My dad worked for some years on a coal mine when he was 16. Mind you, this was on a remote village during the post-war era on Spain. He has countless histories even though he does not share them often; smelly rooms with bunk beds, cold winters, or fishing on a pond with dynamite. He later moved from there to the big city, took correspondence studies on electricity and started a tour around multiple companies and projects as an electrician until he settled on one company (a company that started small but later became one of the biggest multinational corporations of pool products) where he worked until retiring.
Sometimes he would do side jobs fixing pools and fancy installations on the high profile clients. I've been there with him helping out. He once told me: "see these big houses, two pools and an spa? They think they need all this, but have no time to enjoy themselves. Me? I have everything I ever wanted."
He has been all his life self learning just as a pastime. His side project being going back to his old village to build a well and water installations to help farmers irrigate their fields. He even used water pressure to make a kind of 'protocol' to communicate different panels. When you go there, it's crazy land. He's been iterating over his initial design for more than 40 years, and he keeps going at it now at 79. One thing he usually says, contrary to what most people think is that life is long, really long. There's time for everything.
We come from two different worlds. To me it's not just about him being a role model but showing him gratitude for all he has taught me.
"see these big houses, two pools and an spa? They think they need all this, but have no time to enjoy themselves. Me? I have everything I ever wanted."
I really needed to hear this today. I like this outlook. Thanks.
An American tourist was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked.
Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The tourist complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.
The Mexican replied, "Only a little while."
The tourist then asked, "Why didn't you stay out longer and catch more fish?"
The Mexican said, "With this I have more than enough to support my family's needs."
The tourist then asked, "But what do you do with the rest of your time?"
The Mexican fisherman said, "I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos, I have a full and busy life."
The tourist scoffed, " I can help you. You should spend more time fishing; and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat: With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then Los Angeles and eventually New York where you could run your ever-expanding enterprise."
The Mexican fisherman asked, "But, how long will this all take?"
The tourist replied, "15 to 20 years."
"But what then?" asked the Mexican.
The tourist laughed and said, "That's the best part. When the time is right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions."
"Millions?...Then what?"
The American said, "Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos."
That old man breaks his back requiring bed rest for 12 months and multiple dangerous and painful surgeries ... versus a guy who has a couple mil in the bank.
It's a good parable, but doesn't stand up to too much scrutiny.
No, the ants all pay into the system, leveraging the economy of scale, so that everyone has equal access to health care, rather than privileged access for those who can afford it.
You're describing a mutual society, which is a voluntary thing, and very different in character and consequences to compulsory taxation and a welfare state.
You're saying that if the old man worked harder, he'd be less likely to break his back? Or are you saying that if he worked harder, he'd only break his back after he made a few million?
He's saying that in real life the fisherman's job is a bit worse than presented, and the American's a bit better, due to things like healthcare, and financial planning for emergencies and retirement.
And the correct response to that is yes, its a parable, the answer isn't to become a fisherman or necessarily start your business, but to find a good middleground for yourself that keeps the point of the parable in mind.
The way I read the parable, the point is that you can do blue collar work at a humane pace, work smart and have a good life. Or you can work yourself into the ground while life pass you by.
I don't really see how "It's better to be born rich" adds much to the interpretation.
lol, the point of the parable is to remember that you work to live, not live to work. I was responding to your parent post, that was basically just harping that the parable was a bit simplified.
And yet, another extension of the story has the American go to the next fishermen, and they open up a big company together, fishing up all the fish and leaving none for the first guy, plus the supply drives the prices down and make things even worse for him.
Oh, I think they'll just go to the government and arrange to transfer the right to fish to private ownership. That way they can make a profit from leasing out the resource rights, and force the people to pay if the want to catch their own food.
Meanwhile, thousands of people get to eat nutritious fish instead of the stringy pork and stone-baked weeds they were eating before. The population's mean IQ increases a couple of points over the course of a generation. They experience an accompanying rise in various standards of living, from their high-school graduation rate to their average lifespan.
Eventually, the tuna are overfished and the agricultural conglomerates switch to farmed tilapia. Everybody complains loudly... but by now, nobody but a few old fishermen remember how much subsistence farming sucked.
