ClumsyMonkey.net

The Parable of the Ant and the Grasshopper

Classic Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

The Canadian Post-Modern Version:

The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.

The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.

Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed.

The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate like him are cold and starving.

CBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper, with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home with a table filled with food.

Canadians are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.

The NDP, the CAW and the Coalition Against Poverty demonstrate in front of the ant's house.

The CBC, interrupting an Inuit cultural festival special from Nunavit with breaking news, broadcasts them singing "We Shall Overcome."

Svend Robinson rants in an interview with Pamela Wallin that the ant has gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on the ant to make him pay his "fair share."

In response to polls, the Liberal Government drafts the Economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination Act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer.

The ant's taxes are reassessed and he is also fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers.

Without enough money to pay both the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.

The ant moves to the US, starts a successful agribiz company.

The CBC later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant's food though Spring is still months away, while the government owned house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house, crumbles around him because he hadn't maintained it.

Inadequate government funding is blamed, Roy Romanow is appointed to head a commission of enquiry that will cost $10,000,000.

The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose, the Toronto Star blames it on obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity.

The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching Canada's multicultural diversity, who promptly terrorize the community.

Who says we don't live in a democracy?

mosaik wrote:The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of immigrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching Canada's multicultural diversity, who promptly terrorize the community.

Fuck. You.

i'm sorry? are you some kind of spider activist?

and please - if you have an objection, rational or otherwise to the content i post could you at least control the flaming until later on in the debate?

i'm sorry, that was uncalled for. I'm just so bloody tired of all this anti-immigrant shit. Both of my parents are immigrants, although you can't tell to look at them or hear them talk, and they get people telling them all the time about how all these damned immigrants are so weird and how it's not fair that they take jobs from realy honest Canadians. Well you know what? When my mother came from Romania with her family at the age of 16, as refugees from the crushing Communist government, their house was FIRE BOMBED and covered in red spray paint that said things like, "GO HOME YOU FUCKING COMMIES". You tell me how fair that is. It makes me SO angry. And once again, I'm sorry for the above comment.

just so we're clear, i didn't write the above. also, i am the enemy of immigration laws... they're laws after all.

I think the reason the spiders terroize the neighborhood is because they eat bugs, but this parable was written by some lunatic right-winger from kanada so you never know. he could have something against immigrants. lunatic right-wingers up here often do.

i prefer to focus on how a hard working ant got turned into a villian.

okay.

i understand teh story, and can see the point they try to make, but it is Obviously written by a right-winger and assume that the poor do not work for their money they just steal it from the rich, which is not true

Off-topic, seeing that I don't know what this story is about and all, but Clumsyboy, this has to be your worst performance while using the english language. You showed such promise when it came to speaking and typing, and you threw it all away with one extremely lackluster performance. Go sit on the bench, you need a break.

Anyways, would some one like to give me the basis of this story? Like, with names and specific reasons why this person wrote the little extended story?

i'm quite tired right now, but i don't seem to understand what you're referring to, my bad typing? That's been like that for a long time, My spelling? not one of my strengths (huge vocab and no spelling skills go figure) or are you referring to my general lack of strong argument? i'll try harder tommorow when i'm better rested

You better try harder tomorrow. If not, you'll be riding the pine for a long time mister. For now, I think I am gonna call in Alex from the bench, which would be useful if she was online and all....

hey! i don't see you defending Socialism! Where's Sam Roberts when you need him!!

The story is ludicrous. It's so easy to make up "parables" to suit your cause, isn't it? As if the term "parable" automatically implies "moral truth".

If you're going to argue social issues, do it with facts backing you up, not stories.

OK.

Last time i ever try to lighten the mood in here. First of all - I didn't make this up.

It's a joke that was forwarded to me in an email. I thought Clumsyboy would dig it being a Canadian and all and also (to my understanding) a little left-leaning.

However - if you are saying that this parable doesn't reflect canadian society, you're drunk. and i mean that in the nicest possible way.

As for social issues, you all know my quick and easy answer: social programs = theft from the rich.

theft = bad.

therefore, social programs = bad.

please. she's not drunk, she is a victim of alcohol.

hmmmm that remids me, you haven't ever heard of a email called Cows and Politics have you? it's actually a very good description of all the difrent ideologies

this isn't the exact one i saw, but it's close enough, it seems like there's alot of diffrent versions out there

FEUDALISM:You have two cows. Your lord takes some of the milk.

PURE SOCIALISM:You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. You have to take care of all the cows. The government gives you as much milk they think you need.

BUREAUCRATIC SOCIALISM:You have two cows. The government takes them and puts them in a barn with everyone else's cows. They are cared for by ex-chicken farmers. You have to take care of the chickens the government took from the chicken farmers. The government gives you as much milk and eggs the regulations say you should need.
FASCISM: You have two cows. The government takes both, hires you to take care of them, and sells you the milk.

PURE COMMUNISM:You have two cows. Your neighbours help you take care of them, and you all share the milk.

RUSSIAN COMMUNISM:You have two cows. You have to take care of them, but the government takes all the milk.

CAMBODIAN COMMUNISM:You have two cows. The government takes both and shoots you.

DICTATORSHIP:You have two cows. The government takes both and drafts you.
PURE DEMOCRACY:You have two cows. Your neighbors decide who gets the milk.
REPRESENTATIVE DEMOCRACY:You have two cows. Your neighbors pick someone to tell you who gets the milk.

BUREAUCRACY:You have two cows. At first the government regulates what you can feed them and when you can milk them. Then it pays you not to milk them. Then it takes both, shoots one, milks the other and pours the milk down the drain. Then it requires you to fill out forms accounting for the missing cows.

PURE ANARCHY:You have two cows. Either you sell the milk at a fair price or your neighbors try to take the cows and kill you.

ANARCHO-CAPITALISM:You have two cows. You sell one and buy a bull.

ants = community through every single individual ant working.
grasshopper = loner that only looks out for himself

ants = democracy because in TAXES every working individual pays toward their community

grasshoper = no community, loner, something anarchy would produce.

you got alot to learn grasshopper.

the, uh, grasshopper hardly looked out for himself. as you can see he laughed and danced and played all summer.

the ant was a hard working ant. that's about all the insight we get - and this is a case of ONE ant and ONE grasshopper, not a community and a loner.

although i'll give you this. in a free society, we won't have any grasshoppers. just ants.

individualism is just that, it's a belief that you need to take care of yourself. and if you have to step on someone's skull to take care of yourself then your gonna do it. that's not a sense of comunity at all.

individualism is a concept of furthering/bettering yourself while remaining true to the tenants and boundaries of logic, reason, and rational behavior.

it is the most rational way to live, and i firmly believe that if it were adopted globally everyone would prosper.