By Stan Johnston
The world will end on Monday. Not because a “Biblical numerologist” told Fox News. I know because the sky is falling – apparently all the time. Everywhere I go people are fretting about, well, everything. Welcome to the Year of Chicken Little.
Better known as Henny Penny in Europe, the character is a perfect metaphor for today’s insecure world of accelerating change. In the original children’s tale, a young chicken believes the sky is falling piece-by-piece after an acorn hits her head. One bad knock causes Chicken Little to believe everything will be bad going forward. Worse, others quickly jump on the bandwagon. Sound familiar?
While hiking, I have had pine cones drop on my head. It is not a pleasant experience. But I didn’t immediately leap from “a pine cone hit me” to “everything is coming down on me.” Unfortunately, we live in a cynical era. In China it is the Year of the Dog, but the global mood of 2018 is distinctly chicken: The sky is falling, and we are powerless to stop it.
For weeks I’ve been reading that April 23 was the day a numerologist predicted the world would end. It’s another in a long string of hope-draining headlines that dominate our media. From Syria and North Korea to Trump and Stormy, from #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter to chemical weapons and opioid epidemics, we expect most news to be a bummer pretty much daily.
In China it is the Year of the Dog, but the global mood is distinctly chicken
My European friends are suffering through the Year of The Henny Penny with news of Brexit, terrorist attacks, poisoned spies, Catalonia crackdowns and economic challenges. How did we get so negative about life, at least in the headlines?
When I worked on newspapers, subscribers often complained that we only printed bad news. I did personal audits and found the good and bad were pretty much equally distributed. However, readers were more interested in burglary arrests than the food bank 5K run. Just saying.
Even the mistaken belief that disaster is imminent is old news. A few of my favorites:
- The Russians are evil and could nuke America at any moment. If living in Moscow, the Americans are evil and could nuke Russia at any moment. (A time-tested acorn.)
- All civilization will grind to a halt on Jan. 1, 2000, because of the Y2K computer issue.
- The Mayan calendar predicts the world will end in 2012.
- The Large Hadron Collider will create a black hole that could engulf the planet in 2008.
- Aliens in flying saucers have invaded our planet (several times). Some will come down and take True Believers away in 1954. Or 1997.
- In 2000, the alignment of Earth with Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn will result in a new ice age.
- Jesus will return by 1844 (“The Great Disappointment”). I mean 1988. No, make that 2011. Or 2018.
How should we respond to noisy pessimism? Most important, don’t join in. Consider the consequences faced by Chicken Little’s friends:
After being hit by the acorn, the hysterical young chick takes off to warn the king and is soon joined by others. In the most familiar version, a fox invites them into its den: “They all go in, but they never, never come out again.” Having the story end with our team getting eaten could be too harsh for 21st Century children, so the newer PG version lets the chick get rescued and speak to the king – who tells them only what they want to hear.
The story goes back more than 25 centuries but still resonates as a cautionary tale about paranoia, mass hysteria and not believing everything you are told. Whether it’s Fox News or Foxy Loxy, we must resist the temptation to see the world through a veil of gullible fear.
Now today’s good news: The sky is not falling. Who will tell the king?
PS: I am returning to WordPress after two years on LinkedIn. For those posts click here.
Front View Mirror 