Part 16: If Chicken Little Were A Naturalist
Naturalism supports the independent thought and spirit necessary to avoid mass mania
Read also earlier posts »Intro:About »1:Born Of Lockdown »2:Need For Naturalism »3:Equivalence Of God & Nature »4:Special Role Of Science »5:Right & Wrong Tech »6:Smartphones & Covid Vaccines »7:Irredeemable Tech »8:Tower Of Babel »9:Eden & The Fall »10:Mary Shelley: Prophet? »11:Naturalist Congregation »12:First Three Beliefs »13:Natural Health »14:Trinity & Six Freedoms »15:Importance of Continuity
So far in this substack, I’ve outlined the new religion of Naturalism in a fair amount of detail. Now that the religion is “established” a bit (at least in writing), perhaps this essay can be thought of as a first sermon in the faith.
One traditional story that has relevance to Naturalism is Chicken Little (otherwise known as Henny Penny in Britain). It’s the story with the famous exclamation, “The sky is falling!” It was first written down in Europe in the 1800s but was likely based on older oral-tradition stories. It strongly resembles a Buddhist story, involving a rabbit instead of a chicken, that was written some 2500 years ago, so the basic concept of the story is likely very old.
Early in the covid mania, during the year of 2020, I and some lockdown-questioning acquaintances went on a “chalk walk.” We roamed public sidewalks, writing pithy slogans of “counter-propaganda” on the sidewalk surfaces. One message I wrote was, “The sky is NOT falling.” I marked the word “NOT” as “CENSORED” (see first photo).
The next day, the “NOT” had been smudged out with someone’s water bottle, like this:
It thought it was funny that the “smudger-outer” had proved my point of censorship so well! On the other hand, it was a sad token of the fact that many people learn nothing from the simple wisdom of traditional stories.
I’ll explain the wisdom of the Chicken Little story first, then explain how it relates to Naturalism.
Since you probably haven’t heard the story since you were a kid, I’ll recap it first. There are a lot of versions of this story, but I’ll stick with some common elements. It begins with the falling of something small, such as an acorn, on Chicken Little’s head. Chicken Little becomes convinced that the whole sky is falling, and decides he must tell the king the news. On his way to the king’s castle, he meets other characters—for example Ducky Lucky, Turkey Lurkey, Cocky Locky, Gander Lander, and Goosey Loosey—and convinces them all to come with him to the king, to help relay the awful news about the sky. Soon they encounter Foxy Loxy. In the classic “fox’s den” version of the story, this fox convinces them of a “short cut” through a cave to the king’s castle. But instead of a short cut, it is the fox’s own den. The birds are trapped and devoured there.
There are a number of elements of this story that closely resemble emergency manias in modern society: the misinformation, the trust in unconfirmed assertions rather than obvious fact or common sense, and the quick spread of fear. Perhaps the most important three resemblances with real mass-manias are (1) the manipulation of the situation by a self-interested party, in this case the fox, (2) the king, who represents wisdom and true leadership, but who is never reached by the foolish birds in the classic version, and (3) the victimization of the birds, who represent the general public.
In some modern “sanitized” versions of the story, the birds aren’t eaten, but instead find their way to the king. The king reassures them that they need not worry, that it was simply an acorn, not the sky.
In any version, this story is a cautionary tale, but the classic version is an especially keen commentary on truth and leadership because of the sly victimization of the birds.
Try applying the elements of the classic version to the covid mania starting in 2020. The “acorn” is a viral infection that was barely worse than a somewhat bad seasonal flu, as the bulk of research was showing even early in 2020. It was something that few people would have taken notice of, if there had not been media hype. Chicken Little’s over-reaction to the acorn is akin to the media hype that amplified the perception of danger. The recruitment of Ducky Lucky and the others resembles the quick spread of the fear mania. The poultry exhibit a gullible solidarity rather than the necessary, grounded critical thinking, just as many people in our society bought into the lockdown and masking based on shoddy assertions rather than actual evidence. The fact that the animals feel that it is their mission to tell the king implies that they see themselves as having a moral purpose in their idiotic behavior, just as many do-gooders in our society made it their business to pressure others to distance, mask, vaccinate, and generally spread fear. The absence of the king himself represents the absence of wise leadership during the corona years. Wise leaders were certainly hard to come by: only to be found in Florida, Sweden, and a few other localities. Chicken Little is striving to be a leader, but leads in a disastrous way, especially when it comes to assessing advice from foxes.
