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What moral do you take away from this story?
by shoo 1y ago
What moral do you take away from this story?
- gorjusborg 1y agoUnbounded greed will prevent you from enjoying the benefits of your life.
- serf 1y agobeing a deity is a crap job, aim for Pope.
- bhaak 1y agoSome people are greedy and don't know when to stop when they have enough. The fisherman is notably not one of those people. Older generations might have been most offended by the "becoming like God" part. The enchanted fish was willing to grant any wish that is in principle achievable by a human being, even the most ridiculous wish of becoming Pope. But the moment the wish transcends that human realm it is turned down and punished. I guess the theme of "becoming like God" resonates with the story from Adam and Eve's fall.
- _bla_ 1y agoI don’t think of it as punishment. She gets her wish granted, she just did not understand that God does not care about the kind of shallow riches the fisherman’s wife is aiming for.
- thomasmg 1y agoMy interpretation is that the fish didn't actually turn down and punish, but fulfilled the wish. It's just that the fish thought: to be like God means to be humble. She asks to be like God, true godliness is humility. So she did get what she wanted, but not in the way she thought. (BTW I'm not religious in the sense I go to church a lot, and don't even necessarily believe in God, but I do share many of the values of religion.)
- lblume 1y agoBut surely humility is only one attribute of God, and not the most relevant one. Omnipotence and omniscience are typically listed as more important aspects of the divine.
- thomasmg 1y agoIt depends on the religion. In Christianity, Islam, and some "the universe is a simulation" theories: yes. In other religions, god is not all that powerful.
- watwut 1y ago> It's just that the fish thought: to be like God means to be humble. In which religion is the God humble? It wont be Christianity for sure.
- HankStallone 1y agoBeing born to a human, growing up and living as one of them, and letting himself be tortured and killed by his own creation isn't humble? You don't have to believe it, of course, but God humbling himself is pretty much the defining aspect of Christianity.
- watwut 1y ago> Being born to a human, growing up and living as one of them, and letting himself be tortured and killed by his own creation isn't humble? That is self sacrifice.
- skobes 1y agoInteresting, you read it as if the fish said "You want to be like God? No, that's too far. Game over!" But another reading is: God would have chosen the shack (grace to the humble, etc.) So she got her wish.
- balamatom 1y agoI was hoping for a "go home, she is as God", then he goes home and sees that she doesn't exist
- neogodless 1y agoYes, I think... > And they are sitting there even today. ... hints strongly that once that wish was granted, she stopped wanting something different.
- dsmurrell 1y agoThat no matter how good your current dwelling is, your wife will always want upgrades.
- clausecker 1y agoIf you give in to an unreasonable person's demands, that person will demand more and more until it all comes crashing down.
- booleandilemma 1y agoSo when product comes to you with stupid requirements, push back!
- Brendinooo 1y agoRight up until the end I'd say it's a good illustration of the hedonic treadmill. But I'm really not sure what to make of the ending. > "Oh," he said, "she wants to become like God." > "Go home. She is sitting in her filthy shack again." This is ambiguous. The flounder simply acknowledges a change in state without saying whether he actually fulfilled the request or not. If he rejected the request, then it's a tale about checking ambition, trying to be like God, etc. But if he accepted the request? Then it's advancing a very different idea of what God is like. I wonder if the original German is equally ambiguous... EDIT: I suppose she's not making the sun and moon rise, so maybe I'm overcomplicating it.
- RajT88 1y agoIn the New Testament, Jesus had a lot to say about wealth and power being bad. This feels like a reference to all that. In my head, all that Sunday school I had internalized as a kid makes me think, "This is not the kind of church Jesus would preach at" when I see a really nice church where wealthy people attend. Some Christians talk about "mammonites" or "the cult of mammon": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammon
- potato3732842 1y agoPretty much every society ever has the same things to say about how wealth/power enables people to behave poorly.
- zubiaur 1y agoOld too: But the people refused to listen to the voice of Samuel; they said, “No! but we are determined to have a king over us, so that we also may be like other nations, and that our king may govern us and go out before us and fight our battles.”
- Brendinooo 1y agoI don't think it's as simple as "wealth and power being bad". More that - wealth and power are not reliable proxies for favor and righteousness (as many in Jesus's day thought) - wealth and power come with unique temptations Jesus also said "make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings" and there's a bunch of proverbs that talk about how the diligent prosper. A lot of wealthy people are really generous.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- Calavar 1y agoIf you get into options trading, make sure to have a hard stopping point.
- carlosjobim 1y agoDon't get married.
- moffkalast 1y agoDon't get married... to a greedy psychopath.
- oulipo2 1y agoAm I the only one to read it as the fact that God is supposed to be humble, so that's why when she asks to be like God she's back to the shackle?
- moffkalast 1y agoSmart fish, got her on a technicality ;)
- drewchew 1y agoClassic genie move
- FergusArgyll 1y agoI think the "straussian" reading is it's the husbands fault. He knows he's doing the wrong thing but he can't say no. 1) Listen to your conscience & speak up unambiguously 2) Something like "Victim blaming is correct in moderation"? I don't know if I agree with that but it seems like an interpertation
- atrew54231 1y agoI think the point is that when one believes that having their desires fulfilled will bring them happiness, or an end to desire itsself, that the material circumstances in which that person lives are completely irrelevant. In the case of the wife, the suffering she experiences from not having her desires fulfilled is the same whether she is living in a filthy shack or whether she is god. Her internal state is identical in both situations, so her becoming god and her becoming a poor fisherman's wife are exactly the same from a phenomonological perspective. The same could be said for the man. His satisfaction was the same whether he was living in the shack or the palace. What changed for him was the burden of having these material things and asking for more, knowing it wouldn't ultimately make him or his wife happy. Or it could mean that due to the transient nature of all material things, anything gained will invariably break down eventually. All desire leads to loss. Maybe it's both. I think it's both.
- potato3732842 1y agoThere's a few potential pretty reasonable morals to draw from it that apply at the individual and various group levels. The more jaded you are the less of them you'll reject but also the less of them you needed to be told.
- housebear 1y agoI read it as the fish returning her to her God-ordained state, as she was, from her magical-fish-given states of human appointed positions; that is, wealth and status coming from community rather than any kind of divine appointment—which is maybe also a Protestant dig at Papism?
- flux3125 1y agoDon't go above INT_MAX or you'll overflow back to -2147483648
- immibis 1y agoActually it's undefined behaviour. Undefined behaviour may legally include your castle growing wings and flying away to space.