Wednesday, June 4, 2008

Of the Hands, the Feet, and the Belly





He who foolishly leaves his relatives unprotected should know that he thus decieves himself.

Nor is anything of value to a man except his own, as appears in this story.

The feet and the hands being jealous, accused the belly, speaking in the fashion: "You alone hold all our gains and enjoy them.

To us falls the works, to you the pleasure. While we strive with pain, you eat and swallow with pleasure. So choose one of two things: learn a task with which you can maintain yourselfor suffer from creul hunger."

And so they ceased to support them.

The stomach not knowing how to maintain himself, in great humilty begged the help of each of them once, twice, and many times, but they refused him for many days, so that, being without food for a long time, the heat of the stomach died and thirst seized their throat, and thus nature fled

The feet and the hands, although too late, seeing that the whole body was going to die and they with it, brought food and edibles in abundance, but they did not profit it because the stomach could not tolerate the food.

So the body died and with it the hands and feet and stomach.

This fable means that NO ONE is sufficient unto himself, that every man needs relatives and friends, at that we must work each at own at his job, although it may seem to us that at first glance that we are working for others, for for the profit they derive from it will return to us in a roundabout way.

Thus, if we do for others, let us at least do it for the good we will recieve ourselves.

keating and keller: aesop's fables: with a life of aesop, 1993 pg. 103-04, University Press of Kentucky

Yeah some of us might be doing fabulously well, but we should not forget where we came from.

While the people who run this society are elevating a good number of black people to higher economic status. They are mowing a great deal of blacks down at the bottom down (imprisoning them en masse, terrible education in decreped schools, lack of sustainable employment etc.)

And this is what a lot of Blacks on the top will be saying if things get toooooooooo bad.






This is the lesson that we all should learn. We are in this thing together. No matter what we are all in the same boat.


Oh, and by the way, don't go to the site at the last part of the video if you love Obama, lol.

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