspects of life as he lives it.

[jean]

Jun 8, 2009 3:53:39 GMT beth said:

I suppose some still live lives of leisure and debauchery after retirement. Not sure many enjoy it, though.
...Most people I know are not anticipating retirement with any degree of relish. It's symbolic for growing older and less useful.

Retirement is wonderful - I am retired and thoroughly enjoy doing all the things I didn't have time to do when I was working.

I can read all the books I didn't have time for, work on my allotment, make music, draw, paint, cook, sew, go for long walks.

Butwhen ratarsed writes of

...the women insisting they have to get in on the act instead of saying that there are a lot of other things important in life that men have forgotten about and bloody well need to learn and take part in and learn to be complete human beings like women instead of company cogs.

he wants us to accept that the choice is either complete full-time devotion to 'home' and 'relationships', or being a 'company cog'.

It is not so simple - it never has been. There are lots of different sorts of work that people may choose to do. Other people's choices are not mine. Other people's choices are not ratarsed's either, and he owes them the respect of not immediately jumping to conclusions about what it is that motivates them.

[Liberator]

Jun 8, 2009 8:15:52 GMT jean said:

Butwhen ratarsed writes of

...the women insisting they have to get in on the act instead of saying that there are a lot of other things important in life that men have forgotten about and bloody well need to learn and take part in and learn to be complete human beings like women instead of company cogs.

he wants us to accept that the choice is either complete full-time devotion to 'home' and 'relationships', or being a 'company cog'.

It is not so simple - it never has been. There are lots of different sorts of work that people may choose to do. Other people's choices are not mine. Other people's choices are not ratarsed's either, and he owes them the respect of not immediately jumping to conclusions about what it is that motivates them.

Quite untrue of course. I've always made it perfectly clear that my position is the last one that Jean pretends to endorse here, and she has always pretended that expecting men to participate in domestic life equally with women and employment to show any sensitivity at all to the fact of people having any life of their own means playing Cinderella. I've seen Jean answer the points she wants to invent and go on and on trying to force what I've said to fit her own prejudices for enough years to recognise an agenda when I get one rammed down my throat.

The very fact that I have always spoken of men sharing "women's work" equally and she has always blustered about women being free to have a career shows the deliberate dishonesty. It's the same kind of argument met opposition to slavery with homilies about the moral value of 'good honest work' - from the owners who weren't the ones doing it. Once or twice might be a genuine mistake: year after year is a genuine lie.

And Beth, where was any 'rant' about 'feminism'? I specifically said that my opposition to feminism was only part of my opposition to the wage-slave mentality in general. There is nothing specific to feminism about it. What is specific to feminism is Jean's kind of dirty trick using high-flown rhetoric about women getting university places when hardly anybody in the land could afford university anyway (and even fewer who actually needed the education) to justify impoverishing the working classes so they can serve the likes of Jean Brodie here when she fancies a 3am call to the supermarket or a young mother and father up all night with a sick child can be on hand all day to serve, for the Jeans of this world to crow about the wonderful 'opportunity' wicked men like me want to deprive women of (doesn't matter about the men it seems) expecting their personal commitments to control their commercial, not the other way round.

Too late. 'Feminised' society, 'family-friendly' workplace, 'feminine' values have been talked about and slowly developed despite the opposition of so-called 'feminists' like these. Men as well as women do value domestic commitments equally with employment, and there's hardly a woman fool enough to shack up with a man who wouldn't put as much into running their home as she would. It's only these particular so-called 'feminists' who have a real problem with getting rid of the old macho values. As men liberate themselves, these 'feminists' rush to put their shackles on other women. There's more to life than 'work' Jean may pretend to agree but nobody spends as long as she has twisting words and outright lying - as in his post I'm answering - without knowing what they're doing. I believe her as much as I believe the BNP is not racist.