The fox in the story represents an amalgam of profiteering and power-hungry manipulators: Fauci, Gates, Collins, Moderna, Pfizer, WHO, Daszak, the Wellcome Trust, etc. Although it isn’t mentioned in most versions of Chicken Little, it’s possible that the fox even had a hand in dropping the acorn on Chicken Little’s head. That would be analogous to an intentional release of the engineered SARS-CoV2 virus. Just such a diabolical fox, one who intentionally causes the sky-is-falling scare, is found in the 1943 animated Disney version of Chicken Little, which was intended as a warning against Nazism. (It’s a good watch, available on Youtube and Rumble. The Rumble link is rumble.com/v1uytl4-1943-chicken-little-cartoon.html)
One very cogent similarity between this story and covid mania is that the shortcut to the cave resembles the “Warp-speed” manufacture of liability-shielded emergency therapies for covid. What could possibly go wrong with such shortcuts?
Of course, anyone with a thinking brain, one that can draw analogies, could have predicted that the outcome of covid mania would resemble the outcome of this story: profiteering corporations and billionaire investors, millions of vaccine-damaged people, and hundreds of millions more people harmed by lockdowns and masking. Manic people, just like manic animals, fall prey to the fox.
You could also find close analogies between Chicken Little and other modern manias, like climate-change mania.
Why do some people see these analogies, but most don’t? Everyone heard this story as a kid, but obviously most people didn’t internalize the moral of it. If they had, manias wouldn’t spread as easily. The story encourages people not to be like Chicken Little, but so many people obviously are.
If Chicken Little and his friends had been Naturalists, they wouldn’t have made their bad mistakes and fallen prey to Foxy Loxy. I’ll outline why this is so.
If any of the timid birds had questioned Chicken Little’s assertion, then the story would have ended without major mishap. However all the birds joined Chicken Little in lockstep. This indicates that they weren’t acting freely, that they weren’t able to think for themselves or to express any disagreement. The Naturalist beliefs in freedom of inquiry and speech (the sixth belief, see Part 14 link near the top of this page) would discourage such groupthink.
Because of the belief in the importance of continuity (the seventh belief, see Part 15) a Naturalist would resist alarmism and strive to maintain a level head during any claim of emergency. That the very sky—which has existed stably above since the planet began—would suddenly “fall” is a radically alarmist idea, and certainly not in keeping with the continuity of nature.
Also, science is important in Naturalism (it’s part of the fifth belief; see Part 14). There is no empirical precedent for the sky falling. There is also no research suggesting that this a possibility. As Dicken’s wrote: “There is nothing so strong or safe in an emergency of life as the simple truth.” Too bad that Chicken Little is obviously disconnected from verifiable facts, as are all his bird friends. They are like the manipulable “jellyfish people” that I mentioned in Part 1 because they have no grounding. They rely on the assertions of hastily-trusted friends and foxes, rather than obvious reality or lessons from history.
Naturalists would also be immune to the “sky is falling” mania because of the belief in the equivalence of God and nature, and the sacredness of nature (the first belief, see Part 12). The sky is an essential part of our experience of nature. If something as essential and immutable as the sky really were falling, it would be something completely out of our control. It would be God’s intent, the course of nature itself. Our task would simply be to adapt to the falling sky in the best way that we can, if we are able. This is a sort of practical transcendance when we face the sacredness, power, and uncontrollability of nature.
Spiritual transcendance is another defense against such manias. (Spirituality is part of the “Naturalist trinity” explained in Parts 4 and 14). If we realize that our material life isn’t the be-all and end-all, and that we have spirit as well, then we have an inner strength that helps us resist fear. Even If danger is real, and even if we die, we have the comfort that life goes on. This spiritual resistance to fear is encapsulated in Mara’s second temptation of the Buddha. It’s the temptation to give into fear. Mara conjures an army that assaults Buddha with a terrible barrage of arrows and swords, all of which simply turn into flowers and fall to the ground just as they approach the calm Buddha.
The Buddha/Mara story illustrates how the groundedness of spirituality can help us keep composure in the face of threats. When composure is kept, one can often see that the threat is not real, and that bad influences are tempting people to give into fear. Even if the threat is quite physically real, it is very important to keep this composure, so that facts can be seen as they are, and not clouded by fears. Traditional spirituality—in many different religions, not just Buddhism—helped keep millions of people grounded and unafraid during the covid mania, whereas most secular progressive leaders such as Noam Chomsky and Michael Moore stuck their tails between their legs and called for more vaccine coercion. Chomsky and Moore, who should have been smart enough to see the truth, instead listened to Chicken Little. They were lobotomized by fear, possibly due to their lack of belief in spirit.
Naturalists are not often found meditating in a cave, as Buddha was. But through their beliefs, they can develop a habit of being resistant to the unethical alarmism and fearmongering that is making Chicken Littles out of so many other people.
In the next part, I’ll discuss the new secular fundamentalism, and how it is similar to religious fundamentalism.