Overbearing Intellectualism Vs The Shameless Pursuit Of Wealth

Parent Cafe
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<p>The Parable of The Mexican Fisherman And The Banker</p>

<p>An American investment banker was taking a much-needed vacation in a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. The boat had several large, fresh fish in it.</p>

<p>The investment banker was impressed by the quality of the fish and asked the Mexican how long it took to catch them. The Mexican replied, “Only a little while.” The banker then asked why he didn’t stay out longer and catch more fish?</p>

<p>The Mexican fisherman replied he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.</p>

<p>The American then asked “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”</p>

<p>The Mexican fisherman replied, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos: I have a full and busy life, senor.”</p>

<p>The investment banker scoffed, “I am an Ivy League MBA, and I could help you. You could spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat, and with the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats until eventually you would have a whole fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to the middleman you could sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You could control the product, processing and distribution.”</p>

<p>Then he added, “Of course, you would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City where you would run your growing enterprise.”</p>

<p>The Mexican fisherman asked, “But senor, how long will this all take?”</p>

<p>To which the American replied, “15-20 years.”</p>

<p>“But what then?” asked the Mexican.</p>

<p>The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You could make millions.”</p>

<p>“Millions, senor? Then what?”</p>

<p>To which the investment banker replied, “Then you would retire. You could 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.”</p>

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<p>Some people pursue wealth because they want to have kids and send them to college without accumulating crippling debt (see anti-wealth).</p>

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<p>Amen. I can say that was a major force - we saved from day one with the goal of sending (eventual) children to college with no debt.</p>

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<p>The end of the story is where both individuals get cancer. One dies in six months, with no access to healthcare or medicine of any kind. The other spends those millions on healthcare and lives another 30 years.</p>

<p>What a pointless anecdote…</p>

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<p>The investment banker is probably more likely to have health problems.</p>

<p>[Warning:</a> Banking May Be Hazardous to Your Health - WSJ.com](<a href=“Warning: Banking May Be Hazardous to Your Health - WSJ”>Warning: Banking May Be Hazardous to Your Health - WSJ)</p>

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<p>Generally, people do what makes them happy (or at least satisfied) and they think is “best” for themselves and their families. We don’t have to give each possible career or motivation a value judgment. There are ethical boundaries on what’s “okay”, but where exactly those boundaries are is a highly individual thing. </p>

<p>Some are motivated by prestige, wealth, and power, others are motivated by the pursuit of knowledge, others pursuit of a skill, some are adrenaline junkies, etc, and others just want to make enough money to put a roof over their heads, food on the table, and enjoy their time off, etc. There’s no inherent reason why one is better than the other. These different motivations and interests lead people to different career and life paths, and give society diversity.</p>

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<p>right sounds right.</p>

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<p>Generalizations always tend to attract the zealots. Are there PhDs who strive for individual accomplishments and materialistic rewards? Of course. On the other hand are there “Wall Street” professionals who give back time and money to help the less fortunate? Though it might shock some the answer is yes. </p>

<p>We do still live in a capitalist society and it has not yet been ruled a crime to make money.</p>

<p>As far as doing what you are passionate about, I fully support that premise. However, realistically, for most people it is just not realistic. Given that I always say that if you are going to be unhappy at your job/career you might as well make as much money as you possibly can. To paraphrase Dean Wurmer form Aninal House “Poor and unhappy is no way to go through life”.</p>

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<p>There is often an inverse relationship between a job’s level of pay and its misery index. There is a reason that investment bankers, partners in large law firms and CEOs of large corporations are paid the big bucks.</p>

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<p>Some people are crazy and expect you to underperform so they can feel better about themselves. Because stepping up their own game takes too much effort. This doesn’t apply to Ph.D.s who mine cognition unrelentingly for the immense treasures embedded within.</p>

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<p>Bay, I don’t know if you’re familiar with an addictive online pastime called “World of Warcraft” but there are some players who play that game night and day and can’t stop. I have a family member who runs a corporate law interest who does it 80 hours a week and all he talks about is deals, mergers, technicalities of the law, and the legal engineering of corporation structure. Sometimes at a family gathering I try to find the shut off valve but there apparently isn’t one. There is no misery there, in his case, and the absurd money it yields is just another fringe benefit.</p>

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<p>PBS,
You are witnessing the outward manifestation of his miserable existence.</p>

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<p>He may not even realize that he’s miserable.</p>

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<p>He may not be miserable. It’s strange the way people attribute misery. Elite athletes spend most of their waking hours training, or prepping their body. Athletes in the NFL often wake up 2-3 times a night by alarm to whip up egg whites for increased protein intake. You hear of some hitting a third 3-4 hour workout after dinner. Want to improve your free throw percentage? That’s 1000 shots a day for that alone (how many of you would complain over having to reformat 1000 cells individually a day?). Sleep is tightly regulated. Your personal time is limited. Yet nobody considers pro athletes miserable.</p>

<p>On the other hand, a lawyer who works 80 hours a week has a “miserable existence,” or “may not even realize that he’s miserable.” Why? I have no idea. Maybe he genuinely loves the work. The best life situation anyone can have is work that feels like a hobby. We don’t rail this way against Picasso or Tesla or Da Vinci. Yet they spent their lives singularly dedicated to their work. It seems like in today’s society you have to have some passionate hobby outside of work or you’re judged as unhappy. Which is simply not the case. I carve small wood pieces, draw, do some amateur landscape photography, play chess, read fantasy novels, and game in my offtime. But there are also many days where I go home and crack open a professionally-related book or research paper and enjoy myself just as much. Why is one more acceptable than the other? Why must I be miserable to do the latter?</p>

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<p>^You are right, there are probably some people who love working in a large law firm for 80 hours per week and do not find it to be tedious, dull and/or stressful.</p>

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<p>I don’t know if the person in the story is miserable but anyone who has to listen to him is.</p>

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<p>Ha Ha, no kidding. :D</p>

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<p>People just go both ways. Some only want money. Money can be pretty fun it can also insulate you from so much in the world. A healthy desire for security is not a bad idea at ll in my opinion and money is one way to get that.</p>

<p>I definitely think that people that believe that money will make them happy are shallow, because it just isn’t so and eventually people do figure that out. Is the desire for big money about being treated better by people? Maybe sometimes. As i am sure that the desire to get a certain type of education and to get to a certain amount of prestige within a field of study. </p>

<p>I can’t imagine though that people will study endlessly just to impress someone else. There is no way that much effort towards something can be only for that end. I ma a curious person and that fuels my interest in a lot of things. I loved school for that reason and probably would be a lifetime student if i could. The best combo in life is doing something that you really like and getting well paid for it. I guess that fact is obvious, it is finding the thing to do and getting the money for doing it that can be tough.</p>

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<p>Actually, I don’t mind listening, but, you know, when someone talks about one thing only for an hour and a half… “Did you know that RJ Nabisco had this and this leveraging agreement with so and so and we had to asset balance the whatnot to convey this thingamabob?”</p>

<p>This person actually isn’t miserable. He’s rather jolly, makes the dumbest jokes and watches Monty Python a lot on his cell.</p>

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<p>Let me ask an acid-test question … for those interested in accumulating wealth, where is the line between healthy and unhealthy? Yes, at first blush it appears that Steve Jobs is on one side and Bernie Madoff on the other. Can Madoff be excused because “things got a little out of hand and he couldn’t recover” … in which case, there really is no line between “good” wealth accumulation and “bad?” Is Goldman Sachs really doing God’s work? Was Al Capone?</p>