King Solomon and Huck Finn

The following passage was lifted from SparkNotes.  It is about a chapter in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  It is useful, I hope, in further illustrating the point I once made in the mating ritual post.

Huck astonishes Jim with stories of kings, first reading from books and then adding some of his own, made-up stories. Jim had only heard of King Solomon, whom he considers a fool for wanting to chop a baby in half. Huck cannot convince Jim otherwise.

The part about chopping the baby in half was about a dispute about to whom the baby belonged.  The solution the King offered was to chop the baby in half.  For this, he was called wise, but Jim disputed that.

The parallels I see is that in the struggle for dominance in the mating ritual and in the King Solomon story above, the bigger value is subject to risk in a struggle over something less important.

Yet another parallel can be found in the old Roman saying about peace.  If you want peace, prepare for war.  There appears to be the willingness to give up something in order to get something.  It could be expenses in preparing for war, or actual casualties in a war if peace cannot be obtained.  As Herb Cohen liked to say, you should care, but not that much.  But what if the worse happens?  You have to be willing to take that risk.  It would seem that little ventured, little gained.

The moral of that story is never bet anything you aren't prepared to lose.  You need a balance of some kind.