Make a life while you are making a living | INFJ Forum

Make a life while you are making a living

Lark

Rothchildian Agent
May 9, 2011
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This meme is maybe a little old and something of a smultzy or cliched rhetorical device but I wondered if anyone was familiar with it and had any thoughts. Here's a story as an example:-

A boat was docked in a tiny Mexican fishing village.

A tourist complimented the local fishermen on the quality of their fish and... asked how long it took to catch them.

"Not very long" they answered in unison.

"Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more?"

The fishermen explained that their small catches were sufficient to meet their needs and those of their families.

"But what do you do with the rest of your time?"

"We sleep late, fish a little, play with our children, and take siestas with our wives. In the evenings, we go into the village to see our friends, have a few drinks, play the guitar, and sing a few songs.
We have a full life."

The tourist interrupted, "I have an MBA from Harvard and I can help you! You should start by fishing longer every day. You can then sell the extra fish you catch. With the extra revenue, you can buy a bigger boat."

"And after that?"

"With the extra money the larger boat will bring, you can buy a second one and a third one and so on until you have an entire fleet of trawlers.
Instead of selling your fish to a middle man, you can then negotiate directly with the processing plants and maybe even open your own plant. You can then leave this little village and move to Mexico City, Los Angeles, or even New York City!!! From there you can direct your huge new enterprise."

"How long would that take?"

"Twenty, perhaps twenty-five years." replied the tourist.

"And after that?"

"Afterwards? Well my friend, that's when it gets really interesting," answered the tourist, laughing. "When your business gets really big, you can start buying and selling stocks and make millions!"

"Millions? Really? And after that?" asked the fishermen.

"After that you'll be able to retire, live in a tiny village near the coast, sleep late, play with your children, catch a few fish, take a siesta with your wife and spend your evenings drinking and enjoying your friends."

"With all due respect sir, but that's exactly what we are doing now. So what's the point wasting twenty-five years?" asked the Mexicans.

And the moral of this story is:

Know where you're going in life, you may already be there! Many times in life, money is not everything.

“Live your life before life becomes lifeless”

Erich Fromm analysed this sort of tendency in his books and in particular in a research study on social character in a Mexican village, he was by turns apt to find it praiseworthy and to be critical about it, on the one hand he felt the priorities exhibited by, for instance, a peasant carpenter who would produce a needed chair but would no create or could not be motivated to create additional chairs for sale could potentially indicate a productive and biophilious personality, someone who had answered themselves the question to to have or to be, deciding that being, and the priorities which for them it entailed, ie family, friends, leisure time versus the potential of material profits, which was all good. However, on the other hand, he was critical of what superficially appeared to be the same personality and how they would respond to redistribution of wealth or land by selling it and drinking the profits, used to conditions of dependency the opportunities for independence were squandered and this constituted an obsticle to development.

All of which is itself a little like the theorising of communism in Marx, early society was communistic about distirbution, however early society had chronic shortages, was pray to the scarcity and shortages, capitalism created the means to increasing surpluses and post-scarcity society, with its advent class struggles could be dispensed with and a further "new" communism emerge.

Philosophically this sounds a little like the "journey of the hero" or "following your bliss", ie all the tales in which someone leaves the village or original state, encounters many trials and tribulations, only to realise upon their return to the original state that it was what they wanted all along.

I know that Marx never fully worked all this out, he spent his declining years studying anthropological studies of things such as the Russia Mir, a communal peasant farm, which in his earlier career he may have considered atavistic and backward and which ironically, put him in the same camp as pastoral or anti-modernist conservative critics of capitalism like William Cobbett or poets like Southey (whose criticism of industrialism and the factory system is second to none).
 
I've always liked that story. Makes a lot of sense to me.
 
Excellent reminder, thanks for posting!