So said Thomas Tusser, 450 years ago, in Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie, 1573:
A fool and his money, be soon at debate: which after with sorrow, repents him too late.
This is reformed into the more current colloquial adage, “A fool and his money are soon parted” from which the title of this post was derived.
To dissect this time-tested proverb—for one interpretation at least—we can find the fool, the thing of value (being his money in this case), the implied tempting beneficiary and the debate.
Being a fool is about the effects of a decision made as a function of a flaw or defect in reasoning. Being a fool is not absolute, but relative to an objective. It is not determined using hindsight, but with foresight; that is, assessing the decision as of the time that it was made. [1, 2]
Now, we know that there is not always a tempting beneficiary drawing out the fool, as we can all admit that a fool can make a foolish choice while all alone. But we will retain the tempting beneficiary for our assessment here to keep the attribute discrete.
Also, we should consider that fools are not made in the same space of a victim, and perhaps the two terms are mutually exclusive.
On the one hand, to the extent that a person did not have a fair choice, is to that extent the space of being a victim. We might glibly broadly say that some persons are victims of themselves, but that is a loose application of the term, because persons who cannot—with adult clarity and discipline—reconcile their own action to their own inner voices are not really victims, as such. [*1, 3]
On the other hand, to the extent that a person did have a fair choice, is to that extent the space of being a fool, or a sage. But we note again here, as in other posts, that even a fool can get lucky, and a sage can get unlucky, as luck is ever-hovering. However, luck’s future application to a choice mollifies the application of finding our definitional flaw in making a choice. [4]
It has been said, “It is easier to sell something expensive to a fool who has no money, than it is to sell something inexpensive to a sage who has a lot of money.” [5]
The reason is that a fool tends voluntarily to offer a long lever of manipulation; that is, a handle of self for others to grab onto in order to manipulate the fool. Often the tempting beneficiary is the beneficiary of the fool, and it’s not always trickery, but sometimes simply a good gamesman, acting in implicit competing self-interest.
We refer to Baltisar Gracian’s classic text, The Art of Worldly Wisdom (Mauer):
No. 26. Find each person’s “handle,” his weak point. The art of moving people’s wills involves more skill than determination. Usually it is something low, for the unruly outnumber the well ruled. First size up someone’s character and then touch on his weak point. Tempt him with his particular pleasure, and you’ll checkmate his will.
As to this handle, the sage tends to have none. For the fool, the handles are low, long, and many, and everyone gets to use them, which is why the fool is not stable, but rather pushed around, to here or to there, as suits the holding hand.
The sage is not tempted by the vicissitudes of fashion and its appurtenant social flattery [5, 6] or condemnation. [7, *5] The sage does not feel guilt or regret for a decision, as such, understanding that clarity of objectives always tends to have consequences for some stakeholder. [8] And the sage knows self better than anyone else; therefore, no external opinion is superior in knowledge or authority as to a sage’s character or integrity. [9, 10, 11, 12]
Perhaps most subtle of all, the sage understands the implications of time. [13] The sage does not have such vanity as to require satisfaction within the sage’s own view [14, 15], for “Flowers don’t always blossom in a day, and the bee will oft pollinate out of view.” [16] The sage simply does what needs to be done.
But, back the fool’s many “handles” of manipulation, and examples; to wit: Need and desire, and derivative hope. Vanity, validation and other vices. [17] The more insecure is the fool, the longer the handles of the fool; the longer the handles of the fool, the less stable is the fool. [18]
As said in The Epilogue [*5], “Many books teach how to be a good person. Aesop teaches how to be a wise person. There is a difference.” Aesop teaches over and over and over about the fool’s risk related to being a “good” person. [19, 20, 21, 22]
Importantly—and confused often enough—Aesop is not telling anyone not to be a sacrificial martyred good person. Aesop is simply exposing the practical risk against self-interest in doing so without the lucid guiding control of wisdom, by cause and effect. [23]
Wisdom is correlated to the “good” to the extent that clarity of the “good” is the target of the wisdom. Wisdom is the cause, the “good” is the effect. Wisdom effects good, good does not effect wisdom. Goodness forced upon wisdom is the grounding of foolishness itself, by definition; perhaps said alternatively to the above as:
A “do-gooder” fool and his money are soon parted.
