March 09, 2004

"Take the cheese, 'cos kissin' don't last"

Wisdom according to Pratchett? Not quite, but it's a phrase that I find useful as a decision guidepost.

The title is a quote from a Pratchett book. If you don't know which one, I'm not telling, because you might get hooked searching and I would not want to deprive you of that pleasure.

I interpret it to mean that you should take the real, material benefits available from a grateful entity (corporation, group, country, etc.) instead of depending on that good will having an extended shelf life. Gratitude never does last, of course. It goes bad faster than fish and guests.

Come to think of it, guests might go bad faster than fish because they are tied in with gratitude as well.

Cynical? Yes, but even cynical people have true rules about the way the world works. In some ways, you'd even help the group or whatever by accepting the material gift, because you'd also eliminate the possibility of a guilty conscience later. So take the cheese, because it's the moral choice. :)

Posted by PyeCat at March 9, 2004 02:56 AM
Comments

Pye, as much as I'd like to say that you're being an overly-cynical furball here, you're probably right. It does all too often become a case of, "and what have you done for us lately, Mr. SirBino?"

On a completely different note, I'd just like to say here that one Terry Pratchett novel a year is just about my limit. The problem I have with the Discworld series is that the joke gets old. QUICKLY. And most years I just end up re-reading Mort.

Posted by: Noah at March 9, 2004 11:40 AM

Hmm, cheese as the "moral choice"? I suspect you're exaggerating slightly for comic effect, although it's an interesting premise. But isn't it a form of insult to the party from whom you accept the cheese? You're telling them, indirectly, that you have no faith in their future intentions, so you're going to take what you can get and run. In some sense, you're creating a self-fulfilling prophesy, and encouraging the very behavior you fear.

Posted by: Thinky at March 9, 2004 05:25 PM

I suspect the assumption of insult would depend on the culture, and how good the group was at mind-reading. Since groups usually get progressively dumber as they get larger (present company excepted, of course), I think extraordinary mental abilities are a vanishingly small probability.

Posted by: PyeCat at March 10, 2004 12:33 AM