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The One Problem with Teaching A Man How to Fish
Last week, I was watching a liberal and a conservative have a debate about welfare. They echoed the talking points that their particular group tends to spout.
The conservative, who was black, believed that to help the poor typically results in teaching them a learnt helplessness and dependency on the government. The white liberal gave statistics on the working class poor who work many hours a day and earn less than minimum wage as prices on goods and services (especially healthcare) go up.
The objective person can see that there’s merit to both arguments and will admit that it’s a fine line to tread. If you help people, you might disempower them, but if you don’t help them, they may very well die.
This is when the age-old Chinese proverb of “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime” comes into play. For the liberals and conservatives who actually care about people and them being the master of their destinies, they can unite on this ancient maxim.
However, it is important to look at these words and try to play it out in one’s mind.
If you take disenfranchised or uneducated men and women and teach them a skill in order to provide for themselves and their families, they would have a very hard time learning if…
