Poor Aesop. In today’s society he just can’t get any respect.
For thousands of years, he was admired and his fable “The Ant and the Grasshopper” was used to teach successive generations the virtue of preparing for the future and the folly of not doing so. In Aesop’s fable, the ant worked long and hard during the summer, storing away grain to eat during the winter. But the grasshopper thought only of the present, eating and playing and singing and ignoring the future.
In the 1934 Walt Disney version, the grasshopper sang “the world owes us a living.” When winter came, the grasshopper had nothing to eat and finally realized that it would have been better if he had prepared for the coming days of necessity.
This fable is not often told in today’s society. For one thing, there is no consensus about which character was the fool, the ant or the grasshopper. Many modern politicians teach us that it is unfair that the ant have all that grain and that the grasshopper have none. They say vote for me and I will take grain from the ants and give it to the grasshoppers so that we can all sing “the world owes us a living” and be happy.
Who do you think was the fool? In November of 2012, you will have a chance to give your answer.
Tony Stephens
Sherman
