Love the story, though first time I heard it, it was a Maxican potter rather than a fisherman, but heh, it was still an American and a Mexican 🙂

But the point is, we still over-complicate things and put too many dreams on money (or put too many dreams on ice to make money…) Enough is enough is enough. And often as not, a smile, a sunset and a siesta can make us feel richer than any number of months slaving away at the 9-5.

The difference is the fisherman sees the end, the tourist sees the means. Of course, the tourist has been raised in a society that glorifies the means because so many others get to take a cut for their own siestas, smiles and sunsets.

Shouldn’t the Mexican fishermen put some aside in case of a B.P. oil spill?

Simply put…I. Love. This. Post!

The fisherman story is always nice to come across. If I don’t need the extra money, why am I pursuing it anyway? I think social pressure plays a big role, and I think there’s little you can do about it. Sure, you can spend less than your friends, but you can’t overdo it. Too big a difference wouldn’t be appreciated. Another solution is finding a way for everyone (including your friends) to spend less.

This is a great story. We work all our lives to build a Rube Goldberg machine just to impress our neighbors, who of course have to out-do our machine with a far more complex (and expensive) machine…and then their neighbors who in turn have to out-do their neighbor’s machines and so on down the line…How did we get to this point?

The story of the Mexican fisherman has an undeniable visceral appeal. There is certainly value in not making things more complicated than they need to be. But the underlying philosophy, and more generally ERE, strikes me as problematic at a practical level. That is: Living a simple life is all well and good, until something inevitably comes along to upset it. At that point boatloads of cash don’t seem so superfluous. Using the example of the fisherman:
What will he do if a hurricane blows in and destroys his boat and his house?
What if his wife gets in a serious accident and needs expensive treatment to save her life?
What happens when he becomes too old to fish at all?
None of those scenarios are far fetched. Life and death scenarios routinely come at modern human beings that are most expeditiously solved by having accumulated substantial amounts of money. The exception is those humans lucky enough to dodge catastrophes for 40 years and then get hit by a bus before any health problems set in. Is that a bet you want to take?

My problem with younger people with lots of productive capacity choosing to eschew excess productivity and live the “simple life” today is that these same people are likely to get bailed out at some point in the future by those of us who choose to work and accumulate excess (wealth…not consumer junk).

Here’s what actually happens to the “simple fisherman” (at least in America):
Hurricane blows in…and the taxpayers (those of us…wait for it…WORKING) pay to rebuild his house and his boat.
Wife gets in an accident…and the taxpayers pay for the treatment because she is “indigent”.
Fisherman gets too old to fish…and the taxpayers pay for welfare and social security benefits far in excess of what the fisherman himself ever contributed to the system.

What I most disapprove of is the social “safety net” – not those who choose an ERE/simple life per se. I would have no problem with people choosing to work far less than their productive capacity, if people like me were not forced to bail out such people when life inevitably turns against them. But given the reality of the mandatory social safety net, I do have a problem with folks choosing to work far less than their potential because they are effectively being subsidized by those of us who work to accumulate more than just what we need on a steady state basis when we are young and healthy.

To be clear: A person who works a lot and spends it all on useless consumer trash is even more of a “mooch” on the social safety net than someone who doesn’t work to their capacity and lives a simple life. Neither individual is adequately prepared for the kind of life catastrophes that large amounts of money are required to abate, and the consumerist has the added risk of a completely artificial catastrophe – loosing his or her job. Furthermore, I regard as even worse still those who make imprudent business decisions (i.e. the big US banks) and get bailed out by the taxpayer. So this really isn’t a rip on ERE, it’s a rip on socialism.

Basically, I just disagree with socially subsidizing individual imprudence…whether it is of the excess consumption variety, or the lack of work variety, or the lack of business sense variety.

Jason, with all due respect, you are looking at this story purely from a Western cultural perspective. The Mexican Fisherman typifies attitude in the developing world (not always by choice but by necessity and to some extent dictated by cultural norms). If a huricane comes and destroys the Fisherman’s house, he will simply move in with relatives or a neighbor since Mexico is a collective and less individualistic culture (Mexicans don’t worry about these things). If his wife becomes seriously ill, she will simply die because there’s no high tech medical in the village and the government can’t afford to treat her for free. There’s no welfare system so “society” will not be responsible for footing the bill.

‘While Europeans take a month off for a vacation, we take a couple days and feel blessed.’

Europeans take holidays for a month? You must know very different Europeans from me!

@Luke – In Denmark you have a right to 5 weeks of vacation annually. It’s the law.

@JasonR – This is a bit like saying that our ancestors didn’t even need to read to live.

Go out on the ice/forest and slay a mammoth. Then eat it. Rinse and repeat. End of story, now grab your spear and go into the woods.

Everything is simple when you do it. From an outside perspective, it can appear vastly complicated.

“Before enlightenment, chop wood carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood carry water.”

So why all the “meditation” in the middle, when it’s that simple?

@Jason, “Using the example of the fisherman:
What will he do if a hurricane blows in and destroys his boat and his house?
What if his wife gets in a serious accident and needs expensive treatment to save her life?
What happens when he becomes too old to fish at all?
None of those scenarios are far fetched.”

A1) You prepare for the storm, evacuate or take shelter, then rebuild with the help of other victims, by sharing tools, labor, materials you find available.

A2) Say your goodbyes, Mourn, raise you wife’s children, maybe find new love but don’t need too, depends on your beliefs, and realize it wasn’t your fault and we all die eventually.

A3) Hmm to old to fish…if it’s the travel move closer to the lake/river, if it’s the tools, make contrapetions to help out with the reeling in of the fish, the cooking, the gathering/growing of bait, etc. If to sick to gather necessities then you ask other’s to supply you for a year’s worth and pay them back with knowledge, stories, advice, until you die.

Tough experiences but not worth the worry. I would worry more about not being educated, creative, and/or motivated for life and love.

@Jacob – Only if your koans are sans math.

Has anybody ever written to you and said they didn’t get the blog but once they read the book all the confusion about ERE evaporated like morning fog and your truths shone forth like a 1000 suns?

I’d make the analogy that your blog is the Mexican, your book, the American.

That’s how it was for me, but everyone else should buy the book and decide on their own.

It was very interesting to me that it was even suggested that the fisherman was being irresponsible, and was not working. So he doesn’t fish to amass a fortune; since when was what our ancestors might have regarded as “real work” less real than the “work-for-work’s-sake” wheel-spinning and frequent decent into debt that is far more common in modern society?

We must remember that it is still a parable. If we are the fisherman and working just enough to meet our “immediate needs”, could those needs not also include protection against (some) loss?
As Ms. Orman suggests, have a 9-month emergency fund to cover your expenses for that period with no income.
The key is that the fisherman has less to lose because he acquires less, which also means he has to save less to go income-free for 9-months.
So, the lesson: if you focus on what is important (people not things), you will live more simply, so you will spend less, risk less, and ultimately need to earn less. Which means work less.
Sounds good to me!
(Orman also always signs off her TV show with a reminder that people come first, then money, then things. Sound advice!)

@Steeve
This couldn’t happen if fish ressources were privately owned (and this property inforced).

Check out Kenny Chesney’s song ‘The Life’ on YouTube or Vevo… A nice country version of this parable.

Check out this video on YouTube:

http://youtu.be/PGO8MzjBaiw