Not quite sure what the follow up is supposed to teach ?
Is it a critic of EU/US development plans in developing countries in Africa. Come in, transform self-sustaining economies into EU/US dependent one (eg: replacing traditional crop by commercial crop complemented by food import), ruin them for profit, and then rebuild them for profit (or using public funds) ?
I took a surfing lesson in Hawaii last week from a guy who has a degree from Florida State (business, if I'm not mistaken, but I'm also not positive).
After graduating, he realized that he'd rather live in Hawaii and spend his days in the ocean than sitting at a desk. Yes, he could earn more money...but he's very happy doing what he does. He keeps in touch with friends that he graduated with, and while many of them would like to switch places with him, he says he wouldn't switch places with any.
Of course, they may be setting themselves up for a better retirement, etc. But he has realized that a simple life that makes him happy is what he wants. Good on him.
We didn't talk about it -- but teaching surfing was definitely his full-time employment. But a quick Craigslist scan finds tons of apartments for less than $1,000 a month. He said that he leads a fairly simple life.
>>"see these big houses, two pools and an spa? They think they need all this, but have no time to enjoy themselves. Me? I have everything I ever wanted."
Unfortunately a lot things have changed since those days. In fact a few centuries back you could have a lot of fun in life doing nothing at all. These days things are so organized, anybody who falls out of line is likely to through a great deal of suffering. Healthcare is very organized and expensive, you can't get a decent job today without education and the overall society is moving towards a trend where not having a certain set of things can leave you with social disability.
>>One thing he usually says, contrary to what most people think is that life is long, really long. There's time for everything.
This is very true, and this is why if you are going to live really long you better have a good cache of savings for your retirement.
As for the importance of fitting in, I remember one book on pre-Revolutionary France that estimated that at any given time about 1/3 of the population was homeless. Their life expectancy was short, with risks of starvation, being killed by bandits, being killed as bandits, and so on. Again, not really a fun time to be alive.
You need to read up on hedonistic adaption. If you think you 'need things' will give you social disability, well, you're in for a long, tough life. Because there's always someone and some social group with more things than you.
What you need is time to think, time for health and body, and time with genuine friends.
While some specific purchases can make us happy, for most the initial euphoria is soon replaced by feelings of uneasiness as our new thing becomes old.
Why do you think BMW hit the big time with their model series, a strategy every other car company as copied? Because you start with the 1 series. A first you love it and are immensely satisfied with your new status. Then you go in for servicing, and dammit don't those 3 series look good. Eventually you trade the 1 at a shocking loss and roll over to the 3. Happiness! Now you're really getting somewhere. You go to a party and someone gets out of a shiny new 5 series. This 3 series looks crap in comparison. Better look into trading on a 5. And so on.
The lesson is, if you plan on living a long time, better to get control of your desires now and settle on a standard of living that makes you happy. The alternative is facing an exponential growth in the cost of living, hurtling towards a time when your working life ends with a champagne taste and a 2-buck-chuck budget. Happiness will not result. And if you've neglected health and family all along, your going to be broke, sick and unhappy, and maybe even lonely.
See here's the thing. Happiness is a state of mind, not a physical mode of being. Many people, including you, think that a person needs some parity with an invisible standard in order to feel contentment. But that's not true. You don't need anyone's permission to have fun, and you don't need to obtain anything to start enjoying your life.
A few centuries ago, when you say people could have fun doing nothing at all, what you call "a great deal of suffering" in contemporary society is actually materially better than even the middle class lived back then. Much better. It's just that people are wired to compare themselves to their community, and by default that's what people base their self-worth and contentment on, unless they do some careful introspection and consciously change their source of sense of self-esteem.
A few centuries ago, the average family lived on a small farm with little education, no running water, no electricity, and little excess. A large fraction of the children would die before their first birthday, and dying of bacterial infection was quite likely at any age. The boys could expect nothing more than a life full of hard physical work on the farm, and the girls could expect to get married or, if they were very lucky, get a profession like nursing or teaching. Yet, this average family was happy, and it wasn't because of their material possessions or adequate healthcare (clearly). It was because they were grateful for what they had, and because of a supportive community who were just like them and were always there for them.
