Useful and Beneficial (2012)

I think I now understand what has been lost in the transition from oral to written tradition.

These stories, while unquestionably great, are specific in application, not general. For every situation when somebody makes themselves useful to the point of being used and abused there is an equal and opposed extreme of somebody (same or else) being useless and being proud of it in excess.

The value and benefit of this kind of stories is crated by the old wise person with a shaman role who judging from the outside knows which story to tell in which situation. Otherwise, by reading it, somebody in one of the extremes can use the story to justify doing the wrong thing or going even more to that extreme.