Charity, mercy and love are beautiful things, if properly placed and staying in their lanes. The term “properly” begs the question as a function of wisdom. [*3]
There are people who believe that Jesus of Nazareth is a prophet, or a god, or the god, or a singular god of one of three gods, but that is way above my own pay grade for our purpose here. It is enough for us here to admit Jesusian wisdom.
Our claimed perfect do-gooder Jesus was more practical and clever than some people may want to admit.
2121 Then they handed him the Roman coin. He said to them, “Whose image is this and whose inscription does it bear?” They replied, “Caesar’s.” And to that he said to them, “Then pay unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and to God what is God’s.”
[24.1] Yes, Thomas Jefferson used this Jesusian duality wisdom with church/state separation to create a country, as he said in Notes on the State of Virginia. [25, *24] But there’s more. Jesus said:
963. “Behold, I am sending you like sheep in the midst of wolves; so be shrewd as serpents and simple as doves.”
As to “human nature, [Jesus] himself understood it well.” [*24.2] And, yes, Abraham Lincoln used this Jesusian duality wisdom with the metaphorical descendant ground-low serpent balanced to the ascendant rising dove to save a country. So says Lincoln in the closing of his Second Inaugural Address, demonstrating more duality-balanced power than humanity may have ever produced, or that it will ever again produce. It is the apex of being a man, or human being. [26, *24]
But, yes, there is still more. Let us go even further with Jesusian practical wisdom. Jesus understood sustainability to fulfill a mission:
346 And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus said to him, “They have no wine.” And Jesus said to her, “Woman, what does that have to do with me? My hour has not yet come. My time is not here yet.”
[*24.3] Jesus, as a fiduciary, was careful. He understood time. [27] He did not sacrifice all of his food to hungry others while needing to sustain his larger objective, nor did he suggest quixotic noble foolishness, teaching further:
949 “Which of you wishing to construct a tower does not first sit down and determine the cost to see if there are sufficient resources for its completion? Otherwise, after laying the foundation and finding himself unable to finish the work, the onlookers should mock him and say, ‘This man began to build but was unable to finish.’”
[*24.4] Jesus says the fool who does not prepare to complete the objective will be “mocked.” Not very nice, warm or fuzzy. Mocked. [28] Jesus teaches wisdom to a good result, which must endure through time, by prudence and foresight. Where rational prudence must be implemented, there is no “I just wanted to do good” defense for foolish results. [*24.5, *19, 29, 30]
The issue is not what is desired, but what is required.
A good thing must endure through the test. “A republic, if we can keep it,” said Founding Father Benjamin Franklin [31], and it does not follow that to be “good” it must be “perfect.” [*5] As a matter of applied wisdom, helping other things to survive and to prosper is noble (or good), but only to a point. [*3] Noble perfection denotes self-sacrificial martyrdom by love, which is, by fact, necessarily the fine exception and not the general rule. [*24.6] America is not church. [32]
Countries are not in the business of self-sacrificial martyrdom that contradicts the core essence of their own respective existential principles of association.
Noble fools can get cheated out of their own country, as fools and money and countries are soon parted. “Soon” is a relative term, and sometimes “soon” is generational. A failure of enduring to sustain the objective is always too soon.
People are tending to get confused because the argument by the tempting beneficiary—the tempting beneficiary—is misplaced from wisdom into goodness. They are not the same thing, and conflating them is the fool’s error.