[jean]

Jun 8, 2009 13:37:54 GMT Liberator said:

The very fact that I have always spoken of men sharing "women's work" equally and she has always blustered about women being free to have a career shows the deliberate dishonesty.

Does it?

If men share in domestic tasks (which I'm very much in favour of), then there's more space for women to have careers if that is what they want (which I'm also in favour of).

Where's the 'dishonesty' in adopting such a position?

[beth]

Quote>
And Beth, where was any 'rant' about 'feminism'? I specifically said that my opposition to feminism was only part of my opposition to the wage-slave mentality in general. There is nothing specific to feminism about it. What is specific to feminism is Jean's kind of dirty trick using high-flown rhetoric about women getting university places when hardly anybody in the land could afford university anyway (and even fewer who actually needed the education) to justify impoverishing the working classes so they can serve the likes of Jean Brodie here when she fancies a 3am call to the supermarket or a young mother and father up all night with a sick child can be on hand all day to serve, for the Jeans of this world to crow about the wonderful 'opportunity' wicked men like me want to deprive women of (doesn't matter about the men it seems) expecting their personal commitments to control their commercial, not the other way round.

Too late. 'Feminised' society, 'family-friendly' workplace, 'feminine' values have been talked about and slowly developed despite the opposition of so-called 'feminists' like these. Men as well as women do value domestic commitments equally with employment, and there's hardly a woman fool enough to shack up with a man who wouldn't put as much into running their home as she would. It's only these particular so-called 'feminists' who have a real problem with getting rid of the old macho values. As men liberate themselves, these 'feminists' rush to put their shackles on other women. There's more to life than 'work' Jean may pretend to agree but nobody spends as long as she has twisting words and outright lying - as in his post I'm answering - without knowing what they're doing. I believe her as much as I believe the BNP is not racist.

I know it probably doesn't seem so to you, but when you weave that particular feminism POV into every topic, it does come across as a rant.

Otherwise, I'm enjoying your opinion here.

[beth]

Jun 8, 2009 8:15:52 GMT jean said:

Jun 8, 2009 3:53:39 GMT beth said:

I suppose some still live lives of leisure and debauchery after retirement. Not sure many enjoy it, though.
...Most people I know are not anticipating retirement with any degree of relish. It's symbolic for growing older and less useful.

Retirement is wonderful - I am retired and thoroughly enjoy doing all the things I didn't have time to do when I was working.

I can read all the books I didn't have time for, work on my allotment, make music, draw, paint, cook, sew, go for long walks.

Butwhen ratarsed writes of

...the women insisting they have to get in on the act instead of saying that there are a lot of other things important in life that men have forgotten about and bloody well need to learn and take part in and learn to be complete human beings like women instead of company cogs.

he wants us to accept that the choice is either complete full-time devotion to 'home' and 'relationships', or being a 'company cog'.

It is not so simple - it never has been. There are lots of different sorts of work that people may choose to do. Other people's choices are not mine. Other people's choices are not ratarsed's either, and he owes them the respect of not immediately jumping to conclusions about what it is that motivates them.

Jean, I admire your attitude and am happy you're enjoying your retirement. You sound like a self-motivator. I seriously hope I find enjoyment in a variety of interests, too. After taking a 3 year break, I'm getting ready to go back to work for awhile longer - starting in the fall. Best to us both.

[mouse]

Jun 8, 2009 3:53:39 GMT beth said:

Most people I know are not anticipating retirement with any degree of relish. It's symbolic for growing older and less useful.

that is so sad...retirment is fantastic..its a new way of life and its entirely up to the individual whether its a pleasure or not
regardless of income....and we all get older and there is nothing we can do about it so we may as well enjoy

[beth]

I agree with you, mouse. Hope I can manage that kind of positive attitude when I reach retirement age. I find most people I know have problems self-motivating to the point that they never take all the vacation time they are due - just enough for an expensive trip, then look forward to getting back to work. Maybe somewhere along the way we've been brainwashed to equate achievement with gainful employment.