The one thing all these stories have in common is that the sky is not, in fact, falling and the world is not breaking up. The morals point out how foolish it is to leap to overly pessimistic conclusions, how irresponsible it is to incite panic, and how doubly foolish it is to believe the fear-mongering of others without evidence. The Chicken Little stories also raise the moral of how easily bad actors can manipulate fearful people, so that such foxes can more easily prey on such foolish, helpless fowl. That’s the moral I think we’re seeing lived out in this time: bad-faith foxes doing their best to keep foolish fowl whipped up into hysterical fear over irrelevances and scapegoats, the better to distract them from real issues, and thus devour them.
There is another twist to the story that I want to raise up now, though: what about fears that really are justified? What if the sky really is in danger of falling? In that case it’s surely reasonable to be afraid, but Chicken Little still gives us a moral about how not to behave. Even when fear is justified, dashing around in a panic is still not going to help anyone. Rather than playing right into the greedy hands of the foxes who would manipulate us, instead, how about gathering all the other fowl (and hares, and frogs) and trying to figure out how we can all actually help solve the problem.
[Pictures: first and third, anonymous illustrations from Chicken Little by Mara L. Pratt-Chadwick, ca. 1905 (Images from University of California Libraries Internet Archive);
second, wood engraving by William Roberts from The Wonderful History of Henny-Penny, ca. 1855 (Images from University of California Libraries Internet Archive).]