The tempting beneficiary wins on the basis of goodness, but he loses on the basis of wisdom. So he uses the fool’s handle; that is, the fool’s reductive tending absolute need or desire to be “good,” perhaps even the vanity to be a hero of sorts, or worse, the desire to be known as such. [*24.7]
The rhetorical argument is placed exactly to that noble nature—that holy handle—that is prized in every honorable society. [33, 34] A hero is cherished in every society, for self-sacrifice, and by suffering the risk of martyrdom for the cause.
But, behold, the true hero sacrifices only self. A hero does not sacrifice the very thing intended to be saved by the sacrifice. That is not a hero. That is a fool, and a fool of the worst kind. [35]
Rhetoric confuses the manipulative handle of goodness with the solid rock of wisdom. Citing to the prose of the Statue of Liberty without regard to time—applicable 200 years ago during a period when a country was filling its human reservoir—is not the same as a current diluvian catastrophe. The former is a virtue, the latter is a foolish undisciplined vice. Water nourishes and water kills. Context is everything. [*3] Rhetoric floods the mind with ethereal abstract goodness that parts a man from his practical wisdom and wits.
As long as the issue is framed in “America must do good,” people will tend to be miserable and they won’t know why. What is “good” is all over the place in a society of a diverse free-thinking people. Indeed, even Jesus refused to be called, “good.” [*24.8, 26] America is not a church. America is temporal association of diverse people seeking orderly administration. [*32] The American Experiment must sustain successfully through its test. [*31] America must be wise first, and invite goodness when and to the extent appropriate.
Wisdom is the cause, the “good” is the effect. Wisdom effects good, good does not effect wisdom. Goodness forced upon wisdom is the grounding of foolishness itself, by definition.
The issue is not, “Is the policy good?” but rather, “Is the policy wise?“
Oh, I almost forgot. The “lifeboat” title of this post.
America is a like a lifeboat. A drowning person will grasp at anything or anyone to survive. And thank goodness for the noble prized hero who sacrifices self to save one and then another, to a point, until sacrificing everyone else, including sacrificing those already saved in the lifeboat.
No one likes a dilemma. But America is not utopia. We fondly hope and fervently pray that America would be utopia, but America is not utopia. [36]
Good people need to make wise but terribly hard decisions, to hard effects. [*32]
“Hold on with a bulldog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.” Abraham Lincoln to General Grant
Goodness necessarily follows wisdom and rides with it by invitation only. Wisdom is the cause, the “good” is the effect. Wisdom effects good, good does not effect wisdom. Goodness forced upon wisdom is the grounding of foolishness itself, by definition.
The issue is not, “Is the policy good?” but rather, “Is the policy wise?“
A fool and his country, be at debate: which after with sorrow, repents him too late.
For America to sustain, good people need to make wise but terribly hard decisions, to hard effects. Not everyone can do what is necessary. [37, *25] It hurts too much. [38] But, the issue is not what is desired. The issue is what is required.
The sage simply does what needs to be done. [39, 40, 41]
Fondly do we hope ~ fervently do we pray ~ that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away.
Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword as was said three thousand years ago so still it must be said ‘the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.’
