finitum non capax infiniti

Once upon a time there was a man who opened a general store. It was a busy store, with people coming from all around to visit the store and spend their money on the high quality items with which the man filled his store. Years passed and the store continued to do very well. As a result, the man grew to prominence within the community, respected and beloved by all.

Then one day a traveller from the big city stopped by the general store because he heard of its great reputation. He was not disappointed and filled his bag with many items from the store. As he approached the counter the owner smiled because he knew this sale would mean quite a bit of money.

The old man added all of the items together and gave the traveller the total amount due. The traveller handed the old man the money, and that is where our tale takes a drastic turn.

“What do you mean you will not take this money as payment? It’s a fifty dollar bill!” said the traveller.

“That is not a fifty dollar bill,” said the old man. “I’ve owned this store for decades and have been doing business longer than you’ve been alive! I would certainly know a fifty dollar bill if I saw it!”

The traveller took the fifty dollar bill off of the counter and pushed it into the old man’s face so that he could read it clearly. “Look here,” he said, “it reads “This note is legal tender for all debts public and private.” It is a legitimate Federal Reserve Note.” The bill he was showing the old man looked like this:

The old man squinted at the bill to read the small text. He thought for a minute and burrowed his brow. “I don’t care what it says and I don’t care what you say it is, that is not a fifty dollar bill. It must be a counterfeit! This is what a fifty dollar bill looks like.” The old man reached into the cash register and pulled out a bill looking like this:

“You see,” said the old man, “I’m not falling for your tricks. That bill you have in your hand is fake.”

The traveller rolled his eyes and almost felt bad at the old man’s naivete. “It is a fifty dollar bill, sir. It is a new fifty dollar bill that was made, ironically, so that it would not be counterfeited. That older bill was far too weak to stand up to modern day threats of counterfeiting. This new bill addresses those threats. Sure, it looks different from the older fifty dollar bill, but it is still the same in essence. It is still fifty dollars.”

“No, no, no. I will not have it. I know what fifty dollars looks like and its not what you are holding. You are trying to sneak something new in the backdoor! You either give me a fifty dollar bill that looks exactly like this or you need to get out of my store!” screamed the old man.

The traveller had little choice but to leave. What could he do? He wasn’t going to sit there and argue with someone who was so stuck in their ways. He was worried, however, because the fifty dollar bills the old man was accepting were too weak to stand up to the threats of modern day counterfeiters. Sooner or later the old man’s money would be worthless and everything the old man had worked for would be gone, all because he was too stuck in his ways to recognize the weakness of what he had invested in.

As time went on that is exactly what happened. The old man continued to only accept old versions of bills. When he went to pay his suppliers with this money he was rejected. They did not want to accept something so weak from someone so unwilling not only to notice his own shortcomings, but also unable to see that the new bills were not a threat to his old bills, but a vast improvement.

The old man’s store closed and he moved from a level of prominence to complete and utter insignificance. Everything he thought he was protecting by holding on to his old ways was undercut by that very fact.

It was a very sad, very ironic tale.