Aragonis: Never try to ameliorate a zealot or paid propagandist. In attempting a reasoned discussion you only afford him greater opportunity to crank out more long-winded propaganda, culled from a playbook, ad nauseam.
Quote:
Originally Posted by NeilBlanchard
Have you ever heard of such a thing before?
|
Neil: Yes, I have. Here is the blueprint for "Eaarth" the latest screed of environmentalist activism. It is not only 'old hat', it is actually ancient: AKA
"The sky is falling!"
(Entire reference found
here.)
The basic motif and many of the elements of the tale can also be found within Buddhist scriptures as the Daddabha Jataka (J 322).[1] In this a hare disturbed by a falling fruit believes that the earth is coming to an end and starts a stampede among the other animals. A lion halts them, investigates the cause of the panic and restores calm. The fable teaches the necessity for deductive reasoning and subsequent investigation.
There are several western versions of the story, but the best-known concerns a chick that believes the sky is falling when an acorn falls on her head. She decides to tell the King and on her journey meets other animals who join her in the quest. After this point, there are many endings. In the most familiar, a fox invites them to his lair and there eats them all. Alternatively, the last one, usually Cocky Lockey, survives long enough to warn the chick and she escapes. In still others all are rescued and finally speak to the King.
Illustration for the story "Chicken Little", 1916
In most retellings the animals all have rhyming names, commonly:
* Chicken Licken / Chicken Little
* Henny Penny
* Drakey Lakey
* Cocky Locky
* Ducky Lucky or Ducky Daddles
* Goosey Loosey or Gander Lander or Goosey Poosey
* Turkey Lurkey
* Foxy Loxy or Foxy Woxy
In the most common version, Henny Penny is the only character whose last name does not begin with the letter L. (In another version, the character is named Hen Len.)[2]
The moral to be drawn changes, depending on the version. Where there is a 'happy ending', the moral is not to be a 'Chicken' but to have courage, which is the conclusion of the film "Chicken Little" (2005). In other versions the fable is usually interpreted to mean do not believe everything you are told, as in the first version of the film (1943). This was one of a series of four produced by the Walt Disney Studios at the request of the U.S. government during World War II for the purpose of discrediting totalitarianism in general and Nazism in particular. Its dark comedy is used as an allegory for the idea that fear-mongering weakens the war effort and costs lives.[3] The Chicken jumps to a conclusion and whips the populace into mass hysteria, which the unscrupulous fox manipulates for his own benefit.
*****
This is the entire thesis of the book titled Eaarth: that the earth will come to an end or at least be irreparably, irreversibly changed. Once you accept that premise, deductive reasoning and subsequent investigation is deemed unnecessary - just as in the old fable, of which it is essentially a modern day restatement.
Those who subscribe to this foolhardy fable will have been hoodwinked by one of the oldest expressions of fear mongering known to mankind. The author of the book
Eaarth will be laughing all the way to the bank.
And the people who bought and believed the poppycock spouted in the book
Eaarth were known as the followers of Chicken Little. "Cluck, cluck, cluck." They joined the sheeple who went "Baa, Baa, Baa!" Together these ignorant creatures became part of the new social order known as "Animal Farm".
George Orwell certainly was prophetic.