You're missing the point of the quote you pasted. His father had everything he ever wanted because he didn't value material wealth, and was perfectly content with what I imagine you (and probably me too) would call "suffering", because he had friends, family, hobbies, time, and relatively good health. That's really all we need.
That's a huge and unjustified assumption. They likely were exactly as unhappy as a comparable 'average' family today: they would envy their neighbours who owned a better horse, they would fight among themselves (a lot, and with real physical violence among family members), their children would run away and never return, their weakest elements would be bullied mercilessly, and so on and so forth.
Life could be absolutely hellish, even more so for people who did not fit their (fewer and stronger) expected roles.
> It was because they were grateful for what they had
Or rather they were thankful they survived to see another day. That's not happiness, that's just relief.
> and because of a supportive community who were just like them and were always there for them.
They were also ready to judge, gossip, discriminate, bully and cast away anyone who wouldn't fit the strict rules of very hypocritical and moralistic communities.
I can agree that modern consumerism is hardly a paradise, but the past was much worse and there is no reason to look back with rose-tinted glasses. The past was worse in every respect.
Yes, if you didn't fit the cultural mold, I have no doubt life would be very hard for you back then. Also I am by no means arguing that the past was in any way better to the present, just that it is quite possible to be happy without a lot of material wealth.
However, in regard to the probable happiness of the average 18th century family, I still think most research on happiness would disagree with you. People seem to have a default level of contentment that varies only temporarily when major positive or negative changes occur in their lives: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill This suggests that being thankful they survived to see another day, while grim by our standards, actually was real happiness.
Exceptions to this, that is, things that make lasting changes to one's happiness include:
* A supportive community of peers with whom you meet regularly
* Regular physical exertion
* Regular time for quiet reflection
* Marriage
* True and devout belief in a religion.
Our average 18th century family had all of these.
On the other hand, modern society has a greater capacity for a person to self-actualize and get into a path where they are able to regularly enter a state of flow, which is also shown to increase happiness. But this is only an increase capability, not the norm.
None of those elements are necessarily missing from "average" modern society, nor are they necessarily positive things (especially "true and devout belief" in a religion one would not get to choose -- in fact, most "devout" people were anything but, they just went along with it because society forced them to; "marriage" is also a weird one, to be honest, considering how unhappy it can be).
What they certainly had more than us, though, was the certainty that they would not get to choose when or how to interact with such elements. They were fundamentally resigned to a life of reaction, rather than conscious action, as it had been the case for millennia. Again, they were content or relieved at the best of times, rather than actually happy. It's an incredible achievement of the XIX and XX century that increasingly large numbers of people can decide what "pursuing happiness" actually means for themselves.
> None of those elements are necessarily missing from "average" modern society
It's not missing only as long as it is available as a choice, but what the parent meant was probably that the majority of people don't live like that anymore.
Last I checked, people in pretty much any country still get married and declare themselves religious in overwhelming majority. We don't have stats for physical activity (which is declining, yes, but for a majority? Probably not) and "quiet time".
> overall society is moving towards a trend where not having a certain set of things can leave you with social disability
To me, just making this statement is an indicator that you've allowed yourself to buy into something you don't like. It's just as viable to live by the opposite view, which is that people who place too much value on a "certain set of things" don't make particularly good friends. And people who are constantly chasing trendy purchases to define their lifestyle don't seem particularly satisfied with their lives.
Sometimes he would do side jobs fixing pools and fancy installations on the high profile clients. I've been there with him helping out. He once told me: "see these big houses, two pools and an spa? They think they need all this, but have no time to enjoy themselves. Me? I have everything I ever wanted."
He has been all his life self learning just as a pastime. His side project being going back to his old village to build a well and water installations to help farmers irrigate their fields. He even used water pressure to make a kind of 'protocol' to communicate different panels. When you go there, it's crazy land. He's been iterating over his initial design for more than 40 years, and he keeps going at it now at 79. One thing he usually says, contrary to what most people think is that life is long, really long. There's time for everything.
We come from two different worlds. To me it's not just about him being a role model but showing him gratitude for all he has taught me.