With malice toward none with charity for all with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan ~ to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
“243 Don’t be all dove. Let the guile of the serpent alternate with the innocence of the dove. No one is easier to fool than a good man; the person who never lies believes others easily, and the one who never deceives trusts others. Being fooled isn’t always a sign of foolishness; sometimes it shows goodness. Two kinds of people are good at foreseeing danger: those who have learned at their own expense and the clever people who learn a great deal at the expense of others. You should be as cautious at foreseeing difficulties as you are shrewd at getting out of them. Don’t be so good that you give others the chance to be bad. Be part serpent and part dove; not a monster, but a prodigy.” ~ Baltasar Gracian, The Art of Worldly Wisdom
[2] Epilogue: On the Wisdom of Aesop [GRZ_24]
[4] On Wisdom and Luck; Or, Getting Lucky is not the Same as Being Wise [#GRZ_155]
[5] Marlboro Man; You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby. [Branding, Part II] [#GRZ_143]
[8] The Proseuché Ch. VIII (The Prayer of Socrates) [Prayer] [#GRZ_131]
[10] Critical Thinking and the Conflation of Character, Integrity, Goodness and Virtue [#GRZ_148]
[11] The Distinguished Napoleon – The Business of Aesop™ No. 2 – The Frog and the Ox [#GRZ_81]
[15] The Four Horsemen of the Social Justice Apocalypse [#GRZ_122]
[16] The Power of the Spirit of Every Teacher and Coach [#GRZ_99]
[17] On Empathy: To Give Empathy Is a Blessing; To Need Empathy Is a Curse [#GRZ_106]
[18] Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiography – The 13 Virtues – Abridgment Series [#GRZ_85]
[20] The Folly of Love – No. 85. The Lion in Love – The Essential Aesop™-Back to Basics [#GRZ_98_85]
[23] The Essential Aesop LinkedIn Article Index [#GRZ_144]
[24] ONE®: The Unified Gospel of Jesus, Divine Version [Second Edition] Published [#GRZ_59] 24.1 ONE: 2121 [T22:20, R12:16, L20:24] (“Caesar Coin Tax”); 24.2 ONE: 373 [J2:25] (“Human Nature“); 24.3 ONE: 346 [J7:5] (“Time“); 24.4 ONE: 949 [L14:28] (“Shrewd Planning“); 24.5 ONE: 2368 [T25:25, L19:20] (“Profitable Servant”); 24.6 ONE: 543 [L6:36] (“Perfect“); 24.7 ONE: 545 [T6:1] (“Reputation Gifts“); 24.8 ONE: 1790 [R10:18; L18:19] (“Call Good“)
[25] Freedom of Religion, by Thomas Jefferson – Abridgment Series [#GRZ_61]
[26] Good v. Evil; Or, Thoughtlessness by Simplistic Vilification [#GRZ_126]
[27] The Scariest Sound in the World
[28] The Priest-Patton Scale; Or, Context-Based Human Resourcing [#GRZ_162]
[29] Jesus and the (Other) Greatest Commandment [#GRZ_16]
[30] TikTok v. QuickBooks? Preparing for Data War. “Good? Bad? I’m the guy with the gun.” [#GRZ_133]
[32] The Orderly Administration Of A Diverse People. America Is Not A Church. [#GRZ_170]
[33] Failing to Die Is Killing Us, or Logan’s Run Revisited – Stand for America® [#GRZ_76]
[34] What is a Hero? [#GRZ_103]
[35] Oliver Wendell Holmes and His Imbeciles – Stand for America® [#GRZ_71]
[36] The Reason Why Political and Economic Systems Fail; The Executive Summary [#GRZ_145]
[39] The Lincoln Leadership Dilemma; Or, The Primary Objective [#GRZ_176]
[40] The Fable of the King and the Grain Master [#GRZ_177]
[41] The Truth. Hard to Handle, Even Harder to Swallow. [#GRZ_178]
“Facilius est rem pretiosam stulto vendere, qui pecuniam non habet, quam aliquid vile est vendere sapiento qui multam pecuniam habet.” (“It is easier to sell something expensive to a fool who has no money, than it is to sell something inexpensive to a sage who has a lot of money.”); “Prudentia bonum iudicat. Bonus non iudicat quid sit sapiens.” (“Wisdom judges what is good. Good does not judge what is wise.”) ~grz
© 2023 Gregg Zegarelli, Esq. Gregg can be contacted through LinkedIn.
The statements or opinions made in this article are solely the author’s own and not representative of any institution regarding which the author is affiliated.
Stand for America® is a series of publications written by Gregg Zegarelli intersecting philosophy and traditional American values published by Technology & Entrepreneurial Ventures Law Group. Printed or reprinted with permission.
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