Paying the piper

[Guest guest]

Roseann writes:

<<Could the Pied Piper be our affluence. Our lack of respect for our children

and their good and bad behaviors. Have they had to resort to guns to get our

attention.>>

There are no doubt +many interpretations of the Pied Piper myth, but FWIW

mine is that the myth is about " quick fixes " to problems. Consider:

1. Why was the city of Hamelin plagued with rats in the first place?

2. Would drowning the rats have been a long-term solution to the problem?

Wouldn't more rats propogate if the populace was not " cleaning up their act " ?

3. Why was it the *children* the piper stole in the story? Why not just take

the money and run?

Hiring the Piper was the easy fix to the rat problem - just pay him some

money and the rats will be gone. But as Senge says, " the easy way out

often leads back in " .

In the story, it is the children, the next generation that are held hostage

because the piper has not been paid. Quick fixes often lead to the next

generation paying the price.

Will killing all the cows in England fix the problem of Mad Cow disease? No.

In the long term, we have to resolve the problems of industrial farming:

feeding cattle recycled carcasses, widespread use of antibiotics, pollution

problems of large manure pits. In the world of economics, these are called

" externalities " , the price of our errors made today that are not accounted

for in the economic system (at least in the short term), but a price often

paid by our children in the form of virulent antibiotic-resistant diseases,

pollution, etc.

Your hypothesis of affluence makes sense to me in that Westerners in general

and Americans in particular often see money as the quick fix to the Happiness

problem: " if I just had more money for that second car, that bigger house, I

would be happy " . We work hard at our jobs to afford that bigger house, and

in the mean time our children become delinquents from neglect. And the big

house doesn't make us happy.

fa writes:

<<A Jungian analyst over here gave an excellent lecture on the Pied Piper

myth recently. It is unpublished but I will try to get it from her.>>

Any luck yet? I, for one, would very much appreciate hearing what an analyst

(or anyone else in the group) would say about the myth.

Regards,

--Kurt