Website owner: James Miller
Thomas Sowell. The grasshopper and ant.
The following is from the Thomas Sowell Reader, pp. 3-5.
Grasshopper and Ant
Just as the “Rocky” and “Star Wars” movies had their sequels, so should the old classic fables. Here is the sequel to a well-known fable.
Once upon a time, a grasshopper and an ant lived in a field. All summer long, the grasshopper romped and played, while the ant worked hard under the boiling sun to store up food for the winter.
When winter came, the grasshopper was hungry. One cold and rainy day, he came to ask the ant for some food.
“What are you, crazy?” the ant said. “I’ve been breaking my back all summer long while you ran around hopping and laughing at me for missing all the fun in life.”
“Did I do that?” the grasshopper asked meekly.
“Yes! You said I was one of those old-fashioned clods who had missed the whole point of the modern self-realization philosophy.”
“Gee, I an sorry about that,” the grasshopper said. “I didn’t realize you were so sensitive. But surely you are not going to hold that against me at a time like this.”
“Well, I don’t hold a grudge — but I do have a long memory.”
Just then another ant came along,
“Hi, Lefty,” The first ant said.
“Hi George.”
“Lefty, do you know what this grasshopper wants me to do? He wants me to give him some of the food I worked for all summer, under the blazing sun.”
“I would have thought you would already have volunteered to share with him without being asked, “ Lefty said.
“What!!”
“When we have disparate shares in the bounty of nature, the least we can do is try to correct the inequity.”
“Nature’s bounty, my foot,” George said, “I had to tote this stuff uphill and cross a steam on a log — all the while looking out for ant-eaters. Why couldn’t this lazy bum gather his own food and store it?”
“Now, now, George,” Lefty soothed. “Nobody uses the word ‘bum’ anymore. We say ‘the homeless’.”
“I say ‘bum’.” Anyone who is too lazy to put a roof over his head, who prefers to stand out in this cold rain to doing a little work — ”
The grasshopper broke in: “I didn’t know it was going to rain like this. The weather forecast said ‘Fair and warmer’”
“Fair and warmer?” George sniffed. “That’s what the forecasters told Noah!”
Lefty looked pained. “I’m surprised a your callousness, George — your selfishness, your greed.”
“Have you gone crazy, Lefty?”
“No. On the contrary, I have become educated.”
“Sometimes that’s worse, these days.”
“Last summer I followed a trail of cookie crumbs left by some students. It led to a classroom at Ivy University.”
“You’ve been to college? No wonder you have come back here with all of these big words and dumb ideas.”
“I disdain to answer that,” Lefty said. “Anyway, it was Professor Murky’s course on Social Justice. He explained how the world’s benefits are unequally distributed.”
“The world’s benefits?” George repeated. “The world didn’t carry this food uphill. The world didn’t cross the water on a log. The world isn’t going to be eaten by any ant-eater.”
“That’s the narrow way of looking at it,” Lefty said.
“If you are so generous, why don’t you feed this grasshopper?”
“I will,” Lefty replied. Then, turning to the grasshopper, he said: “Follow me. I will take you to the government’s shelter, where there will be food and a dry place to sleep.”
“I’m in public service,” Lefty said loftily. “I want to ‘make a difference’ in this world.”
“You really have been to college,” George said. “But if you’re such a friend of the grasshopper, why don’t you teach him how to work during the summer and save something for the winter?”
“We have no right to change his lifestyle and try to make him like us. That would be cultural imperialism.”
George was too stunned to answer.
Lefty not only won the argument, he continued to expand his program of shelters for grasshoppers. As the word spread, grasshoppers came from miles around. Eventually some of the young ants decided to adopt the grasshopper lifestyle.
As the older generation of ants passed from the scene, more and more ants joined the grasshoppers, romping and playing in he fields. Finally, all the ants and all the grasshoppers spent all their time enjoying the carefree lifestyle and lived happily ever after — all summer long. Then the winter came.
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